SAG, studios steadfast
Negotiators recess as marathon sessions continue
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Hollywood's much-desired labor peace remained elusive early Tuesday as negotiators for actors and studios recessed for 11 hours rather than reaching deal for a new film-TV contract deal.
Bargaining stopped at 2:40 a.m., after nearly 17 hours of negotiations, with no comment from either side as reps quickly drove away from the Alliance of Motion Pciture & Television Producers in Encino. Negotiations will resume at 2 p.m. with no indication yet of whether a final agreement will be announced even though expectations have been high that a three-year pact had been hammered out.
Sources said a flurry of movement from the outlines of a deal late Monday had complicated the task of converting the altered positions into formal contract language. With much of the deal having been crafted during the weekend, the latest rounds of talks have been devoted to agreement on the fine details.
A film-TV deal will end a year of anxiety for the industry, which finds itself mostly on hiatus due to stepped-up production to stockpile for a possible strike. The talks had been expected to conclude Monday, but the slow pace of reaching a deal was due largely to two factors -- the unions' cumbersome approval process and the insistence by SAG and its chief negotiator Brian Walton that every aspect of the agreement be written up in precise contract language.
Although the talks remained under a news blackout, sources also continued to express optimism that an agreement is imminent. Negotiators reached the basic outline of a three-year deal on key issues during the weekend, including a 3.5% gain in minimums, an increase in guest star fees, hikes in residuals for basic cable, foreign TV and Fox Network and the first pension and health contributions on work for the Internet.
The actors' existing contract expired at midnight Saturday. Officials with the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists have said the terms of the expired pact remain in effect as long as negotiations continue.
The collapse of negotiations is viewed as highly unlikely. SAG and AFTRA have yet to take a strike authorization vote, and the results of such a move would be iffy due to a combination of factors -- the worsening economy, fatigue from last year's six-month strike against advertisers and the lack of a contract campaign or other strike preparation this year.
The talks at the AMPTP have drawn several dozen journalists, although far fewer than the numbers that attended the final days of negotiations between the AMPTP and the Writers Guild of America two months ago. Since then, worries about an actors' strike have cooled, so the announcement of a SAG/AFTRA deal is expected to be somewhat anticlimactic.
The AMPTP originally asked SAG and AFTRA to begin negotiations last fall, but the actors insisted on waiting until the WGA deal was reached. The first six weeks of talks unfolded languidly, with the actors taking multiple breaks before accelerating on June 22, eight days prior to contract expiration.
