Strike Leadership Face SAG Mutiny

The Screen Actors Guild's negotiating committee, led by President Alan Rosenberg, may be ousted by anti-strike forces within the union, reports the Los Angeles Times. The move, if successful, could undermine the guild's leadership. A coalition of moderate union board members are frustrated at the strategy that seems to be leading the union toward a strike, with ballots for the strike vote going out today. Sources tell the paper that a meeting scheduled for Jan. 12 will be a showdown between those dissenters and the negotiating committee, mostly made up of the Membership First faction, which has supported Rosenberg and chief negotiator Doug Allen. His role could change after the meeting as well. The plan is to replace the current negotiating team with a board-appointed "task force" in order to jump-start talks with the studios and reach a new contract.