The Possible IATSE Strike Explained, And Why Movie Fans Should Care

IATSE stands for International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, and the simplest way to describe the membership of this union is actually to say who's not a part of it: directors, actors, screenwriters, producers, and vehicle operators (also known as teamsters) are not part of IATSE. They have their own guilds and unions. IATSE is basically everyone else that works on a set, including cinematographers and the camera department, the costume department, grips, carpenters, and pretty much every other position on a movie set.

The AMPTP is a major trade association for the largest film and TV producers in the country. It stands for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which its leadership self-describes as a "trade association responsible for negotiating virtually all industry-wide guild and union contracts."

There are three core requests that IATSE is making: improved and more consistent hours, a cost of living base wage increase, and a change to the "New Media" deal that was struck during the previous negotiation with streaming platforms.

Let's start with the "New Media" deal, which many people I've spoken to believe is the real sticking point in these negotiations. The version that stands now allows streamers like Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Hulu to pay less than traditional studios into the healthcare and pension funds for IATSE members.

IATSE forged the original "New Media" deal back in 2009 when streaming platforms were indeed new media. The basic pay was union standard, but where IATSE cut streamers slack was in any kind of residual payments and the amount these streaming companies would pay into healthcare and pension plans. As a result, the healthcare and pensions for crew members are currently in jeopardy.

And it makes sense because most of the long-term work for crew members is on series, not movies. Lower budget films tend to shoot twenty days or less, whereas bigger budget movies shoot somewhere around 60 days. Then there are the behemoth productions, the "Lord of the Rings" of the industry which can see production go on for over a year. In terms of time spent working, though, crews spend more time working on long-form series, which is the bread and butter of the streamers.

IATSE members are fed up and have been very vocal about their mistreatment, even going so far as to speculate about previous leadership being corrupt and cutting sweetheart deals with the streamers.

The problem is, with the streamers not contributing the full amount and also being one of if not the dominant force hiring these crews, the pension and healthcare funds for the entire workforce are in jeopardy. And while that's the biggest long-term problem they're concerned with, the more imminent issue most IATSE members are fighting for is a change to the sheer amount of hours they're expected to work.

Right now, the average shooting day is 12 hours, which gives them a 12-hour turnaround. This means that 12 hours of their day, they're not expected to be on set. That's not the problem. The problem is that productions typically shoot substantially longer hours than that. This yields a little more in overtime pay, but at the expense of the crew's lives outside of work, and, most importantly, their mental and physical health and safety.

Because the 12-hour turnaround rule is in place, going over by two or three hours a day has a cascading effect leading to one of the most dreaded terms in the whole of the movie business: Fraturday.

"For anybody that doesn't know what that is, it's production slowly sliding their schedule back every day," explains Rustic Films co-founder and indie producer David Lawson Jr. "And so, Monday morning, you'll start at 7:00 am, but by Friday, you're starting at 2:00 pm, which means you're shooting into Saturday morning, which means your Saturday is essentially ruined because you're recovering that whole day."

Penalties were in place to disincentivize producers from going over their hours. But when separating the human cost of these 14-plus-hour days and just looking at flat dollars and cents, it costs productions less to pay more overtime than it does to add days to the shooting schedule.

"It's easy to care about crew members when you think of them as human beings," Lawson said. "It's easy to forget about them when you just see them as line items."

Mike Flanagan ("Doctor Sleep" and the recent "Midnight Mass") started his career as an IATSE editor. While his roles have changed to a writer, director, and producer these days, he stands in solidarity with his old union.

Flanagan said he had trouble justifying the AMPTP's staunch opposition to these proposed changes in his own mind, and that, as a creator, shorter hours on a film set can only be a benefit, not a burden.

"While more restricted hours may sound like a problem, it really isn't," Flanagan said. "The issue is that crews are being worked beyond reasonable thresholds at the moment in an effort to reduce overall production day counts. To cut that back wouldn't be constricting or hurting productions. Rather it would be correcting an imbalance that has adversely landed on the crew, and only gotten worse over time. I can tell you from experience that a rested, invested crew works nearly twice as fast as one that is exhausted and taken advantage of. There's just no way this isn't a net positive."

Gary Sherman, the filmmaker of the '80s genre gem "Dead and Buried," said that in his experience as a director, the work done under those circumstances has diminishing returns.

"Long hours, short turnarounds, and no lunch breaks are one hell of a lot more detrimental to production than the impact the IATSE demands would have," he says, not mincing words. "Forcing people to work hungry and until they're exhausted does no one any good. The toll it takes on the crew members, their health and well-being, is, of course, the most important factor, but what the AMPTP also fails to recognize is it takes a toll on the product and is not saving them money. My least favorite phrase on a production is, 'We can live with that.' It's heard a lot more often when everyone is exhausted."

Sarah Adina Smith, director of "Buster's Mal Heart" and "Birds of Paradise," echoes the benefits of a well-rested and happy crew. She also recognizes that her leadership role on a set has a part to play in this, as well.

"I always strive to make the day without going over, but schedules are so tightly packed that I have to push my crew to work at an inhuman pace in order to do so," Smith says. "I don't want to work that way anymore, it's not fair to anyone. The crew suffers and so does the art. On my last shoot, a crew member was so exhausted by our final day that she tripped and injured herself.

"As a director," Smith continued, "I'm realizing that it's my responsibility to take a stronger stance on schedule at the outset of a project. Oftentimes I'm so focused on just getting a project to a green light that I'm making schedule compromises and promising to pull off miracles. But I'm realizing now that comes at the expense of safety and it's not right. It's my responsibility not to let it happen anymore. Saner, safer schedules benefit everyone and will improve production value as well."