IATSE and studios reach tentative agreement on new contracts

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EXCLUSIVE: (Updated with joint statement) More than a month before IATSE’s current contracts expire, the union and studios have reached a tentative agreement on a new deal.

As fears of another hot labor summer worried Hollywood, the successful negotiation comes just two days after talks between the parties resumed this week.

Touting wage gains, AI safeguards and pension and health plan increases, IATSE just sent the news to its members in its 13 Tinseltown locals. As you can see below, with penalties for extended work days increasing, concerns for crew safety and well-being played a significant role in the negotiations:

Dear sisters, brothers and parents of the Basic Agreement:

The Basic Agreement Negotiating Committee has reached an agreement in principle with the AMPTP. Below are some details of the proposed deal. A full summary of the tentative agreement will be released in a few days, and in addition to the local town halls, a multi-local webinar will be held on Saturday, July 13 at noon PT to review the proposed language in the MOU . (MOA). To avoid harming our fellow members of the Regional Standards Agreement (ASA) locals, who remain in negotiations with the AMPTP, we will wait to publish the full summaries of the two tentative agreements simultaneously.

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

For the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plans (MPIPHP), the tentative agreement provides additional payments from employers that would close the $670 million funding gap, including new residuals from streaming. Additionally, no participant will experience a break in service for the 2023 plan year.
We thank everyone who participated in the 2024 Basic Agreement negotiation process. From start to finish, your contribution was invaluable and brought our negotiating committee to the negotiating table with goals clear and consensus on how to achieve them. The ratification schedule will be available soon and we look forward to presenting the entire file to you.

In solidarity

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

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) announced an agreement in principle on all issues related to the Hollywood Basic Agreement negotiations and of the videotape agreement.

The tentative agreement is now awaiting ratification by union members. Members and signatories will have the opportunity to view the agreement in the form of a detailed summary 2-3 days after this announcement, as well as a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) approximately 2 weeks after this announcement.

The parties now look forward to the conclusion of negotiations on the regional standards agreement.

To put tonight’s agreement in context, the IATSE basic agreement covers the approximately 50,000 members of the 13 West Coast locals, primarily based in Los Angeles. The agreement on regional standards that remains to be finalized concerns the 23 local branches across the country and their 20,000 members.

Working according to the schedule laid out by IATSE and AMPTP tonight, and if the landing of a new regional standards agreement goes smoothly, August could mark the beginning of a rare absence of labor anxiety for a city and industry still reeling from the pandemic, some bad business decisions and last year’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.