The Screen Actors Guild has sent out a mailing to all its members updating them on the negotiations (or lack thereof) and including a response postcard. SAG is not taking a formal vote for a strike authorization. Instead, the postcard is a non-binding, informal poll to see how the membership feels about their union continuing to try and negotiate the kind of contract it seeks.
There seem to be a couple of small controversies over this postcard. Some are arguing that it's a bad idea to do this instead of a formal, binding acceptance or rejection of the studios' last offer. Others are complaining about the fact that the postcards contain a bar code which could enable the tabulators to identify voters by name, thereby eliminating the expected "secret ballot" provisions of union voting. SAG leaders insist the accounting firm won't link names to votes; that the bar code is just there to validate that the card came from a real, eligible voting member. They also want to compile some sort of demographic breakdown to determine how different kinds of actors are voting.
You can download a copy of this mailing as a PDF from this link. There's a good chart in there which explains what the studios are offering and what the union is proposing.
In other news, the Writers Guild is complaining that the studios are not living up to some terms of its most recent contract with the union. This is about as surprising as John McCain mentioning he was a P.O.W.
In way too many deals — labor contracts or otherwise — there are three stages of negotiation. In the First Negotiation, the one that ostensibly settles things, one party agrees to pay an extra dollar. After things are allegedly settled, you have the Second Negotiation, which is where the terms are committed more formally to paper. This is when they try to argue that they didn't really agree to just pay an extra dollar; that it was understood that they'd only pay the extra dollar whenever Halley's Comet was passing the Earth.
The other party says, "That's not what we agreed to" and there are fights and threats and pretty soon everyone gets on the same page with what was agreed upon and airtight paperwork is signed. That's when they segue to the Third Negotiation. In this one, they don't pay the extra dollar because they're figured out a way to argue the meaning of the airtight paperwork; to say, "Yes, well, it doesn't say in there that we can't pay the extra dollar in Monopoly® money." We are now into the Third Negotiation.
One of the reasons the recent Writers Strike lasted as long as it did was because WGA leaders were especially insistent on nailing down the terms of the First Negotiation. They demanded an unprecedented level of detail committed to paper before they'd put the offer to the membership and the members could vote to end the strike. Still, no matter how specific you make an agreement, there seems to always be some attorney who thinks, "Hey, I can get around that." It's one of the reasons that so many people rank lawyers way down the genetic chart, down with primordial ooze, various forms of fungus, and telephone solicitors.