The Screen Actors has attempted to reassure the Hollywood town by proclaiming it is not going on strike any time soon though its feature-primetime contract will expire on Monday night at midnight, media reported Monday.
"We have taken no steps to initiate a strike authorization vote by the members of Screen Actors Guild," SAG president Alan Rosenberg said in a statement Sunday.
"Any talk about a strike or a management lockout at this point is simply a distraction. The Screen Actors Guild national negotiating committee is coming to the bargaining table every day in good faith to negotiate a fair contract for actors," Rosenberg said.
SAG also told its 120,000 members some reports have implied incorrectly that a strike's looming this week.
Hollywood studios, however, has shut down virtually all film production because they do not want to risk having costly projects halted by a walkout.
"The industry is shutting down because SAG's Hollywood leadership insisted on eleventh-hour negotiations and dragging these talks into July," said the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the studios' bargaining agent.
SAG countered in a statement that any industry slowdown was "by management's choice not because of negotiations or the expiration of our agreement."
SAG's contract talks, which began in April, have bogged down on some of the same issues that led Hollywood writers to walk off the job months ago, including disagreements over how union talent should be paid for work created for the Internet.
SAG also has been pressing for an increase in the residual fees actors earn from TV shows and movies sold on DVD, a demand on which the studios have vowed never to budge.
Source:Xinhua/Agencies
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