IATSE going on strike?

ahalpert

ahalpert

Major Contributor
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...on-1235020893/

"The national executive board of the International Cinematographers Guild (ICG), Local 600, announced that it has voted unanimously to support the IATSE (The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) nationwide strike authorization vote and to recommend members vote “Yes.”

The strike authorization vote, scheduled to be held Oct. 1-3, comes in response to the failure of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and IATSE to agree on a new three-year basic agreement. At issue are subjects including rest periods, breaks, wages, benefits and compensation for streaming work."

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/bu...on-1235019912/

"IATSE represents an estimated 150,000 entertainment workers in the U.S. and Canada, including cinematographers, costumers, editors, make-up artists and hair stylists...

Rhine and Lindley reported that those priorities include wage rates “that reflect the success of the streaming services and all the other providers,” “sustainable” benefits, weekend rest periods and daily rest periods “that protect our members from unsafe hours.”

To that end, Local 600 also sent a letter to the AMPTP, first published in August, warning of unsafe working conditions that has now been signed by nearly 100 cinematographers including Roger Deakins, Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, Erik Messerschmidt, Rachel Morrison, Rodrigo Prieto and Bradford Young. The letter warns of the “hazards of unsafe working hours, a practice that continues despite all the medical and indisputable evidence of the harm caused by fatigue. Most notable are the numerous car accidents our colleagues have suffered in recent years including the weekend before we entered these negotiations.”"
 
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I'm surprised it has taken this long for it to come up on here.

I'm not union, in part because I don't work on union shows(well, I have, but they always got "permission" to use me), but I'm behind them if they do strike. It can only help all of us...

I also saw an article recently that more or less hinted that Apple has underreported their subscribers(even though the numbers haven't been released publicly) to get lower production rates, even though some of their shows have budgets of upwards of $15mil/episode.
 
With the shortage of skilled (or even just useful) technical folk post covid, any strike could be interesting. In the UK, our union (BECTU) is in my humble view, not worthy of the tag 'union' - very few of their members actually think they offer much more than cheap PLI insurance and lots of people are not members, or were members and left - like me. We have no chance of even organising strikes, even if people wanted to, which here, I don't think they do. At the moment, if you need somebody, you have to pay what they ask. BECTU represent stage and TV/Broadcast - and the rates for the same job in the two separate industries is wildly different and the union do nothing!
 
The normal rates within different sectors of the UK Film and TV industries vary greatly. For example, no TV production would pay the rates that are paid on commercials (adverts). drama has different agreements. Apart from in the BBC, I don't think there has been a strike in the UK industry since the 1980s and the days of the closed shop. However, there are regular texts on productions that are trying to avoid the minimum rates. These days, BECTU seems to be more into policing than going on strike.

I would add that BECTU has assisted me to get paid on a number of occasions.

The extremely long hours is something that does need to be addressed.
 
Long hours exist in the UK. BECTU did a report on the subject 2017. Their agreements are intended to prevent it happening, but, of course, that doesn't prevent it. Bottom line is that it's counter productive.
 
This weekend we have a large Elvis show - the in is 11am, the expected out probably 1am. Day rates are low - but post covid, it's work.

The thing that BECTU do not do, is understand self-employment. Very odd for our industry. The consider the invoice submitted to be your income. They do not accept that out of this come all kinds of deductions. In my case, the invoice could be three people, equipment and transport hire costs. I wish it was income - but they base their subscriptions on this figure. HMRX don't for Tax or VAT - they understand self-employment totals are based on your margin - income less expenditure. Odd a union cannot get to grips with this!
 
ahalpert said:
The working hours in film/TV are generally shorter in the UK than in the US, aren't they?
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We work faster.

J/k

Not sure about movie sets these days but in promo/docoland usual is 10 hour day. That's 10 hours on set, not 10 hours door to door to include travel. On most of my shoots I do longer, often way longer, once I did a 62 hour day...
 
Liam Hall said:
We work faster.

J/k

Not sure about movie sets these days but in promo/docoland usual is 10 hour day. That's 10 hours on set, not 10 hours door to door to include travel. On most of my shoots I do longer, often way longer, once I did a 62 hour day...
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Wow that's insane. The longest day I ever had was only 27 hours, when I was ACing on the last day of a micro budget short. We never made our day all week and everything we didn't shoot got punted to the final day...

