As expected, the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers ended their first round of bargaining talks on Tuesday without an agreement. However, although reports had previously described the negotiations as cordial, the latest ones said that they had ended on a bitter note, fueling the belief that the industry would be staggering into another strike in July. Indeed, SAG President Alan Rosenberg told Daily Variety that the guild may ask its members to authorize a strike as early as next week. In a statement, the AMPTP said that SAG's insistence on "unreasonable demands" had been the reason for its decision to discontinue the talks. SAG, it said, had rejected the "fundamental business and labor principles" that the directors', writers' and producers' guilds had already accepted. For its part SAG maintained that it had "modified" its original demands while the AMPTP had refused to budge from its own position. "Our negotiating team is prepared to work around the clock for as long as it takes to get a fair deal. We want to keep the town working," Rosenberg said in a statement. Meanwhile, negotiators for the AMPTP are expected to open negotiations with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists today (Wednesday). SAG reportedly has 120,000 members; AFTRA, 70,000. About 44,000 belong to both unions.
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