Actors’ Strike Looms

Look for Hollywood to go silent again this winter: The Screen Actors Guild will send out a strike authorization vote to its members next month, paving the way for a strike as early as January. Voting will take at least three weeks and a strike will require 75 percent of the votes, plus approval by the SAG board. The move comes on the heels of the failure of federally-mediated talks between the SAG and the studios. The economic crisis is a fresh stone on which both parties can grind their accusations: The studios called SAG's leaders "tone deaf" for threatening at this difficult economic time, while SAG's president wrote in a letter, "It's also curious that these global corporations are preaching to us about the bad economy," he added. "Like it's our fault. As middle-income actors we are the victims of corporate greed. We didn't cause this turmoil."