LOS ANGELES — A sudden split between two actors unions over the weekend added an unhappy twist to Hollywood’s troubled contract cycle: It appeared to weaken the labor organizations without making life easier for the studios they bargain with.
On Saturday, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists suspended its bargaining alliance with the Screen Actors Guild, just before a board meeting where they hoped to approve a joint negotiating strategy.
The actors’ current contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expires on June 30, and talks about a new contract were to have begun within two weeks.
Now Aftra, the smaller of the two unions, says it plans to open talks with the producers on its own as quickly as possible. In a brief statement, the studios’ alliance said it welcomed the prospect.
Hollywood, however, stands little to gain from a showdown. Having barely recovered from a three-month writers strike, television producers have been rushing to get their series back on track. Movie studios, meanwhile, are hurrying to finish productions like Universal Pictures’ “Land of the Lost” — a Will Ferrell comedy that was being shot last week at the La Brea Tar Pits, a half block from the actors guild headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard — before facing the possibility of another walk-out.
Informal discussions between the federation and the studios could begin immediately, but formal talks might be delayed by separate negotiations scheduled in early April between the companies and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, which represents production workers.
In an interview on Sunday, Alan Rosenberg, president of the Screen Actors Guild, said his union might now accelerate its timetable so that it would not have to negotiate behind the federation, which is known as Aftra. “We have to move much more quickly than we wanted to,” Mr. Rosenberg said.
The exchanges concealed some dangerous complications, beyond the potential scheduling conflicts. Neither actors union is quite as strong without the other. Both face the possibility that disparate contracts will lead to a protracted struggle for representation of actors on television shows, including prime time series, that could be represented by either.
And the movie and television companies now face the possibility that the actors guild, which has been pressing more assertive positions than the federation, will hold out for bigger gains on its own than would have been possible in joint talks.
The two unions seems to want the same thing: Mr. Rosenberg said his union on Saturday night approved the same demands that had been hammered out together jointly with the federation. He declined to discuss specifics, but confirmed that the proposals would include demands related to compensation for DVDs. Actors have said they want an increase in DVD compensation, which companies have strongly resisted in the past.
In an interview on Sunday, Roberta Reardon, the federation’s president, said that her group’s board had approved the same proposals on Saturday, which means that both unions will start negotiations with matching demands.
The weekend blow-up occurred after leaders of the federation, which represents about 70,000 actors and others, learned that guild leaders, who represent about 120,000 actors, had met with cast members of the CBS soap opera “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
(The two unions have about 40,000 members in common. The federation does not cover movies, but the unions both cover sometimes overlapping areas of television work.)
Earlier in the day, The Los Angeles Times reported that the federation officials had accused the guild of encouraging actors who were trying to end the federation’s representation of the show’s cast. Guild leaders disputed the claim. On Saturday evening, however, federation leaders scrapped the planned talks, which have been conducted jointly for nearly 30 years, citing the soap opera incident as the latest in a series of attempts by the guild to undercut them.
“This was simply the culmination of what really has been a year-long campaign by SAG to discredit Aftra,” Ms. Reardon said on Sunday.
Mr. Rosenberg — who called the soap opera issue a “sham” designed to let the federation exit joint talks. — said his guild had pledged not to take up representation of the “Bold and the Beautiful” actors, even if the federation were decertified. Relations between the unions, often rocky, had become especially difficult after the actors guild earlier floated a plan to tilt its customary 50-50 position on a joint bargaining committee in its own favor, because the guild is larger and its members have more earnings.
As of Sunday morning, the organizations did not appear to be poised for reconciliation. “I’m so furious about the whole thing, I can hardly talk about it,” Mr. Rosenberg said.