Industry & Labor

An overwhelming majority of film and TV workers have given the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees permission to strike if the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers doesn’t offer them a better deal.

Earlier this week, union members representing more than 60,000 film and TV workers gave the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees permission to call for a strike if the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers doesn’t offer them a better deal.

With Daniel Craig back for his fifth and final outing as 007 in EON’s 25th Bond movie, No Time to Die‘s Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren describes his ambitious work in a new episode of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Behind the Screen.

It’s typical for Hollywood’s labor unions to support for each other during labor disputes, but the support for IATSE during its current contract dispute with film and TV producers goes beyond the usual labor solidarity.

Standing together to win Motion Picture and Television Contracts

Some 60,000 members of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees received ballots on Friday morning asking them to authorize the first nationwide strike in the union’s history.

More than 100 Democrats in the House and Senate and independent Bernie Sanders have signed a letter urging the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to negotiate a fair contract with IATSE, saying, “We are united in our belief in the importance of livable wages, sustainable benefits, and reasonable rest periods between shifts and during the workday” – three of the union’s core demands.

In 2006, Haskell Wexler made a documentary about brutally long hours on film sets entitled “Who Needs Sleep?” The issue had become a flashpoint years earlier, when Brent Hershman died in a car crash after working a 19-hour day on the set of “Pleasantville.”

In the annals of the bloody and sometimes lethal battles between labor, management, and law enforcement, the melee that erupted outside the entrance of Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank on Oct. 5, 1945, may not be the most notable: some concussions and contusions, cars overturned and some activists jailed.

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

As contract negotiations stall between the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, crew members have taken to social media to share their support for a possible strike action and for the terms that IATSE is demanding in the next deal.