Michael Buckner, Variety
Members will have until July 17th to vote, with the results announced on July 18th.
With the IATSE contract ratification vote beginning today, union members pressed leaders at a virtual town hall on Saturday over the details of AI provisions in the contracts they’ve been negotiating with major Hollywood studios and distributors for the past four months.
IATSE hosted a roughly three-hour session with IATSE International President Matthew Loeb and other leaders for the organization’s roughly 50,000 members in 13 local chapters that operate under a master agreement with the Motion Picture and Television Producers Association. variety OK, IATSE members began voting today to ratify the three-year interim agreement reached on June 26. IATSE leaders had committed earlier this year to ratifying a new contract by July 31, the deadline for the current contract.
Guild members have until July 17 to vote on whether to approve the contract. The results are expected to be announced on July 18.
Sources I spoke to variety “We are confident that the agreement will be ratified this week. With production slowing and many in the industry facing long periods of unemployment, a swift passage of the agreement is expected to lead to more jobs. This year’s IATSE contract negotiations have been closely watched, coming on the heels of a lengthy strike by the Writers Guild of America and the Directors of America (SAG-AFTRA) last year.”
In the thorny issue of AI, a big focus is how the technology will affect job retention. At the town hall, Loeb and members of the union’s contract negotiating committee effectively conveyed to members that the agreement is a starting point for how the union will address a rapidly evolving technology that could transform business. According to the wording of the memorandum of agreement, “The parties agree to meet, at the request of the International Union, at least semi-annually during the term of the contract to discuss and review information regarding Producer’s use and proposed use of AI systems,” and “Each Producer agrees to meet, at the request of the International Union, quarterly on a company-by-company basis during the term of each contract. At such meetings, Producer will identify significant emerging technologies utilizing AI systems that Producer is using or intends to use in film productions that may affect the subjects of these contracts.” Agenda items include “the extent to which employment may have been affected as a result of the use of AI systems.”
In a meeting, variety Union leaders encouraged members to report their experiences to their local chapters to identify issues that need to be addressed. They also suggested that they may aim to have each chapter address the AI portion of future negotiations in their regional and sectoral parts of the negotiations. This time, the AI element was negotiated at the end of a lengthy process of regional and national contracts. Because the membership of the 13 chapters operating under the Master Agreement ranges from cinematographers and editors to art directors and set medics, AI is expected to affect each chapter in different ways and at different times.
Of course, this powerful technology has been a hot topic even before the tentative agreement was officially announced on July 10. A few days earlier, members of the Motion Picture Editors Union (IATSE Local 700), which comprises editors, assistant editors, sound editors, mixers and others, received an email from union officials providing “further context” in light of “several questions and concerns” that had been raised about the AI portion of the tentative agreement.
“Many of you are concerned about the possibility that producers will use your timelines, project files, concept art, or other representations of your creative labor to train AI models,” Cathy Lepola, national executive director of Local 700, wrote in an email obtained July 8. variety“While we were able to secure protections to prevent studios from taking advantage of the prompts you provide to AI models, we understand how important and essential it is to you and your union to ensure that your creative essence is not used to train AI models.” She continued that during the negotiations, “The studios have reiterated that they are focused on and most concerned about potential legal action and litigation regarding copyright infringement. They are engaged in legislative lobbying to build stronger protections and this is their priority. We have reiterated that we have no intention of allowing them to use IATSE members’ AI training to exclude our work, and they have acknowledged that this is important to us.”
Lepola added that the tentative agreement “affirms that your work falls under the jurisdiction of the union, regardless of the use of AI tools. Union members who perform or oversee that work fall under the jurisdiction of the collective bargaining agreement. The language may be different than WGA or SAG, but essentially the intent is the same. The language of the collective bargaining agreement matters, but the intent also matters, and you can rely on the intent if disagreements arise.”
In an email, Lepola emphasized that the tentative agreement includes the aforementioned meetings with the AMPTP and individual producers/companies, as well as the importance of members reporting on their experiences. “We still have a lot of work to do,” she wrote. “I believe that what we have accomplished in these negotiations lays the foundation we need to build on, not just until the next round of negotiations comes around again, but into the future. Most importantly, we have saved ourselves from having to wait three years. …You all play a very important role in this, and we need you to report back on everything related to the technologies you are developing so that we can gather the data we need to effectively address ongoing concerns during these meetings. We must work together on this to be as successful as possible.”
The Editors Guild is the second-largest of the 13 local unions that operate under the Master Agreement, and because ratification votes are conducted in a manner similar to the Electoral College, the International Guild of Cinematographers (the largest local union) and the Editors Guild have the most influence.
