Union Vs. Union

The ongoing battle of the Editors Guild, Local 700 IATSE and the mother international (the IATSE) is about as intense as any I can remember.

[Unionized film editors] find themselves the unlikely center of attention in an escalating labor dispute that threatens a new three-year contract [the IA-AMPTP "Basic Agreement"] covering compensation, benefits and working conditions for thousands of Hollywood crew members.

In a rare breaking of rank, the Motion Picture Editors Guild is recommending its members vote against ratification of a tentative deal recently negotiated by its parent union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, or IATSE. The Local 700 editors guild said the contract with Hollywood studios and TV networks is flawed in several areas and doesn’t adequately address the effects of the streaming media boom on compensation and benefits. ...

Three decades back, when I was a fresh-faced union business representative attending one of his first biz rep meetings at IA headquarters, I witnessed a screaming match between the then-head of the Editors Guild and the then-President of the I.A, a gruff, no-nonsense Italian named Al DiTolla.

The issue was a big-budget (mostly) non-IA feature that DiTolla wanted the editors to help the international leverage into a collective bargaining agreement covering the movie's production workers. But the Editors Guild already had a contract with the post-production house editing the big feature, and said "no." A heated argument at high volume (in front of thirty union reps) then ensued.

There have been other disputes between the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees and various locals in the years since; mostly the IA has come out on the winning side. ("It's hard," a grizzled rep once told me, "to fight city hall."). The issues for this dust-up appear to be ...

A) The Editors Guild is getting nine hours between shifts ("turn-around time") while other unions are getting ten. (This comes about because the other unions started with a nine-hour turnaround time and had an hour added to the time allotment, while the editors had an eight-hour turnaround that also got a one-hour sweetener).

B) The Editors Guild finds the new benefit fees for small independent post-production houses to be exorbitant, and will make it harder for the small companies to stay in business. The editors point out that the conglomerates and their subsidiaries will only be paying a fraction of the increase.

C) The Editors Guild believes the new residual formula between the IA and AMPTP for streaming video will be inadequate for keeping the IA's pension and health plans healthy and solvent.

Regardless of who's "right" in all this, the feud has been acrimonious. And Twitter, Facebook and other social media has made the angry back-and-forth both broader and nastier than it would have been in simpler, by-gone days when there weren't armies of keyboard warriors slinging invective.

I'm delighted to be retired.