Actors Seek Boycotts to Support Strike

Turning up the heat for a new contract, dozens of striking actors descended on this city’s Procter & Gamble plant Tuesday to help launch a nationwide boycott of some of the company’s oldest and best-known products.

The action coincided with demonstrations in New York and at Procter & Gamble’s headquarters in Cincinnati, where members of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists announced a consumer boycott of Tide detergent, Crest toothpaste and Ivory soap.

The picketing and boycott, which have won the backing of the 13.1-million member AFL-CIO, are meant to draw attention to the five-month strike by commercial actors against the advertising industry over pay and other issues.

And it is designed to force Procter & Gamble, the nation’s second-largest advertiser after General Motors and thus a major player in the negotiations, to exert pressure on other advertisers to hammer out a contract. Both sides have agreed to meet next week in New York.

A Procter & Gamble spokeswoman said Tuesday that the advertising industry has already proposed a “fair and lucrative” contract and that her company is being unfairly singled out.

At the heart of the dispute is a disagreement over how much commercial actors should be paid for ads appearing on cable television, and whether contracts should cover commercials made exclusively for the Internet.