As reported by the Hollywood Reporter: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/hollywood-teamsters-iatse-solidarity-rally-amptp-negotiations-1235838247/
A coalition of Hollywood’s below-the-line unions rallied Sunday on the eve of their latest contract negotiations. They threatened a historic strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers if their demands weren’t met. Such a work stoppage would follow a pair of strikes in 2023 by industry writers and actors that crippled the entertainment industry and have left it limping into the new year.
“I hope they’re paying attention right down the road at the AMPTP,” IATSE vp Michael Miller announced from the stage to the crowd of around 1,000 people at Woodley Park in Encino. (Nearly 1,000 more watched a livestream online.) He then invoked a slogan repeated throughout the event: “Nothing moves without the crew.”
DGA head Russell Hollander’s speech drew a notably more muted reaction. The Directors Guild, which by contrast to SAG-AFTRA and the WGA had little visible presence at Woodley Park, was seen by many in the Hollywood labor movement as too quick to acquiesce in 2023, as the WGA strike was already underway and SAG-AFTRA was on the verge of its own stoppage, and incurred further intra-union resentment for picking up pattern-bargaining gains after the strikes were over.
The biggest reactions came from other labor leaders, including when California Labor Federation executive secretary-treasurer Lorena Gonzalez initiated a call-and-response of “Fuck around and find out” and when L.A. County Federation of Labor president Yvonne Wheeler exclaimed: “AMPTP, hear us loud and clear: These workers may work below the line, but that doesn’t mean their wages and benefits should be near the poverty line.”
Hollywood Teamsters head Lindsay Dougherty, who served as the profane MC for the event, ticked off key demands involving rest, safety and compensation, then promised that “we will strike if we have to.” Sean O’Brien, the national president of the Teamsters, gave perhaps the most pointed speech of the day, repeatedly referring to the entertainment companies as “the white-collar crime syndicate.” Like others, he sought to reframe the notion that crewmembers didn’t have, as he put it, “the intestinal fortitude to take on the fight” after being put out of work for so long last year. He observed, of the AMPTP, “it’s time to make them aware that if they thought they had a fight last summer, they can’t even predict what they have now,” explaining that “we are desperate — and being desperate is great. It means we don’t care about consequences for our actions.”
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