know about the differences between New York and L.A. “I think they had the room pretty much stacked against us. “There’s always been a war between New York and Los Angeles, and it’s tragic,” he said. But the tensions reached a tipping point last week when SAG’s New York board publicly took the unusual step of calling on the union to scrap a planned strike authorization vote, citing the deteriorating economy.Īfter the meeting, an exhausted-looking SAG President Alan Rosenberg emerged saying he remains just as determined as ever to hold a strike authorization vote and blamed the internal divisions on a historical divide within the union. The union’s hard-line and moderate factions have been wrangling for much of the last year over negotiating strategy and an ill-fated campaign to defeat the AFTRA accord. SAG has a long history of internal bickering.
Others fear that a strike would give only a leg up to the smaller actors union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which has already negotiated a contract with the studios and has been signing more shows in prime-time TV.
The sides are sharply at odds over how actors should be compensated in the digital era.īut the campaign is facing mounting opposition from many of the union’s own members, who question the wisdom of holding a strike vote in the midst of a deep recession that has forced widespread layoffs and cutbacks across the entertainment industry. The union representing 120,000 actors is spending more than $100,000 on an “education campaign” to muster support for a strike authorization vote, which union leaders say is necessary to give them leverage in negotiations with studios that have gone nowhere for months. On the cusp of a crucial strike authorization vote by members of the Screen Actors Guild, Hollywood’s biggest union is wrestling with rising discontent among its members over the prospect of an imminent showdown with the studios.
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