IATSE & Studios Reach Tentative Agreement On New Contracts

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EXCLUSIVE: (Updated with joint statement) With over a month to go before IATSE‘s current contracts expires, the union and the studios have come to a tentative agreement on a new deal.

As fears of another Hot Labor Summer had Hollywood anxious, this successful negotiation comes a mere two days into the resumption of talks between the parties this week.

Touting wage gains, AI guardrails, and pension and health plans increases, IATSE just sent out the news to its members of its 13 Locals in Tinseltown. As you can see below, with increased penalties for extended workdays, safety concerns and crew well-being played a not insignificant role in the bargaining:

Dear Basic Agreement Sisters, Brothers, and Kin:

The Basic Agreement Negotiating Committee has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP. Below are a few of the details about the proposed deal. A complete summary of the tentative agreement will be released in a few days, and in addition to local town hall meetings, a multi-local webinar will take place on Saturday, July 13th at noon PST to review the proposed language in the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA). To avoid undermining our fellow members in the Area Standards Agreement (ASA) Locals, who remain in negotiations with the AMPTP, we will wait to release full summaries of both tentative agreements simultaneously.

Some of the proposed changes in the Basic tentative agreement include: scale rate increases of 7%, 4%, and 3.5% over the three-year term; hourly workers will receive triple time (3x hourly) wage when any workday exceeds 15 elapsed hours, all On Call classifications will now receive double time on the 7th day of the workweek, and additional increases in pay will take effect on non-dramatic productions under the Videotape Supplemental Agreement. The tentative deal includes new protections around Artificial Intelligence, including language that ensures no employee is required to provide AI prompts in any manner that would result in the displacement of any covered employee. These changes in the Basic Agreement are in addition to the tentative agreements reached in the Local Agreement negotiations.

For the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans (MPIPHP), the tentative agreement includes additional payments from employers that would address the $670M funding gap, including new streaming residuals. Additionally, no participant shall incur a break in service for plan year 2023.
We thank everyone who participated in the 2024 Basic Agreement negotiations process. From start to finish, your input was invaluable and ensured that our Negotiations Committee was at the bargaining table with clear goals and a consensus for how to achieve them. The ratification timeline will be forthcoming and we look forward to presenting to you the complete package.

In Solidarity

The announcement to members was followed within minutes by a joint statement from IATSE and the Carol Lombardini-led Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers:

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) announced a tentative agreement on all issues for the Hollywood Basic Agreement and Videotape Agreement negotiations. 

The tentative agreement is now pending ratification by the unions’ membership. Members and signatories will have the opportunity to review the agreement in the form of a Detailed Summary 2-3 days following this announcement, as well as a Memorandum of Agreement (M.O.A.) an estimated 2 weeks following this announcement.

The parties now look forward to closing negotiations for the Area Standards Agreement.

To put tonight’s deal in context, the IATSE Basic Agreement covers the around 50,000 members of the mainly L.A.-based 13 West Coast Locals. The still to be completed Area Standards Agreement is for the 23 Locals across the nation and their 20,000 members.

Working on the schedule laid out by IATSE and the AMPTP tonight, and if the landing for a new Area Standards Agreement is smooth, August could prove the beginning of some rare lack of labor anxiety for a town and an industry still reeling from the pandemic, some bad business decisions and last year’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.