Hollywood’s Below-the-Line Unions Rally Ahead of Contract Negotiations

A coalition of Hollywood’s below-the-line unions rallied Sunday on the eve of their latest contract negotiations. They threatened a historic strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers if their demands weren’t met. Such a work stoppage would follow a pair of strikes in 2023 by industry writers and actors which crippled the entertainment industry and have left it limping into the new year.

“I hope they’re paying attention right down the road at the AMPTP,” IATSE vice president Michael Miller announced from the stage to the crowd of around 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.”

Hollywood Basic Crafts and IATSE Join Forces

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 are joining this year to negotiate their health and pension benefits with the Hollywood trade group the AMPTP, which represents studios and streamers. Those talks begin Monday.

The “Many Crafts, One Fight” rally served mainly as an opportunity for members to express solidarity and hype each other up. So-called “above-the-line” unions SAG-AFTRA and the WGA made strong shows of force with their sign-wielding members and leaders expressing gratitude. (Teamster cooperation was key in the WGA’s production shutdown strategy early in its stoppage.) WGA West vice president Michele Mulroney drew applause when she acknowledged crew support which “sustained us through our own long and arduous fight,” and noted that “without all of you our words would just languish on the page.”

DGA’s Role and Other Labor Leaders

DGA head Russell Hollander’s speech drew a notably more muted reaction. The Directors Guild, which by contrast to SAG-AFTRA and the WGA had little visible presence at Woodley Park, was seen by many in the Hollywood labor movement as too quick to acquiesce in 2023, as the WGA strike was already underway and SAG-AFTRA was on the verge of its own stoppage, and incurred further intra-union resentment for picking up pattern-bargaining gains after the strikes were over.

The biggest reactions came from other labor leaders, including when California Labor Federation executive secretary-treasurer Lorena Gonzalez initiated a call-and-response of “Fuck around and find out” and when L.A. County Federation of Labor president Yvonne Wheeler exclaimed: “AMPTP, hear us loud and clear: These workers may work below the line, but that doesn’t mean their wages and benefits should be near the poverty line.”

Solidarity and Calls for Action

Hollywood Teamsters head Lindsay Dougherty, who served as the profane MC for the event, ticked off key demands involving rest, safety, and compensation, then promised that “we will strike if we have to.” Sean O’Brien, the national president of the Teamsters, gave perhaps the most pointed speech of the day, repeatedly referring to the entertainment companies as “the white-collar crime syndicate.” Like others, he sought to reframe the notion that crew members didn’t have the “intestinal fortitude to take on the fight” after being put out of work for so long last year. He observed, of the AMPTP, “it’s time to make them aware that if they thought they had a fight last summer, they can’t even predict what they have now,” explaining that “we are desperate — and being desperate is great. It means we don’t care about consequences for our actions.”

IATSE president Matt Loeb, who followed O’Brien at the podium, was succinct in his pitch: “The studios can afford to give us more,” so he called on the crowd to “get our piece.”

Priorities and Negotiations

The below-the-line unions have been open about the challenges that their benefits plans face following the 2023 strikes, which significantly limited job opportunities for crew members. During the work stoppages, funding to the plans took a hit, while actions taken to keep members afloat during the strikes — like offering COBRA free of cost, helping top off hours for healthcare eligibility, and allowing IAP hardship withdrawals — also took their toll.

Labor’s priorities in these negotiations will be to increase retirement accrual rates and gain new streaming-based funding into the plans. In a statement in January, Miller, the IATSE vice president, said, “It’s important for our unions to be on the same page as we collaboratively negotiate for the plans not only because sustainable benefits are a shared priority of our memberships, but also because recent hardships have brought behind-the-scenes crews together in historic fashion.”

Following the joint benefits negotiations, IATSE will negotiate its Basic Agreement (covering West Coast Locals) and its Area Standards Agreement (applying to Locals outside the New York and L.A. areas) before those two contracts expire on July 31. The Teamsters Local 399 will tackle its craft-specific issues in talks that are projected to begin in June.

Ready for Change and Uncertain Times

Rally attendees didn’t yet have a strong sense of whether another strike would truly come to pass but appeared ready to endure it if necessary. “What we’re asking for is simple, really: to be able to afford to live in L.A. where we work,” says transit driver and Local 399 member Robert Morris. Mike Flores, a grip with IATSE Local 80, observed that the feeling is now or never for better protections, pointing out that job opportunities dried up even before last year’s strikes and haven’t normalized since, and A.I.’s advancements are on everyone’s minds: “Things are about to change — we all know it.”