Actors' guild approves two-year contract

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Members of the Screen Actors Guild overwhelmingly voted to approve a new two-year contract with studios and producers, the union announced Tuesday.

"This decisive vote gets our members back to work with immediate pay raises and puts SAG in a strong position for the future," said David White, the group's interim national executive director.

The union endorsed the package 78 percent to 22 percent. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers hailed the vote, after a two-year-long negotiating process.

"The ratification vote by SAG members is good news for the entertainment industry," the alliance's Web site said. "We look forward to working with SAG members ... to emerge from today's significant economic challenges with a strong and growing business."

The actors had been working without a contract for nearly a year and the new contract did not immediately clear away the bad feelings.

"The membership has spoken and has decided to work under the terms of this contract that many of us, who have been involved in these negotiations from the beginning, believe to be devastatingly unsatisfactory," said Alan Rosenberg, the Screen Actors Guild national president.

"I call upon all SAG members to begin to ready themselves for the battle ahead."

Before the agreement, the two sides had been at odds mainly over the amount actors should be paid when their movies or TV shows are distributed on discs or through new media, such as mobile phones and the Internet.

The talks were tumultuous for Hollywood's biggest actors union. During the drawn-out process, SAG fired its executive director and named a new chief negotiator amid a bitter division among the actors over the question of calling a strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

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