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Deals, Deals, Deals

Some entertainment-related labour news:

1. The Writers’ Guild of Canada will vote on July 17 on whether to extend its contract through 2009.

2. In “Will there be an actors’ strike?” news, AFTRA (the other Hollywood actors’ union) voted to accept an agreement similar to the WGA and DGA deals. The Screen Actors’ Guild lobbied hard to convince AFTRA members to vote down the deal, but they succeeded only in ensuring that the vote passed by a a relatively low margin. This leaves SAG in a bad position, not only because AFTRA won’t be negotiating jointly with them, but because in the all-important PR war, this gives the studios the ability to make SAG look unreasonable for not wanting a deal that was already accepted by others. (The lobbying wasn’t completely for nothing, though, since the studios would have had even more leverage if AFTRA had approved the deal overwhelmingly. SAG can at least point to the fact that AFTRA’s acceptance was rather weak.) that with the current situation, SAG will probably have to accept something similar to AFTRA’s, with maybe a bone thrown to them by the studios to soothe their pride. It’s not a very good situation, since it creates the potential for a lot of hostility and resentment all around.

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