I guess it was a fairytale that the UK has more normal hours. I guess it's good that you aim for 10 hours vs 12 but that can all get thrown out the window quickly
 
As long as its cheaper to run the crew into OT instead of budgeting additional days nothing will change. The change either has to be strict health and safety guidelines with punishments beyond minor fines or OT penalties so severe they force the bottom line.
 
FrameFarmMedia said:
The change either has to be strict health and safety guidelines with punishments beyond minor fines or OT penalties so severe they force the bottom line.
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That is theoretically possible. But one additional ask the unions are making is simply more break time throughout the day. (Like at a normal job.) Some of the crew hardly have time to eat or pee
 
FrameFarmMedia said:
As long as its cheaper to run the crew into OT instead of budgeting additional days nothing will change. The change either has to be strict health and safety guidelines with punishments beyond minor fines or OT penalties so severe they force the bottom line.
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+1 on most of the above.
An hour of overtime beyond a 10 hour day MAY save some money with the "We just need a couple of pickups to clean up the episode" kind of scenario. However, when a strike looms, crews can be pushed to 14-16 hour days (that's double or triple time plus any meal penalties if I recall)...and costly mistakes occur much more frequently after 12 hour shifts. Not just injuries, but blown takes, etc. the cost of which can easily override an additional short day. The producers' position of "we need to get all we can because they may shut us down tomorrow" is often counter productive and certainly more hazardous to cast and crew.
Unfortunately, the situation seems to repeat itself at every contract negotiation...at least regarding episodic shows.
 
kplo said:
. However, when a strike looms, crews can be pushed to 14-16 hour days (that's double or triple time plus any meal penalties if I recall)...and costly mistakes occur much more frequently after 12 hour shifts. Not just injuries, but blown takes, etc. the cost of which can easily override an additional short day. The producers' position of "we need to get all we can because they may shut us down tomorrow" is often counter productive and certainly more hazardous to cast and crew.
Unfortunately, the situation seems to repeat itself at every contract negotiation...at least regarding episodic shows.
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"In its over 100-year history, IATSE has never before gone on strike,"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vog...tse-strike/amp

I don't think your point is legitimate. Or at least, the times you're describing are exceptional. What IATSE objects to is the norm.
 
The "justification" I've seen given by productions (in several articles on this topic) as to why they operate like this, is that it's still less expensive to pay all of the OT and penalties to the crew than to have to pay talent for additional days/week.
 
It's just wrong to abuse people this way. The articles I've read make me wonder how people are able to cope. One union member told me he worked sixty-five 14 hour days in a row. That's nuts. How did it get this far?
 
Paul F said:
It's just wrong to abuse people this way. The articles I've read make me wonder how people are able to cope. One union member told me he worked sixty-five 14 hour days in a row. That's nuts. How did it get this far?
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Because "everyone" wants to be in this business and there are 2,327 people standing in line for each and every single person working, that will be happy to do it for less money and even worse treatment, just for a chance. So everyone "stays in line", because they are "replaceable". But I think the studios and production companies are about to find out that that is not truly the case, now.

I think the difference now, is that everyone is united. That's always been the problem, getting EVERYONE together and united. But the camels back has finally been broken.
 
Most people don't appreciate just how out of hand things have gotten. It's not just about working a long day. It's a day that goes 14-16 hours. During that day they do "French hours" and don't break for lunch. You're supposed to try to find a moment to grab a bite, usually standing in a corner. Often they don't provide enough time for turnaround for the next day. Because the days area always stretching so long they start Monday at 5am and by the time they reach Friday the day is starting mid-afternoon and stretching into Saturday morning, known as Fraturday. Then it's a 5am call on Monday again, forcing people to flip their schedule in a day.

Production pays for all the penalties associated with all of this. It's cheaper to pay the crews to be tortured this way than it is to pay for an extra week for the talent, the locations, etc. It's also a matter of delivery schedules because if you're on a TV series you can be shooting for 10 months like this, but if you tried to reset the schedule to normal hours you could work for 52 weeks a year and still not get the work done. They want the content to flow and will not allow anything to get in the way of that as long as they can legally get away with it.

There are other parts of it but this is the key issue for crew.
 
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