ACTRA on Thursday said it will appeal part of a court ruling that, earlier in the week, sent the question of whether its strike is legal to arbitration.

But amid the latest legal skirmishing between the actors union and the CFTPA, representing Canadian producers, the pre-bargaining posturing between the two embattled camps has begun in earnest, again.

Stephen Waddell, ACTRA’s chief negotiator, says his union has asked Justice Sarah Pepall of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to rule on whether provincial labor relations boards have jurisdiction over the Independent Production Agreement.

Justice Pepall sided with the CFTPA on Tuesday by ordering that the question of whether ACTRA can pursue a legal strike outside the protocols of the IPA should go to arbitration.

‘The producers maintain that certain process issues should be before an arbitrator, while we maintain that labor boards should deal with such issues,’ Waddell tells Playback Daily.

Provincial labor boards are key to ACTRA’s strike action. The actors union earlier this week received ‘no board’ reports from labor board conciliators in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, enabling its strike to eventually extend to those provinces.

The CFTPA claims that provincial labor boards have no power to sanction ACTRA taking its members out in their jurisdictions.

But continued legal wrangling came as ACTRA and the CFTPA faced calls on all sides to move from public posturing to serious negotiations.

Representatives from a dozen Toronto studio operators and equipment suppliers including Panavision, William F. White, P.S. Production Services and Deluxe Laboratories met separately on Tuesday with ACTRA and the CFTPA, and urged both sides to get back to bargaining.

In addition, Dufferin Gate Productions offered to host resumed talks on Friday afternoon at its Toronto office.

ACTRA plans to hold a rally Friday morning in front of the CFTPA’s office in downtown Toronto before attending the Dufferin Gate meeting.

But the CFTPA’s John Barrack says his producers’ bargaining committee could not assemble in Toronto before Monday, as American studio representatives were detained in Vancouver, where a separate deal is under negotiation with the UBCP.

‘Everyone wants to get a deal. But it’s important to act like you want a deal. And holding rallies and grand-standing is not the way forward,’ says Barrack.

Both ACTRA and the CFTPA, in separate open letters released Thursday, positioned themselves as the patient good guys, and the other side as spoilers.

‘Given the state of the industry and the fact that only 39% of ACTRA members even voted in the nationally conducted strike vote, it only seems reasonable that ACTRA would want to resume bargaining,’ writes the CFTPA.

‘We certainly do. However, if ACTRA continues to hold to the same positions that it has been taking for the last month then very little progress will be made,’ the producers warned.

But ACTRA, in its own letter, urged Barrack to attend Friday’s planned talks.

‘I am hopeful you’ll confirm both to us and to the production community as a whole that you will also attend, with reasonable proposals and an intention to settle,’ Waddell wrote.