The board of directors of the Screen Actors Guild has voted — barely — to recommend that its membership accept the contract that its negotiators brought back. The tally was close — 53.4% to 46.6% — which is probably closer than most folks expected. It opens the door wide to a bloody pro/con battle over ratification and that we shall see. A large part of SAG feels they've come too far to take essentially the same thing the other guilds did in "new media." Moreover, in some ways those terms are worse when they're applied to actors.
Ballots will go out around May 1 and are due back at the end of the month. Between now and the due date, we're going to see a lot of yelling and demonstrations and rallies and web campaigns. My guess though is that in the end, the contract will pass by a wider margin with the membership than it did at the board level. It's not so much that the members will like it any more but that they're worn down, worried about a permanent rupture in their guild, and don't see a leader able to carry them into battle.