It was a productive weekend for Hollywood.
After a nine-month standoff between actors and producers, a series of decisive moves between labor and management heralded what appeared to be the end of a long, cold silence for the entertainment industry's key players.
On Sunday, the Screen Actors Guild's national board approved a tentative agreement between the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers covering film and TV work, which was struck on Friday.
The board voted 53.38 percent to 46.62 percent to recommend the contract soon after 4 p.m., according to a SAG statement.
SAG's task force -- headed by the national board's dominant faction Unite for Strength -- won the battle over the date of the two-year contract's expiration date. The approved pact 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. Hopefully, this will allow the Hollywood unions to collaborate on their negotiation strategies.
In order to solidify the 2011 date, SAG's task force took the issue of force majeure off the table. Force majuere ensures that producers will pay actors a percentage of their salaries in case of a work stoppage out of the guild's control, such as a strike by another union. SAG contends that the studios owe actors
as much as $10 million in force majuere payments that should have been paid during last year's writers' strike.
For now, SAG members will have to negotiate with their employers individually to obtain those payments.
And Saturday, the guild along with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists unanimously approved new contracts covering conditions for the shooting of commercials, worth about $36 million in additional payments.
The new contract, struck with a joint policy committee for the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, added $21 million to health and pension funds, and provides a new structure for commercials for the Internet and other new media.
The contract between SAG and the AMPTP will be sent to SAG's rank-and-file membership with the board's recommendation to ratify in early May.
SAG's negotiations with the AMPTP ended bitterly last February when the studios insisted that the new contract expire in 2012.
Except for the earlier expiration date and no force majeure, the proposed agreement is similar to the deal offered by the studios last fall. It includes 3.5 percent annual increases, including a three percent wage increase, a .5 percent pension and health contribution and a 3.5 percent wage increase in the contract's second year.
SAG's statement infers that the new-media structure included in the agreement is the same as stated in the AMPTP's "last, best and final offer" -- the same terms that AFTRA, the WGA and DGA have already accepted.
The guild stated the proposed deal includes "a new media structure that tracks those achieved by other industry unions, resulting in gains for actors including jurisdiction on all derivative, made-for new media productions ... [and] residuals for ad-supported streaming of feature films and television programs."
