Negotiators for the Screen Actors Guild have reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on a new contract. They've gone months and months of warfare and mudslinging without one and now they have one…probably.
SAG hardliners are already saying they will urge the membership to reject it and SAG softliners (to coin the opposite noun) are saying they could have gotten this deal months ago. Both sides seem to be saying this before they know what's actually in the deal, which will be unveiled before a SAG Board Meeting on Sunday.
It is rumored though that the contract's expiration date is June 30, 2011. If so, that would be a "win" for SAG, though at what cost we don't know. Recently, leaks from within the deliberation were suggesting that the expiration date was the stumbling block; that SAG wanted this date and the AMPTP didn't want them to have it.
6/30/11 would line up SAG's next negotiations with AFTRA's, which would help if those two unions are to patch up their differences and link arms again. It also would allow some coordination with other above-the-line guilds. The current Writers Guild contract expires on May 1, 2011 and the current Directors Guild contract also expires June 30, 2011. So the WGA gets to go first in the next round and interesting alliances are already possible. If SAG is getting the June 30 date, that makes the possibilities even more intriguing.
Beyond that, it's wait-and-see with the SAG contract. I suspect there will be a lot of yelling at what's not in the deal and a concerted effort to vote it down. But I'd be very surprised if it's so bad that it won't pass by a wide margin. It won't be a great deal. The union lost the chance to get one of those when it splintered with AFTRA. But it won't be so egregiously terrible that the members will turn it down.