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Online Now LOS ANGELES — The Screen Actors Guild appeared determined to go ahead with a strike authorization vote after a group of board members failed in an attempt to oust the union’s lead contract negotiator.
The national board of the Screen Actors Guild adjourned a marathon 30-hour meeting on Tuesday afternoon without voting on a proposal calling for the
removal of Doug Allen, the union’s national executive director, from his role as lead negotiator for the 120,000-member union.
The ouster had been proposed by a group of moderate board members who were seeking to overturn a previously approved referendum to submit a strike authorization vote to the union’s 120,000 members.
Though that group recently won a majority of seats on the union’s national board, they apparently were not able to overcome parliamentary measures that kept their proposal from coming to a vote in a meeting that lasted throughout the night on Monday and into Tuesday afternoon.
The lack of action appears to leave the union essentially unchanged in its efforts to restart talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers over the actors contract, which expired last June. Attempts to use a federal mediator to broker an agreement collapsed in November.
The union’s board had previously planned
to mail ballots for the strike-authorization vote on Jan. 2, but that vote was postponed after a group of directors had begun arguing that the declining economy required the union to alter its stance.
Two board members who spoke on the condition of anonymity said their proposal had been thwarted by parliamentary moves taken by Alan Rosenberg, the union president, and supporters of the strike authorization measure.
In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Rosenberg said that a group of board members had submitted a document to the union “that purports to deal with” Mr. Allen and his role in the union negotiations. But, he said, the union’s lawyers “have concluded that the document does not constitute a valid written assent” by those who signed it.
The statement said that Mr. Allen and the negotiating committee “remain committed to advancing the cause of actors and our crucial contract negotiations.” A spokeswoman for the union declined to
comment further.
The union is battling the producers over a contract that, in addition to setting base pay rates for actors in filmed productions, would outline pay scales for work transmitted digitally over the Internet and by other means. The actors union is the last of several major Hollywood unions to reach agreement with the producers.
A strike authorization must be approved by 75 percent of those voting to allow a strike to go forward. The negotiating committee had said that approving an authorization did not require members to strike, but said that the authorization was needed to get the producers to return to the bargaining table.
Uncertainty over the union’s intentions has caused some studios to begin to slow production of feature films in anticipation of a possible strike.
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Someone's got some splainin' to do. 
