Quebecor has waded into the increasingly heated labor talks between Quebec’s largest actors union and its independent producers association.

Members of the Union des artistes, which represents roughly 7,000 French-language performers, walked off the shoot of the TVA series Le Coeur a ses raisons Thursday to force the APFTQ’s hand. The two sides have been trying to hammer out a new collective agreement since December.

The union maintains the APFTQ’s latest offer ignores its key demand to establish a ‘new model’ to better compensate performers working in the multi-channel, multi-platform universe, mirroring a recent dispute between ACTRA and the CFTPA in most of English Canada. UDA says its members aren’t getting their fair share of the province’s increasingly profitable film and television industry, particularly revenue generated by specialty channels, DVD sales and the Internet.

In a bizarre twist, Luc Lavoie, spokesperson for TVA parent company Quebecor said publicly that his company supports the strikers and is willing to negotiate directly with them. This baffled the independent producers association, which released a counter statement. ‘We don’t quite understand how Mr. Lavoie can be involved in discussions where he is not present,’ read the release.

‘Lavoie is questioning the monopoly of APFTQ in these negotiations, but we are already negotiating with TVA,’ says UDA spokesperson Anne-Marie Des Roches. UDA presides over 47 different collective agreements, including those with the province’s principal broadcasters, also including TQS and Radio-Canada.

‘Quebecor is in a big war with the independent producers over rights. They don’t want the producers to be the intermediary between the performers and the broadcasters,’ says Des Roches.

The APFTQ, meanwhile, questions the UDA’s strike motives. ‘We are at the table in good faith, yet our members have to deal with work stoppages,’ says association president Claire Samson. ‘These actions compromise certain productions and they cost money.’