Actors Union Prepares for Contract Talks

[Omaha Steve]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120424392268401341.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By PETER SANDERS
February 29, 2008; Page B3

LOS ANGELES -- Two days after Hollywood screenwriters voted to ratify a new three-year labor contract with the major studios, the Screen Actors Guild said in a letter to its members that it expects to begin formal negotiations with the studios sometime after March 31.

SAG's contract expires on June 30 and its leaders, President Allen Rosenberg and National Executive Director Doug Allen, have said they will not necessarily accept the same terms negotiated by the writers and directors unions in recent months. The leaders said they would continue meeting with the CEOs of major studios and networks in advance of any formal talks.

The Directors Guild of America, whose contract was also up on June 30, quietly negotiated a new three-year deal with the studios in the midst of the 100-day Writers Guild of America strike. That deal helped guide the writers and studios towards a resolution of the strike and a new contract.

While SAG has many of the same concerns as the other two guilds over issues of compensation for use content on the Internet and via other new media, the SAG leaders said there are other issues specific to actors that need to be discussed.

"The compression of compensation for middle class working actors and forced endorsement by product integration, for example, must be addressed in our negotiations," the letter said. "Also the impact of some of the new media provisions of the DGA or WGA contracts would fall more harshly on actors than on writers and directors."

A SAG spokeswoman said the union had no further comment.

But as the union prepares to negotiate it is facing discord from within. More than 1,000 union members have signed a petition urging SAG to change its rules and allow only members who have worked a certain amount of time in the past six years to vote on contract issues; the guild, which at 120,000 members, dwarfs rival guilds in terms of size, has thousands of members who don't work regularly as actors.

The guild has yet to take any action on the matter.

Write to Peter Sanders at [e-mail]