Actors, Producers Keep Negotiating Past Deadline

Amid reports of progress at the bargaining table, negotiators for West Coast actors and producers continued their talks past a 5 p.m. deadline Thursday.

Mark Locher, public relations director for the Screen Actors Guild, said the talks could go well into the night.

It was the second extension of talks in as many days.

Locher said that progress has been made on a number of issues and that a number of compromise packages have been offered by both sides. But he would not elaborate.

Carol Akiyama, senior vice president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, said: “The fact that the discussions are continuing indicates an exchange of meaningful dialogue.”

Both Locher and Akiyama said the two sides are working hard to avert a strike that could delay the start of the fall television season. The old three-year contract between SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists on the one hand and the producers on the other expired a month ago and it has been extended on a day-to-day basis since then.

A strike would interrupt filming of feature movies and prime-time television series, which already are in production for the fall season. It would not affect daytime soap operas, television news, radio shows or the filming of commercials, which are covered by other contracts.

Earlier this week, SAG and AFTRA, which bargain jointly for 92,000 actors, singers, dancers and stunt people, announced that they had received overwhelming approval from their members to call a strike if necessary.

If the negotiations break down and a strike is called, there will not be an immediate work stoppage because of procedures the two unions have for starting a walkout. There would be no picketing before next Tuesday at the earliest, according to Pamm Fair, an AFTRA spokeswoman.

Negotiating sessions are being held at the producers’ Sherman Oaks headquarters. During much of the day, a source indicated, small groups of negotiators met in what are known as “sidebar” meetings to resolve various issues that divide the two sides.

“There’s a lot of compromises being made, but they’re all subject to change until we walk out of here with a handshake,” one union source said.

Sources on both sides said the unions had scaled back their wage proposal. Earlier this week, the actors had proposed a 22% increase spread over three years. That has been reduced to 18%; the producers have been offering 9% over three years.

According to sources on both sides, the key matters yet to be resolved continue to be four separate issues regarding residuals, the extra fees paid to a performer for reruns of filmed or taped material. The unions have objected strenuously to proposals by the producers that they say would seriously erode actors’ earnings from residuals.

On Thursday, a new element was injected into the talks. A dissident SAG group called Actors Working for an Actors Guild, which has been closely associated with Charlton Heston, issued a statement raising questions about the bargaining strategy of the union’s negotiating team.

Morgan Paull,chairman of the dissident group, said that while he is satisfied with the progress in the bargaining, he objects to one approach that has been taken by the union negotiators but since dropped. He said he opposed the bargaining committee’s “tying the Extras’ Guild proposals to our negotiations.”

Paull was referring to a thorny subject that has been a festering sore in the entertainment industry for several years.

Extras working on shows that are taped are represented by AFTRA and are covered under the contract currently being negotiated. However, extras working on shows that are filmed are represented by the Screen Extras Guild in Hollywood and by the Screen Actors Guild in New York. They are not covered by the agreement being negotiated now. Their old contract expired at the end of January, and negotiations for a new three-year contract have been stalled for some time.

In several rounds of the actors’ talks, sources said, union negotiators raised matters relating to the extras’ contract in an attempt to get that matters resolved, too. This approach aroused Heston’s ire and he had planned a news conference on it Thursday but called it off after the extras issue was dropped from the actor’s negotiations, one of Heston’s allies said Thursday.

Locher, the SAG public relations director, would not discuss Paull’s statement or reports of Heston’s objections: “It is our policy not to discuss the internal strategy of our negotiating team.”

Heston successfully opposed a merger of the actors and extras unions in 1982 and 1984.