Directors Guild Leaders Tell Members “We Know There Will Be Conflict” on Eve of Negotiations

Katie Kilkenny
·3 min read
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On the eve of the start of contract negotiations, top dealmakers for the Directors Guild of America are telling members that their 2023 talks with studios and streamers “are about more than our next contract.”

“We know there will be conflict. The battle will test us. But we won’t rest until we win a strong contract today that builds a bridge to continued DGA prosperity into the future,” negotiations committee co-chair Todd Holland said on Tuesday in a video message to the union’s 19,000 members, a group that includes directors, assistant directors, unit production managers and stage managers.

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Featuring Holland alongside negotiations committee chair Jon Avnet and co-chair Karen Gaviola, the video overviews top negotiations priorities this cycle and sets a serious tone for the upcoming talks. “Together, we are an unstoppable union. We’ve negotiated world-class contracts because we deserve them,” Avnet said. Added Gaviola, “This year, our negotiations are about more than our next contract.”

The union’s negotiations will begin on Wednesday at the Sherman Oaks headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major entertainment companies in labor deals. The DGA’s current three-year contract expires on June 30.

For the first time in 15 years, the DGA is entering negotiations with employers as fellow industry union the Writers Guild of America is on strike. In another unusual development, this year the WGA began their negotiations before the DGA did, but the former’s talks abruptly ended on May 1 after management and labor failed to reach a consensus on key issues like the size and duration of writers rooms and the regulation of artificial intelligence.

“We hope they win a fair contract on terms that respects their vital contributions to this industry,” Holland said of the WGA in the video. “We are all union workers. They write the stories that we direct, that actors perform — and with the help of our craftspeople and drivers, together we bring these stories to life.”

The DGA has publicly telegraphed that in its talks it is seeking to improve the streaming residuals formula for members to reflect the global growth of streamers, to boost wage floors, to support its health and pension plan, to codify new safety measures, to protect directors’ creative rights, and to improve diversity, equity and inclusion language. The union engaged in informal discussions with studios and streamers on at least some of these issues months ago, but failed to reach an agreement on priorities at that time.

“Our industry has changed, is changing and will continue to change,” Gaviola said in the video. “The explosive popularity of streaming around the world has transformed how, and where, our work is viewed — and our contracts must adapt to changing production and distribution.”

Added Holland, “Since the birth of the guild in 1936, we have partnered with producers to share in the success of our industry as we fought for our future.  And now we are fighting to receive our fair share of the new, global future.” Avnet continued, “We have a short window to negotiate. And our mission is very clear.”

The union began warning members late last year that these coming talks might be contentious, telling them in November that it was “prepared for a fight” in a particularly “difficult and complicated” industry context. And in a sign of solidarity this time around with the writers and other industry unions, the DGA’s negotiating committee chair Avnet and national executive director Russell Hollander attended a WGA member meeting at the Shrine Auditorium on May 3, where Avnet told the crowd of streamers, “Did you tell them to forgo profits for subscriptions?”

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