Actors’ Union Talks Break Down

By BRIAN STELTER
Published: November 22, 2008

The Screen Actors Guild, Hollywood’s largest union, inched closer to a strike on Saturday, after two days of talks with an alliance of Hollywood studios apparently broke down.

Joined by a federal mediator, the union met with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Thursday for the first time in four months. After adjourning early Saturday, the union said that the producers continued to “insist on terms we cannot possibly accept.”

In a statement, the producers said: “SAG is the only major Hollywood guild that has failed to negotiate a labor deal in 2008. Now, SAG is bizarrely asking its members to bail out the failed negotiating strategy with a strike vote — at a time of historic economic crisis. The tone-deafness of SAG is stunning.”

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They must be completely disconnected to the real world to think they can make demands at this time.

Look at the major studios:

Disney - Makes money from advertising and Theme parks. Virtually every company will be cutting its ad budget in 2009 and the consumer recession will certainly affect park attendance.

Sony - Primary source of revenue is electronics. Needless to say, the recession is gonna hurt them big time.

GE (Universal) - This company's very existance is in doubt due the debacle caused by its financial arm.

FOX, Viacom, Time Warner - All rely on ad revenue (see Disney).

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It's hard to imagine that the studios will concede anything to SAG no matter how long they go on strike.

The heads of the studios and the SAG need to go to Washington to ask for a bailout.

No bailout for **** actors imo! Weed out the suckers!

So many actors out of work will pose systemic risk to the world economy far greater than the collapse of the financial and auto industries.

OP,

You really should include specific sticking points. My understanding is that the studios/networks are playing their usual "we don't make any money off new media right now and we can't pay you for it because we don't know if it will be a future revenue source" card while simultaneously bragging to investors about the current profitability of new media.

Also, SAG will never authorize a strike. They have 120,000 members, and many if not most if not almost all cannot afford a prolonged work stoppage. Plus agencies will be pushing hard for a resolution; a strike would be awful for them.