SAG negotiators, including president Alan Rosenberg, were back at it with the studios and networks Thursday, a day after AFTRA reached its tentative deal with the AMPTP.

AFTRA's agreement is similar on key issues as pacts approved this year by the WGA and DGA, and it remains unclear how SAG might mark any further gains in those same areas. Like the others, AFTRA's deal -- now tagged for a membership ratification vote -- includes an increase in base pay, increases in employer contributions to the health and retirement plan and historic new jurisdiction over new media.

"I don't think (SAG is) going to be getting a better deal," entertainment labor attorney Alan Brunswick said. "I'd like to think they're realistic enough to know it doesn't make sense for them to strike by trying to better a deal three other unions have agreed to."

One of the stickiest issues that AFTRA president Roberta Reardon said they faced involved an AMPTP proposal to create a clip library and remove the right of consent for the nonpromotional use of clips. But that effectively was tabled in the tentative AFTRA agreement, to be revisited within three months of the pact's ratification. In the interim, actors will retain their consent rights.

Also, AFTRA and management agreed that actors joining new programs after July 1 can bargain the consent issue at the time of hire. That's a solution first proposed by SAG's negotiators -- and rejected by the AMPTP -- when they were bargaining in April.

The Hollywood Reporters' Leslie Simmons is following the story

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