Hollywood Basic Crafts negotiators stand outside the offices of the Motion Picture and Television Producers Alliance.
Courtesy of Teamsters Local 399
As they wrapped up their final week of negotiations with Hollywood studios and streamers, the unions that make up the Hollywood Basic Crafts coalition struck a defiant tone.
In a statement released Wednesday, the unions said the major entertainment companies at the table in those talks “can and should respect” the workers the unions collectively represent, including about 7,600 drivers, electricians, plasterers, caterers, plumbers, laborers, stage managers and animal trainers, among others.
The group, made up of Teamsters Locals 399, IBEW Local 40, LiUNA! Local 724, UA Local 78 and OPCMIA Local 755, said it expected “to see the companies attempt to use fearmongering tactics against the reasonable terms our members are fighting for in these negotiations” in the coming weeks, but did not specify what those tactics might be. The group also argued that its members “will not be the ones left to balance the books on the company’s poor business decisions over the last year.”
On Tuesday, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents Hollywood’s employers in labor negotiations, presented its latest counterproposals to the unions. Hollywood Basic Crafts said it would work on its responses before talks resume on Monday, July 8. Negotiations are currently scheduled to end on July 19, ahead of the July 31 expiration date on many contracts.
When negotiations resume Monday, “we hope to see AMPTP ready to sit down at the table again and be ready to negotiate and ‘care’ about the issues our members are facing,” Hollywood Basic Crafts said.. “As we have said before, we have no intention of negotiating against ourselves. We are prepared to ask for additional dates so that our members’ fundamental priorities are heard, understood and taken into account by the employer. [sic] if they are not ready to do so by July 19.”
The Hollywood Reporter contacted AMPTP for comment.
The last time the Hollywood Basic Crafts union updated its members on the status of negotiations, union leaders said the studios were showing a “lack of willingness” to address their members’ core concerns. “As we come to the end of our June dates, we want to make it clear that we are not interested in negotiating against ourselves,” Lindsay Dougherty, president of the Hollywood Basic Crafts union, and four other union leaders said at the time.
These two latest messages from the Hollywood Basic Crafts negotiating team differ from those sent by the IATSE crew union, which, during its recent negotiations on the basic agreement and the regional standards agreement, has generally offered members a sense of progress at the bargaining table. IATSE reached tentative agreements on its basic agreement on June 25 and on its regional standards agreement on June 27.
With those major crew contracts nearly complete (IATSE union members still need to ratify the agreements before they can go into effect), all eyes are now on Hollywood Basic Crafts as negotiations approach their July 31 deadline. Negotiator Dougherty said: THR In June, she said she had no plans to call a strike authorization vote, but that if members rejected the deal their leaders had reached, “that would be tantamount to an authorization to strike.”
