7/27/22, 7:02 PM Things to Consider Regarding Organizing Efforts

July 27, 2022

To: AICP Members

Fr: Matt Miller, President & CEO

Re: Things to Consider Regarding Organizing Efforts

You undoubtedly have seen the “Stand with Production” (SWP) communications designed to
apply pressure to members of the freelance production community who are reluctant to join their
unionization effort. It falsely paints the entire industry with a broad brush and is not helpful to an
open and honest discussion about our industry, its work, and the challenges all of us face.
 
Unfortunately, the SWP narrative attempts to sell unionization as the solution to their outlier and
exaggerated examples. 

Many of you have contacted us with numerous accounts of freelancers expressing extreme
distress over SWP’s false messaging, tactics, and derogatory narrative. It’s been widely reported
that SWP has refused to answer simple and direct questions from members of the community it
purports to represent, including not being forthcoming about the dynamics of their makeup and
leadership.
 
AICP strongly believes that a unionization effort among freelance production employees will
harm those individuals it claims it will help, and therefore wishes to express its views directly to
you, as a member employer of the AICP.
 
Areas of Concern
SWP has said that its unionization effort seeks to encompass the following job classifications:

Producers
Production Supervisors
Assistant Production Supervisors (a.k.a. Commercial Coordinators)
Production Assistants
Bidding Producers

These freelance production professionals are among our most trusted and valued employees.
SWP is targeting hesitant freelancers by trying to characterize them as weak and miserable on
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every project. This SWP depiction is untrue and demeaning to our highly valued freelancers and
to the professionalism of the industry.

The relationships between member production companies and freelancers, built over time, has
the goal of success on both sides. They might be altered irrevocably by eliminating, in a number
of important contexts, the direct line between employer and employee by inserting union
contracts and procedures between employers and production teams rather than the blanketed
trust that exists.  

This could hurt freelance production staff and our industry in the following ways:

Economic arrangements resulting from unionization could lead to lost jobs and
lost income for these employment classifications, and currently
represented IATSE crew.  Here’s how:
Increased costs could induce agencies and clients to send even more production
outside of the United States. This means lost business for the entire industry. Such
increased costs might push larger numbers of projects to non-union companies that
would not be governed by the terms of union contracts.   
Reduction of work opportunities for freelancers in certain management areas;
reduced compensation; and the expenses of union initiation fees and recurring dues
can adversely affect freelance production employees’ income.
Work rules agreements and overly restrictive jurisdictional boundaries resulting
from unionization could have a major effect on how freelance production
employees manage their own schedules, and the schedules of their teams.  To
comply, production companies might have to create a level of oversight and
management of their schedules that are not in place or currently required. 

Health Plan Impacts to Freelancers

 
The Producers’ Health Benefits Plan (PHBP) is an innovative and generous “Cadillac” healthcare
plan funded entirely by AICP employers and designed specifically for freelance production
employees. Some of the benefits freelance production employees would lose if PHBP was
replaced, include:

Qualification: In many instances, it would take longer to qualify for the IATSE benefits and
requalification milestones that must be met twice as frequently as PHBP.
Commencement of Coverage: The amount of time between meeting the IATSE coverage
requirements and the commencement of coverage can take as long as seven months.
Coverage Period: The IATSE coverage period is half the duration (six months) of the PHBP
coverage period (12 months), greatly reducing security, and the ability for family planning
as well as planning of medical procedures.
Hundreds of freelancers (over 20%) who qualify each year for PHBP by way of earnings
and not the number of days worked would not have qualified for the IATSE coverage.
PHBP provides no cost Long and Short-Term disability coverage; IATSE has none.  
The underwriting and financial viability of PHBP is jeopardized by the loss of any job
classification, thereby destabilizing the security of the employees that have received
coverage during the last 16 years.

The Industry Reality for All of Us

 
We recognize that one of the driving factors behind this unionization effort is the increased
demands by marketers and agencies to compress production schedules and make production
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work on their terms, whether because of pressured timelines or attempts at curtailing budgets.
 
A union-sponsored propaganda video and other false narratives greatly exaggerates the scale and
scope of this issue. We recognize that schedule compression is real and problematic. While the
roots are many and complex, it is in everyone’s interest to work with all concerned parties toward
practical and effective solutions. This has been raised with key clients and agencies and continues
to be a priority for AICP.
 
Unionization, in itself, will not resolve any of these issues. Instead, the potential economic
compacts and disputes that may result could foster conditions that are detrimental to individual
employees and the industry as a whole.
 
In summary, the economic impact of agreements resulting from a unionization
effort could hurt our valued freelance production employees financially, force
productions to non-union shops, chase U.S. production to foreign shores, and
curtail the decision-making authority that freelance production employees
currently enjoy.
 
 

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