By Lisa Richwine
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Negotiators for the SAG-AFTRA actors union agreed to a request from Hollywood studios to call in a mediator to try and forge a last-minute labor agreement and avert a second labor strike in the entertainment industry.
The 160,000 members of SAG-AFTRA have authorized a strike if a deal cannot be reached before midnight on Wednesday. The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since early May.
In a statement late on Tuesday, SAG-AFTRA said it aimed to secure a “fair deal” by the Wednesday deadline and “exhaust every possible opportunity.”
“However we are not confident that the employers have any intention of bargaining toward an agreement,” the statement said.
SAG-AFTRA also said that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the group that negotiates on behalf of studios, “has abused our trust and damaged the respect we have for them in this process.”
The union said studio sources had leaked the request for a mediator to the press before SAG-AFTRA negotiators were informed.
A spokesman for the AMPTP, which represents Walt Disney Co, Netflix Inc and other major studios, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jacqueline Wong)
