IATSE Locals Form Contract Captain System Ahead of 2024 Negotiations

Katie Kilkenny
·3 min read

Several subsidiaries of Hollywood’s major crew union are preparing for the union’s next round of negotiations by implementing a contract captain system.

Several major Locals of IATSE — The Motion Picture Editors Guild (IATSE Local 700), the International Cinematographers Guild (IATSE Local 600) and IATSE Local 728 — are creating these teams, which task volunteer union members with communicating negotiations information to a group of their peers while also passing on member sentiment to leaders, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The groups are being formed in advance of IATSE’s Basic Agreement negotiations, which are expected to begin as early as March before the pact’s July 31, 2024 expiration date.

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In a communication to members about its new “contract action team,” the Editors Guild stated, “We don’t expect the next round of negotiations to be easy; we know that we need to be prepared to fight for the contract we deserve. In any fight, a union is only as strong as its membership is united, informed, and engaged.” The group of member volunteers will “ensure that we go into the upcoming round of negotiations with the strength necessary to win a fair contract,” the communication continued.

The system is similar to one that has long been used by the Writers Guild of America, widely considered the most aggressive of Hollywood’s labor groups. The WGA’s contract captains, who are tasked with communicating and improving morale during negotiations, but who assume greater organizing responsibilities if there is a strike, have been in place continuously since the union’s 2007-08 strike. (The union previously used strike captains on and off in some previous work stoppages.) “That’s how you move 8,000 people into action,” WGA executive director David Young, who has been credited with implementing the latest system, told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.

This year the Directors Guild of America instituted a similar “outreach team” before negotiations that the union warned would be “difficult” began (the DGA ended up making a deal with studios on June 3 before its pact expired). SAG-AFTRA, meanwhile, asked for strike captain volunteers days before its ongoing strike was called on July 14.

IATSE Locals have, perhaps, multiple reasons to form these groups. The 2024 negotiations are expected to be tough, given that IATSE delegates only just ratified the union’s 2021 Basic Agreement amid an outcry that the tentative agreement hadn’t done enough to enshrine reasonable rest periods and to secure the union’s health and pension plans. (Still, with many crew members deeply impacted by the concluded writers’ strike and ongoing actors’ strike, it remains to be seen how aggressive the union will be willing to act in the bargaining room in 2024.)

And many IATSE leaders were surprised by union members’ increasing assertiveness over the months of negotiation in 2021 as the deal was hashed out over a protracted period. As negotiators were in the bargaining room, a popular Instagram account, IATSE Stories, emerged, telling anonymous horror stories about working conditions, while in October of that year Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot, reigniting conversations about crew set safety. The contract captain system is seemingly being set up to inform leaders of any shifting winds in member sentiment, as well as keep members up to date with the union’s take on negotiations.

The crew union has been preparing for its 2024 negotiations for months, with bargaining surveys expected to be sent out to members to determine priorities for the next round of talks soon.


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