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Actors End Ad Strike
A tentative agreement was reached Sunday between the actors unions and the advertising industry, signaling an end to almost six months of acrimonious work stoppage in Hollywood--Tinseltown's longest strike ever.
Details of the three-year pact between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and a group representing advertisers and agencies were announced Monday afternoon in a joint statement from SAG and AFTRA.
The new contract is subject to a vote of the unions' boards and then by the rank and file members. If the boards approve the contract at a meeting Saturday, actors could be back on the sets as soon as next Monday.
The strike, which began May 1, is the first major Hollywood walkout in 12 years. However, with industry labor relations as tense as ever, many observers see it as a dress rehearsal for an even more damaging strike next year involving actors and writers that could shut down TV and movie production for months.
For now, though, the thespian set is claiming to be happy with the pending deal. The actors will get an across-the-board boost in the pay scale for cable TV ads, as well as guaranteed fees for the burgeoning field of Internet ads.
The actors, who get "pay-per-play" residuals for network television ads (meaning they get money in the bank every time a commercial airs), had asked for a similar pay structure for cable and the Web. Actors usually earned a maximum of $1,000 for those ads, with no residuals.
But advertisers refused to bend on the cable pay-per-play front. Eventually, the unions relented and agreed to a significant pay hike for cable ads during the intense latest (and apparently final) round of talks last week.
The Hollywood Reporter says the negotiating committee was "almost unanimous" in approving the deal, and that SAG president William Daniels, viewed as one of the most militant and persistent leaders of the work stoppage, is "absolutely" in favor of the settlement.
"In the final analysis, both labor and management negotiators worked hard to bridge the wide gap that separated our original positions," Daniels says in a statement. "All of us realize that for our common good, it was time to end this strike.
"There are two goals in a strike: To get a better contract and to strengthen the union. We have achieved both."
The strike has taken a major toll on the economies of Los Angeles and New York, the centers of commercial production before the strike. Thus far, the Los Angeles economy has lost more than $1.5 million a day, while the New York economy has lost more than $500,000 daily.
Throughout the strike, producers continued to shoot commercials with nonunion actors, both in the States and abroad, despite the strikers' efforts to disrupt shooting. According the Hollywood Reporter, SAG and AFTRA members lost about $200 million in wages.
(originally posted 9:15 a.m.)
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