TV, radio performers ratify Hollywood labor deal

Source: Agencies  |   2008-7-9  |     ONLINE EDITION

THE smaller of Hollywood's two performers unions said yesterday that its members have ratified a new prime-time TV contract, undermining a last-ditch bid by the larger, more militant Screen Actors Guild to secure a richer deal.

The pact with Hollywood's major film and TV studios covers 70,000 members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and it won final approval despite an all-out campaign by SAG urging some 40,000 actors who belong to both unions to vote down the AFTRA accord.

Terms of the new AFTRA pact are essentially the same as those in the "final offer" the studios presented to SAG last Monday when talks broke off hours before their existing contract expired.

SAG plans to issue its formal response to that proposal on Thursday.

AFTRA leaders had warned that defeat of their contract settlement could lead to renewed labor unrest as Hollywood struggles to recover from a tumultuous 14-week strike by screenwriters that ended in February.