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View of the crowd at the ‘Many Crafts, One Fight’ rally in the San Fernando Valley on March 3, 2024.
Gary Baum
A coalition of Hollywood’s rank-and-file unions rallied Sunday on the eve of their latest contract negotiations. They threaten a historic strike against the Alliance of Film and Television Producers if their demands are not met. Such a work stoppage would follow a pair of strikes in 2023 by writers and actors in the industry that paralyzed the entertainment industry and left it limping into the new year.
“I hope you’re paying attention in the future at AMPTP,” IATSE Vice President Michael Miller announced from the stage to a crowd of about a thousand people at Woodley Park in Encino. (Nearly a thousand more watched a live stream online.) He then invoked a slogan repeated throughout the event: “Nothing moves without the crew.”
For the first time since 1988, the Hollywood Basic Crafts group, which includes Teamsters Local 399, IBEW Local 40, LiUNA! Local 724, OPCMIA Local 755 and UA Local 78, and the crew union IATSE, will join together this year to negotiate their health and pension benefits with the Hollywood trade group AMPTP, which represents studios and broadcasters. Those talks begin Monday.
The “Many Crafts, One Struggle” rally primarily served as an opportunity for members to express solidarity and promote each other. The so-called “over the line” unions SAG-AFTRA and WGA made strong shows of force with their members and leaders holding signs expressing their gratitude. (Teamster’s cooperation was key in the WGA’s production shutdown strategy at the beginning of its shutdown.) WGA West Vice President Michele Mulroney received applause when she acknowledged the support of the team that “sustained us through our long, arduous fight” and noted that “without it all for you, our words would simply languish on the page.”
DGA director Russell Hollander’s speech provoked a noticeably muted reaction. The Directors Guild, which unlike SAG-AFTRA and the WGA had little visible presence at Woodley Park, was seen by many in the Hollywood labor movement as being too quick to concede in 2023, as the WGA strike was already underway and SAG -AFTRA was on the verge of its own walkout and incurred further resentment within the union for making gains in employer bargaining after the strikes ended.
The biggest reactions came from other union leaders, including when California Federation of Labor Executive Secretary and Treasurer Lorena Gonzalez initiated a “Fuck you and figure it out” call and response and when County Federation of Labor President of Los Angeles, Yvonne Wheeler, exclaimed: “AMPTP, Hear us loud and clear: These workers may work below the threshold, but that doesn’t mean their wages and benefits should be near the poverty line.”
A canine dressed in solidarity at the “Many Crafts, One Fight” rally in the San Fernando Valley on March 3, 2024
Hollywood Teamsters director Lindsay Dougherty, who served as the event’s lay MC, listed key demands related to rest, safety and compensation, then promised that “we will strike if we have to.” Sean O’Brien, national president of the Teamsters, gave perhaps the most scathing speech of the day, repeatedly referring to entertainment companies as “the white-collar crime syndicate.” Like others, he sought to reframe the notion that crew members did not have, as he put it, “the intestinal fortitude to take on the fight” after being out of work for so long last year. Regarding the AMPTP, he noted that “it’s time to make them aware that if they thought they had a fight last summer, they can’t even predict what they’re going to have now,” and explained that “we’re desperate, and being desperate is great. It means we don’t care about the consequences of our actions.”
IATSE President Matt Loeb, who followed O’Brien to the podium, was succinct in his speech: “The studios can afford to give us more,” calling on the crowd to “get our share.”
Rank-and-file unions have been open about the challenges facing their benefit plans following the 2023 strikes, which significantly limited work opportunities for crew members. During the work stoppages, funding for plans was affected, while measures taken to keep members afloat during strikes (such as offering COBRA at no cost, helping fill health care eligibility hours, and allowing withdrawals due to IAP difficulties) also took their toll.
Labour’s priorities in these negotiations will be to increase superannuation accrual rates and secure new flow-based funding for schemes. In a January statement, Miller, vice president of IATSE, said: “It is important that our unions are on the same page as we collaboratively negotiate plans, not only because sustainable benefits are a shared priority of our members, but also because recent difficulties have united with the teams behind the scenes in a historic way.”
Following joint benefit negotiations, IATSE will negotiate its Basic Agreement (which covers West Coast Locales) and its Area Standards Agreement (which applies to Locales outside the New York and Los Angeles areas) before that those two contracts expire on July 31. Teamsters Local 399 will address their specific craft issues in conversations expected to begin in June.
Those attending the demonstration still had no clear idea whether another strike would actually occur, but they seemed willing to endure it if necessary. “What we’re asking for is really simple: to be able to afford to live in Los Angeles, where we work,” says transit driver and Local 399 member Robert Morris. Mike Flores, a member of IATSE Local 80, noted that the sentiment is now or never in favor of better protections, noting that job opportunities dried up even before last year’s strikes and have not normalized since, and AI advances are on everyone’s minds. : “Things are about to change, we all know it.”