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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.

Is it naive that I expected one of the winners to say they stand with IATSE?” Girls executive producer Jenni Konner tweeted the day after Sunday’s Emmy Awards.

The AMPTP informed the IATSE that they do not intend to respond to our comprehensive package proposal presented to them over a week ago.

IATSE is continuing to prepare its members for a possible strike or a lockout if it can’t make a deal with management’s AMPTP for a new film and TV contract. The union’s current contract was set to expire July 31 but was extended through September 10, the union says, “in an effort to exhaust every opportunity to make a deal.”