SAG Drama Continues: Allen Won't Return to his Post

The Screen Actors Guild is still facing it's worst enemy in the stalled negotiations for a new contract with producers: itself.

The infighting and squabbling has continued over the last few weeks, and made its way into a courtroom this week as SAG President Alan Rosenberg attempted to forcibly return Doug Allen to the chief negotiator spot. Allen was removed by the board as the push for a strike collapsed, and replaced with interim director Doug White.

Rosenberg and Vice President Anne-Marie Johnson were claiming that Allen's removal violated SAG bylaws, which require a two-thirds majority vote to remove the director. SAG lawyers countered by saying that since the entire board was replaced, it only required a majority of votes. Members of SAG chose to put a more moderate board in place in hopes of ending the stalemate that has actors working without a contract since June 30, 2008.

With this legal hurdle behind them and calls for a strike seemingly over, the Screen Actors Guild, which represents over 120,000 actors, could return to talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers shortly.

Rosenberg is not willing to give up that easily, though, and his lawyers have said he will file another appeal, further delaying any chance of an end to the standoff. Another court dispute could delay contract talks for another three weeks to a month.

Through all of this, the AMPTP has remained silent, waiting patiently for SAG to sort itself out. The intenral collapse within the union may prove to hurt their chances to have any leverage with AMPTP over the main sticking point in the negotiations: the royalties paid to actors for Internet and new media broadcasts.

As the economy continues to sink, SAG's bargaining power is diminishing, and by the time they sit down with the AMPTP, they could see their contract reduced even further.