The AMPTP alerted me to this "Open Letter to the Entertainment Industry"  in the form of an ad addressing the current situation with SAG and set to run in the Los Angeles Times tomorrow. I have a better idea: Why don't the Hollywood CEOs get off their damn high horses and start negotiating directly with SAG (like they did with the WGA) and stop leaving everything up to their extremist labor lawyers and the AMPTP's version of Dick Cheney, Carol Lombardini. This letter shows what a sham the AMPTP is and that it reps a Big Media cartel of these 8 companies. Also, it's interesting how this letter conveniently forgets that Chernin made a favored nations deal on behalf of these CEOs with the WGA concerning New Media: if SAG gets a better New Media deal, so do the WGA and DGA:

This was released by SAG on Wednesday, November 26th:

Why should we vote to authorize a strike?
We need to show management that we are willing to fight to preserve our ability to earn a living as union performers; otherwise, management will take that away from us.  Nearly half of our earnings as union performers come from residuals, but management wants us to allow them to make programs for the Internet and other new media non-union and with no residuals.  This means that as audiences shift from watching us on their televisions to watching us on their computers and cell phones our ability to earn a living will go away and future generations of actors may never be able to earn a living through their craft.  This change will happen faster than you think.  To add insult to injury, management also insists that we eliminate force majeure protections from our contract.  These protections have existed since the first SAG contract in 1937 and protect you when production stops as the result of an “act of God” like a natural disaster or a strike by another union, such as the WGA strike earlier this year.  This is an enormous rollback that will leave actors without one of the most basic protections of a union contract.What is the effect of voting “yes” to authorize a strike?
Voting “yes” does not mean that there will automatically be a strike.  A strike authorization is a tool that gives us more leverage in negotiations and we intend to use it to try to get a fair deal.  If we receive “yes” votes from at least 75% of the members who vote on this referendum, the National Board will have the ability to call a strike, but it must vote to do that, and that won’t happen before we attempt further negotiations to reach a deal with management.  Why does management believe we should endorse non-union, residual-free work in New Media?
Management claims this bad deal is necessary because they need to “experiment” with new media and they claim they will renegotiate these terms with us in the future.  We have already agreed to most of management’s new media terms, however, and have proposed, in the areas where we still disagree, extremely flexible terms for new media

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Dueling statements today...

SAG President Alan Rosenfeld sent this message to members (also available on video here):

Dear Screen Actors Guild Member,

As your president, I want to take this opportunity to communicate directly with you about recent developments regarding our television and motion picture contract negotiations.

Last week, under the guidance of a federal mediator, we attempted to resolve our differences with the AMPTP. Our national negotiators and committee met with the mediator prior to our sessions with management, and followed the protocol and advice of the mediator. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts over two days to find creative solutions designed to move the process forward and to reach agreement, the federal mediator adjourned the mediation process early Saturday morning after concluding that mediation was over.

Now, per the resolution passed by 97% of our newly constituted national board of directors in October, we are launching a member education campaign and we will send out a strike referendum ballot to SAG members in December.  We ask that you support your board and negotiating committee, and vote YES to authorize the board to call a strike only if it becomes absolutely necessary.

Your leadership believes that we must be empowered with the real threat of a work stoppage in order to let management know that we are committed to protecting the future of all actors. We ask for your support, knowing that you have entrusted us to fight for your rights, and to protect your wages, working conditions and your health and pension benefits. We take your trust very, very seriously and will work towards reaching a fair agreement without a work stoppage.

Management continues to apply its one-size-fits-all demands to SAG actors. And we continue to stress that actors have unique, reasonable needs that are different, not better, but different, than writers, directors and crewmembers.  So they are telling us to allow the unions who negotiated before SAG to be our proxies. I wonder, would NBC ever let ABC negotiate its license fees for them? Of course not, but they think it’s perfectly reasonable to ask us to defer to the needs of other union workers and ignore what is critical to actors and their families.

It’s also curious that these global corporations are preaching to us about the bad economy. Like it’s our fault.  As middle-income actors we are the victims of corporate greed. We didn’t cause this turmoil.

Now, more that ever, we need

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