No Expectations For SAG-AMPTP Meeting
Deadline Hollywood, 11.17.08
By Nikki Finke
Yes, SAG and the AMPTP are scheduled to meet on Thursday thanks to federal mediator Juan Carlos Gonzalez's shuttle diplomacy. No one knows if it's with the AMPTP full committee, but I know that SAG is making arrangements for its entire negotiating committee to be available. Expectations are less than zero that the AMPTP will even consider budging from its New Media positions under the guise that the guild is lucky a last best offer was made before the economic climate worsened. Read full article and comments
posted by thereel @ 5:38 PM
4 Comments:
This doesn't look good folks......
Um....
Take a look at the comments on the article; they look even worse....
But this has gone far beyond our speculation.
We should just wait & see -and keep our fingers crossed; for our favorite actors. -Saghy
Hi all
You all will pardon my extended online absence but I've been catching up with real life and dealing with a developing health problem of my senior citizen father's (and it's looking like Alzheimers or a cognitive/dementia type illness, i.e. think Declan Gage in last season's finale) so apologies for not participating more with you all
I emailed this MSNBC story to the big bosses here but to sum it up the mediation failed and that means that a strike authorization vote is going out to SAG members. That doesn't mean the actors will vote to strike for sure but more likely than not they will, especially since the WGA (aka our beloved writers) have had to take the companies to arbitration for non-payment of their residuals in new media that they are contractually owed per the contract signed in February of 2008...the companies are apparently not keeping their word
to the writers (and this was not totally unanticipated by the leadership of the WGA). Throw in the $60 million dollars actors are owed by 80 different TV productions (and no I do not know whether Criminal Intent is one of them) for force majeure payments that are owed to the actors from the 2007-2008 WGA strike (ie the actors followed a contract provision and hung around and didn't go off to other work and for that they should get reduced pay under their SAG contract) and you can see where I think most of them will be inclined to strike.
It will take 75% of SAG members to vote to strike and yes it is a terrible economy and yes it would be hard on everyone to not be working but we're talking about the future here...and not getting paid for the work you do on the Internet is not something the actors can live with long term. Plus you're looking at a few bad apples running a few big companies into the ground...they could have just paid everyone in the entertainment unions what they asked for (avoiding the WGA strike) and it would have cost them less than 1% of their profits...but that's not what they chose to do and all the employees, the shareholders (GE stock is down to $14.00 a share), the advertisers (who didn't want to pay premium prices to put ads on reality TV and reruns) and the citizens of the USA are suffering from their stupidity.
Anyway sorry to be on the soapbox but here's the SAG strike authorization vote story link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27853901
VDOVault
I agree with you -in part.
The Negotiating Committee would not insist -rather stubbornly- on a strike, if they didn't have some kind of a back-up.
On the other hand, they're not quite sure weather what they have is enough; that's the reason for "the full-scale educational campaign, in support of an authorization":
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iE0uIqtrdPXiNMr1qniAIsCAa0fwD94JU5T01
Now that's a good one -new, strange ideas always excite me.
Frankly, my real concern -apart from our favourite actors- is for the little people in the industry; though it's also true that when the big ones fall, they fall bad- and they fall ON THE LITTLE ONES.
Needless of an example, it's the same case scenario in the Wallstreet Tumble, that literally shook up the whole world.........
Yet, people are entitled to pursue what's rightfully theirs -no doubts whatsoever -but there's always this subject called "Pros & Cons" which every intelligent soul should pass, before being accepted as qualified, register for the "full-scale edducating campaign".....
Maybe all I can do -as a humble fan- is to pray it all ends well -and sooner, rather than later.
May positive energies bless all the sincere ones; -Saghy
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