“You are going to change the way you do business” – Deadline

While IATSE members are expected to start voting for strike authorization on Friday, union leaders say they have a message for Hollywood media conglomerates: “You are going to change the way you do business.

The union’s petition calling on companies to give the union a fair contract has now exceeded 100,000 signatures.

“The idea of ​​a living wage for the lowest incomes in our trades is something that shouldn’t be new to these companies that are worth billions of dollars, make billions of dollars from our work and tell us about a few. pennies, ”Mike Miller, IATSE’s vice president in charge of the union’s west coast office, said at a recent Hollywood rally at the Editors Guild in support of a fair contract. “It’s time to have a living wage and sustainable benefits. “

Watch the rally video above.

The fight for a fair contract, he said, alongside Editors Guild National Executive Director Cathy Repola, boils down to a fight for human dignity and human rights. “These elementary dignities are also the most basic of human rights,” he said at the rally on Sunday. “The idea that anyone can go an entire day at work without a guaranteed meal break; the dangerous hours we work are no longer sustainable, and we are not talking about anything other than being able to take a break between shifts so that we can eat and sleep and come back to work; and you can come home from work safely.

Regarding the union’s demand for a greater share of corporate income from new media, he said: A commitment that “If you participate in the development of this business, you will share future growth and prosperity.” Well, they’re successful and they’re growing, and we want our part and they have to keep their word.

“And with the biggest entertainment media conglomerates in the world, IATSE is forced to fight for the weekend,” Miller added. “He’s a grassroots tenant that unions fought for and won decades ago, and they’re not going to take him from us.

DGA, SAG-AFTRA, WGA East, WGA West & Teamsters express their “solidarity” with IATSE –

“The employers’ response is, ‘We’re not going to change the way we do business.’ And our response to that is, “That’s why unions exist, and thank you for the importance of unions 101. Because we’re here to tell you that you’re going to change the way you do business,” Miller said.

The union, he said, is ready to fight.

“They don’t believe we’re serious,” Miller said. “They think that we are weakened and that we are afraid because of the pandemic. What they are wrong about is that we are not weakened and we are not afraid. We are tired and we are hungry and we are fed up. They have been trying to divide us from day one. They tried to divide us by hand; they tried to divide us by the earnings; they tried to divide us by local; they tried to divide us by region and they tried to divide us by contract. And all they’ve done in every attempt to divide us is they’ve made us stronger and brought us together and put us in a position to show them that they won’t divide this union. We are one union. We are 13 residents of Hollywood; we are over two dozen locals across the country, and they will not deprive us of the most basic workers’ rights and human dignity.

‘Tacit agreement’ reached to extend Hollywood’s Covid protocols, which were due to expire on Thursday

The Alliance of Film and Television Producers, the business negotiating body, said it was “committed to reaching an agreement at the negotiating table that balances the needs of both sides and will keep the industry at the table. work ”and that“ a strike has a devastating impact on the industry and will inevitably cause thousands of IATSE members to lose their income, not qualify for Medicare benefits, jeopardize funding pension plan and disrupt production.