Hollywood's major actors union and studios are set to resume this week their stalled talks over a new contract, for the first time since the union elected a more moderate board and fired their chief negotiator.

The Screen Actors Guild (SAG), which has about 120,000 members, and the Alliance of Motion Picture Television Producers, which represents major studios and TV networks, are scheduled to hold two days of negotiations in Los Angeles from Tuesday, the first bargaining sessions since last November.

The contract covering motion picture and television production expired at the end of last June. Previous negotiations deadlocked when SAG demanded better terms than other entertainment industry unions received.

The main sticking points during the negotiations are the amount of pay for programming shown over the Internet and DVD sales. Production has continued under the terms of the previous agreement.

The resumption of talks was announced on Wednesday, two days after the SAG National Board of Directors, now controlled by a more moderate faction, fired executive director and chief negotiator Doug Allen.

The SAG board also disbanded the committee that had been negotiating a new contract and directed that it be replaced with a task force to complete the negotiations on behalf of the board.

The actors union, whose members are mostly in Los Angeles and New York, has been split over a proposed strike vote, which was earlier scheduled to begin on January 2, but postponed at the last minute.

Supporters of the strike proposal say it is crucial to gain leverage in negotiations, but opponents think that launching a strike is not appropriate with the current economic environment and it would be unlikely for the proposal to receive the required 75 percent approval among the members.

(CRI February 3, 2009)