Strike Out
In 2016, a coworker of mine introduced me to his director/producer uncle, who in turn got me connected with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), a workers’ union that focuses on film, theater, concert, and conference technicians. Through them, I’ve had many great gigs, such as conferences for Apple and Google, concerts for Ed Sheerhan and Lady Gaga, and Netflix series such as The O.A. and 13 Reasons Why.
In late September of this year, word began to spread that IATSE was going to go on strike nationwide. We hear about unions going on strike before, but why is a group geared toward entertainment doing it now? What caused this drastic turn of events, and what could be the end result?
From what I’ve gathered, we can boil the conflict down to three key issues: New Media renegotiations, unlivable wages for lower-end crafts, and Working Hour Demands.
When working on a show that’s going to be broadcast on TV, whether a concert, sitcom, or award show, crew would get a small bump in pay. I received a good chunk when I worked on the NFL Honors Awards show back in 2016. Although we had to work faster, given the fact that we had a live broadcast schedule to keep, it made working for television attractive and profitable.
At that time, Netflix had just recently come onto the scene. Since no one knew how streaming services would turn out, they categorized it as “new media.” As such, the bump in pay for broadcasting would not apply. The rest came down to waiting. How would this new platform turn out?
From what we can see, streaming services have exploded in popularity, nearly shoving broadcast television out of the competition. In fact, many people have considered it the latest iteration of television.
With that in mind, IATSE requested to bring the broadcasting pay bump back to the negotiation table. Some streaming shows have budgets that exceed most motion pictures, and with the current definition of new media, workers are being paid far less. Sadly, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have decided not to make a counteroffer, shutting down negotiations.
Personally, I have less to say on this matter. I enjoy working on set, and I’d rather not get wrapped up in pointing fingers at who’s acting greedier, the workers or the producers. That being said, I do believe that everyone in the business should earn a livable wage, which some in the lower-end crafts have suffered without. California, the home state of filmmaking, has some of the highest costs-of-living in the United States of America. It’s not going to do producers any good if the workers they require can’t even afford to live in the place they’re needed.
However, the third key issue, the Working Hour Demands, really hits close to home.
To be clear, Working Hour Demands does not refer to the workers’ demands, but the producers’. For years, the standard turnaround time, the time between clocking out at the end of the day and clocking in the next day, is a minimum of 10 hours. While that sounds like a lot of time, ten hours go by very fast. For many of us filmmakers, we work for roughly 10-14 hours a day. With the current turnaround setup, you could clock out at 9pm and be expected to clock back in by 7am. That’s not a lot of time to rest, especially for the crews that have more labor-intensive duties.
Now, imagine that happening 5-6 days a week.
A related problem, which many people consider a fourth key issue in this predicament, is certain production companies’ inability to provide reasonable rest during the workday/week. Some shooting schedules get so hectic that people are asked to work during their breaks. Yes, requesting this forces the producers to pay for the extra work, but it has gotten to the point where they begin to anticipate and budget for these foreseeable “work during break” periods instead of spacing out the work enough to avoid them in the first place.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this multiple times. When I was an intern on A Champion Heart, we worked a 19-hour day. I understand why we had to do all that work, the people I worked with made the day bearable, and the director understood enough about human decency to give us a couple of days off to recuperate. While that may have been the longest day I ever worked, it wasn’t the worst. Not by a long shot.
The worst case of long workdays coupled with short turnaround that I’ve experienced was when I was working on the set of a Hollywood-backed streaming show. Our main filming location was about an hour and a half away from my house, so the commute back and forth had already cut my “resting” time from 10 hours to 7. A few weeks in, we were informed that, on a future day, we would be doing a company move to another location after lunch and continue filming there. This second location was 2 hours away from our first. All the days leading up to this big move, we were told that Production would provide transportation for cast and crew there and back. Every day, we were reminded that transportation would be provided.
The morning we arrived on set for the big company move, we were informed that Production had canceled the crew transportation and that we would have to commute ourselves.
Needless to say, many of us were quite livid. A show produced by a major studio apparently couldn’t afford a few vans and drivers. I offered to chauffer some of my crewmates to and from Location 2 (trapping them in my car while I played Red and Disciple for two hours each way). We made the best of the rest of the shooting day.
The bad part came afterward.
Let’s do some math: I had driven an hour and a half from home to Location 1. After working about five hours and breaking for a one-hour lunch, I drove two hours to Location 2. After working another three hours or so, I drove two hours back to Location 1 so my crewmates could get back to their cars. That’s almost 15 hours. Factor in my fatigue from the previous workdays leading up to this, and you get a very tired Timothy.
All of that, and I still had to drive an hour and a half to get home. I decided to go to a nearby grocery store to grab some food, camp in the lot, and try to get a little bit of rest before driving the final stretch.
However, my weariness was greater than I expected. While driving to the grocery store, I didn’t notice a red light until I was already at the intersection, going full speed, and cars were turning right in front of me. Thank God everyone’s brakes were working. That was one of the few times I’ve had to honk my horn, and more so because I was the one about to cause a problem. Now much more alert, I got to my destination, rested, then drove home.
Here’s the kicker: After that entire ordeal, I still had to work another 11 hours the next day.
This issue if far more widespread than my isolated case, and I was one of the fortunate ones. Many filmmakers have been run so ragged by the high demand of their jobs that they cause traffic accidents. Some of these incidents have resulted in loss of life.
After 2020’s COVID-19 crisis, many people began to reevaluate their work-life relationships. I have long said, “My job supports my life, I do not live for the job,” despite many of my fellow filmmakers not sharing that view. Now, with the renewed focus on self-care, unions such as IATSE are finally taking steps to improve on-and-off set conditions.
Unfortunately, the AMPTP refused to renegotiate on this issue, as well. Extending a shooting schedule to accommodate a longer daily turnaround would cost more money on permits, paychecks, and rentals. Programs scheduled for broadcast television would get delayed.
As of last weekend, a majority vote gave IATSE president Matthew Loeb authorization to call for a nationwide strike if a fair deal is not reached with the AMPTP. At the posting of this article, the two parties have not reached an agreement, and everyone is waiting on the edge of their seats, watching to see what will happen.
If a strike does occur, it could spell disaster for the film business.
General audiences may not see the effects right away. Most films and shows are filmed well before their release dates, so there should be a bit of a backlog saved up.
However, once that backlog is empty, there is going to be a large, noticeable void of new material. Why? Because previously scheduled projects would be ground to a halt due to union workers walking out mid-production.
Filmmaking is not a fast process. One season of a television or streaming show takes nearly a full year to produce. Feature films, several years, depending on the complexity. Even if the strike does not last that long, it would take a sizeable amount of time for new content to release, especially if the AMPTP actually listens and spreads their production schedules enough to accommodate reasonable rest and turnarounds. All those Marvel movies, gameshows, and Hulu series we’ve been enjoying at such a quick pace? Stalled for an unforeseeable amount of time. For a business like Show Business, it would be a devastating blow.
On the flip side, there would be a positive result from an IATSE strike: crew members would get better treatment. They could earn a livable wage, get proper rest between shooting days, and no longer be taken advantage of by large production companies.
Improvements in filmmakers’ working conditions have been long overdue. I’m hoping that IATSE and the AMPTP reach a fair agreement. If a strike must happen in order for them to do so, then so be it.
If you’d like to see more crew accounts of what we’ve had to deal with in the film world, check out @ia_stories on Instagram. Members have been very vocal as of late, and many of their stories have been far more extreme than the ones I shared above.