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Source: The Los Angeles Times
It was just over a month ago that the film and television industry faced the threat of being shut down entirely. Such a threat was the result of stressful negotiations over a contract between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents the various film and television studios working in North America, and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the labor union representing over 150,000 artisans, craftspeople, and technicians working on major studio productions. With their most recent contract about to expire and there being a need to renew the contract, the IATSE strived to improve the working conditions of its members, citing overlong hours and unsafe working environments (among other factors) as it made its demands to the AMPTP. For a while, discussions achieved so little that the IATSE voted to authorize a strike should there be a need for one. However, the possibility of a strike started to dwindle when, at the very last minute, leaders of the IATSE announced that it had reached an agreement with the AMPTP, one that was just recently ratified by the union as a whole.
On Monday, November 15th, the crew workers that make up the IATSE voted to approve the new three-year contract negotiated and agreed to by union leaders and the AMPTP, officially ending the possibility of workers going on strike any time soon and ensuring that production on the various films and television series currently being made would continue as planned. In a statement released by the IATSE, the final vote was extremely close, with 50.3% of votes favoring the ratification of the new contract, one that will cover all workers based on the West Coast as well as those working outside Los Angeles and New York City. Of the over 63,000 members eligible to vote for the measure, around 72% of this number, an incredibly high turnout, ended up participating.
In a similar method to the electoral college that selects the United States president, the IATSE used a system of voting that allocates a certain number of delegates to each union local depending on the size of a given local. After all of a local’s members have voted, the delegates will vote unanimously to either approve or reject as determined by which side receives the majority of votes. In this case, the overall delegate vote ended up being 359 in favor of ratifying the new contract and 282 against it, resulting in a 56% approval (slightly higher than the total of overall votes) of the contract. It’s worth noting though that five of the thirteen West Coast locals, including Local 80 (which represents grips) and Local 600 (which represents camera crews), did in fact vote against the new contract. In fact, around 50.4% of all voting members based on the West Coast did indeed cast their votes to reject the contract.
Although the IATSE has long strived to avoid public conflicts with the AMPTP, recent events, including those directly related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, have made such efforts more difficult, especially as the need to make up for lost time (as most productions were forced into shutdown during the early stages of the pandemic) led to most crews being put under a much greater amount of pressure than what they are used to, which was already incredibly stressful for a vast majority of crew members. For many members of the IATSE, there has never been a more critical time to improve conditions for those working on a given studio set, and if union leadership is to be trusted, such conditions have indeed been approved. “From start to finish, from preparation to ratification, this has been a democratic process to win the very best contracts,”claims Matthew Loeb, international president of the IATSE. “The vigorous debate, high turnout and close election indicates we have an unprecedented movement-building opportunity to educate members on our collective bargaining process and drive more participation in our union long term.”
Among the improvements that were achieved by this new contract are 54-hour break periods for those working five days a week, an increase in wages for those working in the historically lower-paid crafts, and increased coverage of health and pension plans after the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in higher costs. However, this isn’t enough for those who voted against the new contract, many of whom state that such issues as long on-set hours and other unsafe working conditions have not been properly addressed. The recent death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was accidentally killed on the set of the Alec Baldwin produced film “Rust” has been frequently cited as evidence of how unsafe a film set can be. Camera crew members have allegedly made numerous complaints to producers that the sets they work on are unsafe due to the many hours they have had to spend there each day, but it was only after the death of Hutchins that such complaints were made known to the public.
Other issues referenced by those voting against the new contract include studios being permitted to make workers work 14-hour shifts (despite there now being a ten-hour limit on turnaround between film shoots), the proposed wage increase being less than the current rate of inflation, and the lack of residuals that fund health and pension plans for those working on the production of films and programs being made for streaming. Despite this though, supporters of the new contract are hailing it as a landmark in the push for better on-set working conditions, with the AMPTP appearing to be especially enthusiastic about the new deal. “Throughout the negotiations, IATSE leadership advocated changes to improved quality of life for those they represent,” the organization claims in a statement released shortly after the IATSE’s announcement. “These agreements meaningfully reflect the industry’s endorsement of those priorities and keep everyone working.”
Will this new contract hold up in the long run? There’s no way of knowing for sure at the moment, but for the time being, a strike and a shutdown are no longer a major concern.
