STRIKE!

     As I write, an impending strike threatens to shut down the film and television industries completely. The contract between the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE), my union for the past several decades, and the Alliance Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) expires on July 31^st.  And the two sides aren’t even close to an agreement.

     In addition to editors like myself, IATSE  (known to members as the IA) represents cinematographers, production designers and art directors, costume designers, hair and makeup artists, lighting experts and sound technicians.  AMPTP speaks for the owners and managers of television networks and motion picture studios, along with the heads of streaming entities and executives running smaller production companies.  Those of us who make movies and TV shows, represented by our union, in other words, are at odds with those who finance and/or manage our work.

      The most contentious issues – filmmakers’ demand that the workday not be so long that our health and safety are endangered and our demand that we get the same residuals from streaming services as actors, writers and directors in order to keep our pension and health insurance fund solvent – seem straightforward enough.  But in these times, when union membership is low, when monopolistic corporations behave as though they hold all the cards and when new media have disrupted normal avenues of distribution and broadcasting, nothing is simple.

      In the IA’s 124 years of existence its goals and achievements have, on the contrary, been relatively uncomplicated:  wages commensurate with the rarity of members’ skills, employer contributions to a pension fund substantial enough for members to retire comfortably, affordable high quality health coverage also paid for by employers, overtime pay for overtime work, and provisions for reasonable meal breaks and time off from workday to workday.  Negotiations between the union and studios have sometimes been contentious, of course; there have occasionally been strikes. 

     But in the past half-century labor-management battles never posed an existential threat to the union.  The entities that financed movie production recognized that a unionized workforce was good for them.  Filmmakers’ reasonable compensation package made competition for jobs intense, so producers have always gotten the highest quality work from union crews. 

     My son, Adam Miller, posited early in his editing career that the only way to make a good low budget film is with a big budget crew, because well-paid filmmakers can’t be inefficient.  Wasting time is too costly.  So wise financiers happily pay more - and save money in the long run - by hiring expert and efficient union crews that deliver high quality work, on schedule.

     I was unaware of the union when I fell in love with cinema and still romanticized the starving artist as much as any college student.  But after graduation, starvation was a tough sell.  My very middle class parents had just forked over much more tuition than they could afford.   Becoming aware of union wages (and above scale rates), however, enabled me to tell mom and dad that just like lawyers and doctors, filmmakers are often paid well.  I could work my way up in a field about which I’d become passionate, and the compensation would be good.  It was the union, of course, that made such a claim possible.

      When I joined the New York Editors Guild (IA Local 771) at the start of my career, hourly rates, insurance benefits, guaranteed time away from the workplace at the end of each day, and employer contributions to our pension fund were at an all time high.  But from the early ‘80’s to the present, organized labor has been under attack, so it’s gotten harder and harder for IATSE to negotiate agreements as good as those of the pre-Reagan years. 

     I’m not saying the union was perfect back then.  East and west coast locals hadn’t yet merged and were often at odds.  It was hard to become a member if you didn’t have family already in the IA.  Those of us who struggled to get on union shows even suspected a degree of corruption in addition to the obvious nepotism.  Finally, contracts between the studios and the various film crafts expired at different times, so a picture could be edited even if the cinematographers struck or designed and shot even if the editors were out; we were not a united front.

     But today all of the film crafts’ agreements with the AMPTP terminate on the same date, July 31^st.  And this gives the IA true power to negotiate a good deal for us, because if there’s a strike we all go out and the networks are left without programming to start the television season, and movie studios won’t have finished films for “awards season.”

     Knowing we have this strength, it seems like a no-brainer to strike if the AMPTP won’t meet our demands on life and death issues.

     Let’s talk first about the length of the workday.  People outside the movie industry may not be aware that a 12-hour workday is considered normal in Hollywood; we often toil for as many hours in one week as non-filmmakers do in a week and a half.  Sometimes it’s much worse.

     Exacerbating the problem is the fact that the current contract requires only 8 hours between the end of one workday and the start of another.  In other words, if Tuesday’s shoot wraps at midnight there’s no financial penalty for requiring the production crew to be back on set at 8am.  Add commuting time and the need to unwind for a few minutes and what we wind up with is sleep-deprived filmmakers who do nothing but work. This not only wreaks havoc on our family lives, it becomes extremely dangerous.     

     The late cinematographer Haskell Wexler made these dangerous work conditions a cause célèbre after camera assistant Brent Hershman was killed in a car wreck in 1997, falling asleep while driving home from a job at the end of a 19-hour workday (which was preceded by four 15-hour days).  What the IA wants codified in the new contract, as I understand it, is 12 hours between wrap and call, and a maximum 14-hour workday.  Not only does that seem reasonable to anyone outside the motion picture industry, it seems absolutely vital to all of us in it.  The AMPTP seems to disagree.

     The issue of employer contributions to IATSE’s pension and welfare fund is more complicated.  Our pension plan is funded largely by employer contributions for every hour we work.  But as studios have made fewer and fewer films in the past decade, that revenue has diminished. 

     There is an additional source of pension plan funding:  residual payments from distribution in secondary markets – feature films on DVD and Blu-ray or sold to television networks and airlines, for example.  But these traditional forms of revenue are drying up as viewers today stream most content.  And right now, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu don’t pay residuals to the IA pension and welfare fund. 

     Consequently, the solvency of the plan itself is nearing “critical status.”  As of January 1, 2017, it was only 67.4% funded, and under federal law, a pension plan is considered to be in “critical” condition if funding falls below 65%.

    

     No one questions the importance of adequate pension payouts or affordable high quality medical coverage.  But when it comes down to financing pensions and insurance for those of us who work behind the scenes, the AMPTP is pleading poverty.

     Which is crazy!  While the studios complain that profits and attendance are at an all-time low for theatrical films and that TV ratings are way down, projected 2022 income for the film and TV industries, including power players Netflix and Amazon, is  $119.2 billion, up from $64 billion in 2017.   Clearly, then, the industry is making record profits.

     Simply put, my union sisters and brothers and I deserve to share fairly in the revenue. The AMPTP has already granted the Writers, Actors and Directors Guilds  “new media” (streaming service) residuals for their health and pension plans.  We want the same square deal.

  

     Because of streaming, of non-existent anti-trust law enforcement and of windfalls generated by recent corporate tax cuts, media corporations are so flush they’re considering construction of a $100 million tram to the Hollywood sign. How about investing that money in the those of us behind the camera who make the movies and TV shows that generate their mega-profits?  “Instead of a tram,” says a Local 600 spokesperson says, “let’s hike up instead and fund our pension!”

     Of course, I hope a strike can be averted.  Organized work stoppages wreak havoc with the very kind of economic security for which IATSE has struggled.  But at the moment the AMPTP seems intransigent on what, as I said above, are truly existential issues.  If we stay united and recognize our own bargaining power, we can make them do the right thing!