Hollywood’s high crew unions have introduced that they are going to be bargaining their well being and pension advantages collectively on the outset of their 2024 labor negotiations with studios and streamers.
IATSE and the Hollywood Fundamental Crafts coalition (which incorporates Teamsters Native 399) introduced on Wednesday that they may collectively negotiate their Movement Image Pension and Well being Plan proposals with the Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers this 12 months. A number of sources have advised The Hollywood Reporter that these talks will start March 4, barring any unexpected circumstances. Although the unions share well being and pension plans, they haven’t come collectively to discount adjustments to these plans since 1988, per the labor organizations. Lately, the Teamsters and the Hollywood Fundamental Crafts have negotiated their advantages after IATSE bargained its Fundamental and Space Requirements Agreements.
Following these joint profit talks in 2024, IATSE will proceed with negotiations for its Fundamental Settlement, protecting 13 Hollywood Locals, and its Space Requirements Settlement, which governs tens of 1000’s of members working exterior the L.A. and New York areas. The Teamsters Native 399 and the Hollywood Fundamental Crafts, which additionally contains the Worldwide Brotherhood of Electrical Staff Native 40, Laborers Worldwide Union of North America Native 724, United Affiliation Plumbers Native 78 and Working Plasterers & Cement Masons Worldwide Affiliation Native 755, are anticipated to start negotiating their separate agreements in June.
In accordance with the unions, main priorities in the advantages talks will embody boosting retirement accrual charges and “securing extra streaming-based funding mechanisms for the plans.” Of their announcement, the unions acknowledged that varied measures taken throughout 2023 to assist crew members survive the writers’ and actors’ strikes had taken their toll on the well being and pension plans, that are funded partly by residuals accrued from members working.
“Although the plans took a success financially as a consequence of work stoppages extended by the employers in 2023 in addition to the pandemic work stoppage in 2020, the trustees of the plan knew funds spent to make sure continuity of employees’ well being and retirement advantages was cash effectively spent,” IATSE vice chairman Michael Miller stated in a press release. “It’s necessary for our unions to be on the identical web page as we collaboratively negotiate for the plans not solely as a result of sustainable advantages is a shared precedence of our memberships, but additionally as a result of current hardships have introduced behind-the-scenes crews collectively in historic style.”
Teamsters Native 399 chief and Hollywood Fundamental Crafts chairperson Lindsay Dougherty added in a press release that “combating alongside IATSE on shared MPIPHP advantages won’t solely assist all Hollywood crewmembers, but additionally remind the employers that after they can’t divide us, they need to worry us. Nothing strikes with out the crew.”
The crew unions’ negotiations represent the following main labor battle for an business that was buffeted in 2023 by two historic strikes from actors unionized with SAG-AFTRA and writers with the Writers Guild of America. In an look at a union leaders panel in January, IATSE worldwide president Matt Loeb stated {that a} crew strike is a possible possibility for the union on this 12 months’s negotiations, relying on how they go. “Nothing is off the desk, and we’re not going to surrender our power and our means as a result of they [studios] suppose they sapped us and everyone’s checking account bought sapped as a result of they had been unreasonable for months and months,” he stated.
Throughout that very same panel, Teamsters movement image division head Lindsay Dougherty added, “The studios can’t face up to one other strike, let’s be clear about that.”