I haven’t said much about the news that the Screen Actors’ Guild will ask for a strike authorization vote because, well, I don’t have much to say about it. Like many people, I’m skeptical that there will be a strike in the current climate, but on the other hand, that’s what the producers are counting on, and believe it or not, they’re occasionally wrong. (The AMPTP feels free to drive a hard bargain, in part, because they figure that the actors would never go on strike at a time like this and therefore they have to be bluffing. But the SAG people also know that the producers are terrified of another work stoppage, so they must be bluffing. And scary things happen when both sides assume the other is bluffing.)
I haven’t said much about the news that the Screen Actors’ Guild will ask for a strike authorization vote because, well, I don’t have much to say about it. Like many people, I’m skeptical that there will be a strike in the current climate, but on the other hand, that’s what the producers are counting on, and believe it or not, they’re occasionally wrong. (The AMPTP feels free to drive a hard bargain, in part, because they figure that the actors would never go on strike at a time like this and therefore they have to be bluffing. But the SAG people also know that the producers are terrified of another work stoppage, so they must be bluffing. And scary things happen when both sides assume the other is bluffing.)
Mark Evanier is very good at explaining these things, though, and in this post he explains the situation in terms so simple that even I can understand them. And in a later post, he also has a good explanation of the difference between a strike vote and a strike authorization vote (which is as much a bargaining tool as anything else).