SAG Votes Overwhelming "Yea" on New Contract

Tue., Jun. 9, 2009 6:48 PM PDT by Natalie Finn

SAG

Oh, those showbiz folk. Such divas, always running late.

Nearly a year after their previous deal expired, members of the Screen Actors Guild voted 78 percent in favor of approving a new two-year contract, effective June 10 at 12:01 a.m., covering film, TV, digital and new media projects.

Approximately 35.3 percent of SAG's 110,000 members mailed in a ballot.

SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers hammered out a tentative deal in April, as SAG's leadership—which believed it was getting screwed over financially in multiple ways—finally took a cue from its increasingly disgruntled membership and opted to put the terms to a vote.

"This is a great decision for SAG and I'm so appreciative of everything the new leadership is doing to put the Guild back on track," Monk star Tony Shalhoub said in approval. "They've obviously got the right ideas for making SAG stronger."

As when the Writers Guild of America went to battle with the AMPTP, SAG's major sticking point was new-media residuals and protection for actors as their projects go digital.

"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," SAG president Alan 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."

Oh, boy.

The new contract contains $105 million in wage increases for union members, though, per studio estimates, actors have also lost out on about $80 million in raises by working under the terms of the old deal—which expired June 30, 2008—for the past 11 months.