This Sunday, Los Angeles hosted the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Featuring such winners as Daniel Day Lewis, Javier Bardem — and pretty much every major actor from “The Sopranos” — the Screen Actors Guild Awards could potentially be the only all-out gala this spring with the writers strike threatening the Oscars. And come this summer, things may get even worse if the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) decides to join the strike.

Established in 1933, the SAG is an AFL-CIO affiliated union representing more than 120,000 performers. The SAG ensures a monopoly of nearly all screen actors through its tight network of rules and contracts. Its members are only allowed to work on SAG-approved sets where the producer has signed an agreement with the Guild.

In turn, these producers must ensure that all featured performers on a set are SAG members, with the exception of a principal — that is, an actor who has never worked on a SAG-approved set. But once these actors finish their first Guild gig, they must join the union before they can work on a SAG-affiliated set again.

However, most actors are happy to join the union, since Guild contracts provide them with a number of perks, including standardized pay, guaranteed working conditions and a slew of quality pension and health benefits.

Much of the recent scrutiny of the SAG stems from the ongoing Hollywood writers strike, which, according to NBC, has already cost the industry $1 billion, including the wages of those who have been unable to work on closed sets. Many of the writers’ complaints stem from disputes about residuals from DVD sales, new media like Internet downloads, streaming and on-demand programming and union membership for those working on animated and reality shows.

These same issues are fueling fears that the SAG and the Directors Guild of America could join the writers on the picket lines once many of the SAG contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers expire in June. As the current writers strike has shown, such an action could be a long, drawn-out process. Currently, royalties from DVD sales and internet streaming are not written into the contracts of actors, writers or directors. With the increasing popularity of these newer mediums, it is natural that all those involved would want a piece of the pie.

But with the Internet, it is often difficult to judge what actual revenues are generated by viewings through alternative media, and producers have proven reluctant to give up a chunk of revenues without knowing how large those revenues really are.

A strike later this year would not be the first time the SAG has headed for the picket lines. In 1980, the actors went on strike and boycotted that year’s Emmy Awards, staying on the picket lines until the studios agreed to a 32.25 percent minimum pay increase.

But given the difficulty of determining revenues from new media, an SAG strike this year could be much trickier to resolve and last longer than the four-month hiatus in 1980. As the current writers strike, which is dealing with just these issues, shows no signs of ending after more than 12 weeks of protests, both sides have yet to begin official bargaining.

Throughout the strike, ratings have continued to slide for all the major television networks, clearly indicating that the results of an actors strike could be equally as devastating to the movie industry.

– Contact Asif Atterwalla