SAG faction expected to seek ouster of negotiating team

Adding to the drama that has engulfed contract talks between actors and Hollywood studios, moderates on the Screen Actors Guild board are expected to push for the ouster of the union's negotiators.

The move designed to break the six-month deadlock could undermine the guild's current leadership, which some fear is bringing Hollywood to the brink of another strike.

SAG has been shaken internally by rival membership groups that take opposing views about what course of action the 120,000-member union -- the largest in Hollywood -- should take in efforts to reach a new contract with the studios. But despite those sharp differences, the strategy has largely been set by the guild's hard-line leadership, which includes President Alan Rosenberg and Executive Director Doug Allen, the chief negotiator.

Now a coalition of the union's board members, frustrated at the stalemate with the studios that has left SAG in limbo, is expected to call for disbanding the union's negotiating committee at an upcoming meeting.

It also plans to vote against holding a strike referendum and instead replace the negotiating team with a "task force" appointed by the board, said people close to the situation who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to discuss the plans.

The negotiating committee is dominated by the Membership First faction that has backed Rosenberg and Allen, whose future as the union's chief negotiator also could be on the table at the Jan. 12 meeting, the people said.

The new negotiating team would be constituted to reflect the results of an election last fall, when a group of moderates known as Unite for Strength won key seats on the board, forming a slight majority with supporters in New York and elsewhere.

If approved, the new negotiators would seek to jump-start talks with the studios, probably by consenting to new-media pay terms negotiated by other unions in exchange for improvements in traditional-media pay areas.

Such a move, however, would be a major blow to SAG leaders, who have argued that a strike authorization from members is needed to give them leverage with studios in what they view as landmark negotiations that could determine how actors are paid in the digital era.