CHICAGO - SAG'S CHIEF NEGOTIATOR FIRED

SAG'S CHIEF NEGOTIATOR FIRED

After being rebuffed by the Screen Actors Guild's hardliners at every turn in their efforts to seek a new approach in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, union moderates, who hold a majority on the union's board, used a procedure called "written assent" to oust its chief negotiator and executive director, Doug Allen. The move had been predicted, but it was widely assumed that Allen would launch a legal battle to block it. He did not. Much of the opposition to Allen was led by the union's local officers in Chicago and New York, and the action came after they were prevented from holding a vote on Allen's ouster at a meeting of the board over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. "We despise that we had to do this to put the guild back on the course to sanity, but hopefully this move will reopen negotiation," Todd Hissong, president the SAG's Chicago local, told the Wall Street Journal . But SAG President Alan Rosenberg, a strong supporter of Allen's negotiating strategy, told Daily Variety , "This is the darkest day within my memory. It kills democracy at SAG." Allen, who will continue to receive his $500,000 annual salary until the end of the year, issued a perfunctory statement saying that he was "disappointed" with the decision, but that he was "proud of my record." In an account of the meeting at which Allen was fired, entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel said that Allen was called into a meeting room after SAG attorneys examined the written assent and asked the signers if there was anything they wanted to say to him. "There was an awkward silence," Handel wrote on his blog, "then one of the actors answered, 'Thank you for your service.' Allen replied, 'You're welcome,' then talked out, slamming the door."

27/01/2009