It's finally over.
The eleven-month standoff between the Screen Actors Guild and producers came to an end Tuesday night as SAG members voted overwhelmingly to approve the union’s new TV/theatrical contract with the AMPTP.
A whopping 78 percent of members who returned ballots approved the ratification of the new contract. Thirty five percent of the 110,000 members who received ballots returned them by 5 p.m. Tuesday -- an above average turn-out for SAG referendums.
The vote count in the Hollywood Division was 70.7 percent to 29.3 percent in favor. In the New York Division, the vote count was 85.7 percent to 14.3 percent in favor. And in the Regional Branch Division, the vote count was 89.1 percent to 10.9 percent in favor.
The contract provides $105 million in wage increases and other improvements, including a 3 percent wage increase, a .5 percent increase in pension and health contributions and residuals for new-media work similar to the guild’s home-video residuals.
The pact goes into effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday and will expire June 30, 2011 -- the same date AFTRA's primetime TV contract is set to expire. The WGA's contract with the studios' group will expire a month earlier.
SAG President Alan Rosenberg, who has called the contract a “terrible deal” that would “just kill actors,” accepted the result and is turning his attention to re-negotiating the contract in 2011.
"The membership has spoken and has decided to work under the terms of this contract that many of us, who have been involved in these negotiations from the beginning, believe to be devastatingly unsatisfactory,” Rosenberg said in a statement.
“Tomorrow morning I will be contacting the elected leadership of the other talent unions with the hope of beginning a series of pre-negotiation summit meetings in preparation for 2011. I call upon all SAG members to begin to ready themselves for the battle ahead.”
SAG Interim National Executive Director David White praised the guild’s membership for ratifying the contract. “This decisive vote gets our members back to work with immediate pay raises and puts SAG in a strong position for the future.”
The guild’s chief negotiator John McGuire thanked the SAG members and staff who helped the union reach a deal with the AMPTP April 11.
"We emerged with a solid deal that the members have now voted up. The negotiating team worked tirelessly, building on the work of the first negotiating committee, to deliver these improvements to members,” McGuire said.
UFS spokesperson and board member Ned Vaughn told TheWrap that the board will now focus on re-opening negotiations for SAG's four other expired contracts covering basic cable, primetime TV animation, cable animation and video games.
"I'm delighted. SAG members have made a very smart decision," Vaughn said. "We made some important changes, produced some important results and we want to keep building on that success by negotiating the other outstanding contracts and to absolutely start repairing our relationship with AFTRA."
Representatives AFTRA and the AMPTP congratulated the guild in separate statements.
