Actors will have a little bit longer to decide whether they want to authorize what could be the second work stoppage in two years.

The Screen Actors Guild announced they would move a strike authorization vote from Jan. 2 to Jan. 14, effectively removing the chance that actors would boycott the Oscars, that is if a Jan. 12 meeting of SAG's leadership concludes that's the correct course to go.

SAG's efforts to add a possible strike to its bargaining has met some resistance from high-profile members of the group, including the board of directors that governs the New York side of the union.

"While your leadership is not always in agreement, we must all pledge to keep our disagreements inside the boardroom and not air our differences in the press," said national president Alan Rosenberg in a statement to members. "We must all represent you with integrity and a commitment to stand together as we take on the huge global media corporations that want to break our union. We must stay true to our solidarity votes in the boardroom and true to our responsibility to better the lives of all SAG member and their families.

"Make no mistake: a house divided is doomed to fall."

SAG has maintained that a strike authorization vote doesn't necessarily mean there will be a strike. Instead, it would bring another tool to the bargaining table as the union tries to work out a deal with studios who have in turn said that SAG is making demands far beyond deals struck with other unions over the past year related to compensation through new media like the Internet.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios collectively, didn't address the strike vote delay, but did implore individual members of the union to read through the agreement they've presented and to make their own decisions on how to proceed.

"These agreements contain meaningful economic increases and first-ever new media rights and residuals," AMPTP said in a statement. "We are proud to have made such important agreements even as the national economic crisis has worsened almost by the day. We sincerely hope that, before too much times passes in 2009, we will also reach a labor agreement with the Screen Actors Guild."

SAG represents more than 120,000 actors in New York and Hollywood.

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