By Raquel Maria Dillon
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Hollywood producers gave the Screen Actors Guild another contract offer in hopes of ending a labor dispute that has lasted for months.
The proposal, which producers called their “last, best and final offer,” came as the two sides ended three days of negotiations Thursday.
SAG, the last holdout among several unions that have agreed to long-term contracts, has opposed the producers’ previous offer, saying it failed to guarantee guild coverage in productions made for the Internet and failed to make residual payments on made-for-Internet content that is rerun online, among other issues.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said the offer provides residuals for several kinds of Internet programming, though it was unclear whether it specifically addressed the guild’s demands. It also said the offer represents a $250 million increase over the contract that expired on June 30.
A message left with SAG spokeswoman Pamela Greenwalt were not immediately returned Thursday night.
“The terms in the offer are the best we can or will offer in light of the five other major industry labor deals negotiated over the past year and the extraordinary economic crisis gripping the world economy,” AMPTP said in a statement.
Producers said SAG has 60 days to accept the proposed three-year contract. Afterward they reserve the right to modify or withdraw the offer.
Producers insist the three-year contract would start when it is ratified, instead of when the last one expired, which would mean SAG would not be able to join with the writers’ and directors’ guilds to increase their bargaining power when their contracts expire in 2011.
The negotiations this week followed months of internal strife at the guild, which fired its national executive director, Doug Allen, earlier this month. Allen had supported holding a strike vote but the leadership change makes such a vote highly unlikely.
The talks marked the first time the two sides met since November.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads โ essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More