Angry that the Hollywood-based national leadership of the Screen Actors Guild has dithered dangerously in a seven-week-old contract stalemate with producers, New York SAG officials have jumped in to fray, calling for a federal mediator to intervene.

According to N.Y. SAG leader Sam Freed: “All of us in New York, Hollywood, and across the country should be concerned about how this failure to reach an agreement is impacting our members… We have already suffered significantly as a result of the WGA [Writers Guild] strike, and now we are experiencing an additional loss of work, made worse when we can only find a job by having to work without a contract under old terms and conditions. There are some who feel we have all the time in the world to make this deal. We on the N.Y. board do not.”

SAG president Alan Rosenberg had a blistering response: “This is not in the best interest of New York Division SAG members or any SAG members across the country. It could tend to delay and prolong the negotiations by emboldening management with a false belief that SAG actors are split on the issues. The plainly political nature of this action is cynical and unfortunate.”

SAG’s current leadership is already is under assault from a newly formed dissident group of actors called United for Strength, which is pushing stars like Adam Arkin and Kate Walsh as part of an upcoming board of directors election, to be decided September 18th. The old guard, led by Rosenberg, calls its faction Membership First and has enlisted Mad Men’s Keith Carradine and Scott Bakula to join its election slate.

The writers’, directors’, and smaller actors’ guild, AFTRA, have already cut deals with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The AMPT offered SAG a similar deal to the other guilds, but SAG demanded more (and more and more, according to the producers), and the AMPT gave a final take-it-or-leave-it and walked from the table. After the recent 100-day writers’ strike which ground production to a halt, many companies are hesitant to begin large productions with a possible actors’ strike, if sides don’t come to terms.

The dissidents want the current AMPT proposal put to a vote by SAG’s 120,000 members, but present leadership says it can still negotiate a better deal and won’t permit a membership vote.

Where actors usually put their dramas on the screen, this one is playing out in the daily news.

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