SAG negotiators urge board to call a strike vote
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It's been something like three months since the AMPTP made its "final offer" to SAG -- supposedly Nick Counter made over a dozen "final" offers to the writers guild between October and January -- and after Counter rebuffed a recent request for new talks, the negotiating committee has urged the national board to seek a strike authorization vote.
All this means is that SAG would be asking for permission to call a strike, it is not a vote to strike. But it's still the very last step before a strike if a high "yes" turnout doesn't convince the other side to start talking again.
Nikki Finke is supposed to have more information about what's going on up sometime I guess in the next 24 hours so we'll all be watching that to see what happens. I don't know too much about the particulars of SAG politics so for all I know that vote could be called anytime now, or it could be never come. Depends on what the consensus is when the big heads get together next and consider their dwindling options. I don't think there was ever a possibility that AMPTP was going to cave and give SAG something it hadn't offered any other guild without a strike. The WGA had to strike just to get anything on new media at all, and that one lasted over 21 weeks just to get that much.
It's good to remember though that a SAG strike would be far more immediate, shutting down everything currently in production. It'd mean the loss of the second consecutive fall television season, but it'd also put a huge dent in every studio's feature slate, unlike the WGA strike which only lasted long enough to hurt TV.
More coming soon.
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