The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) have finalized a spot agreement covering the labor pool in Los Angeles County.
The new contract took effect Oct. 1, 2000, and runs through Sept. 30, 2004. According to IATSE international president Thomas Short, some 330 commercial production houses are signatories to the contract.
"Essentially, we re-upped the deal that had been in place, with some relatively minor changes and clarifications," assessed AICP president Matt Miller.
Short noted that wage increases amount to three percent hikes for each of the first two years, and four percent annually in years three and four.
The new contract also recognizes the jurisdiction of IATSE for Internet-related projects. "To the extent that it [an Internet commercial] looks and talks like a motion picture and needs a grip, an electrician and a cameraman, for example, we are going to use IA people for those roles," stated Miller.
Short said that, to his knowledge, "We’re the only union or guild that has obtained recognition in the area of product made for the Internet." He added that the contract also contains a provision affirming IATSE’s jurisdiction over any new technology that emerges to record the moving image.
The issue of union jurisdiction over Internet commercials has been a major sticking point in the ongoing strike by the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) against the ad industry. The Joint Policy Committee (JPC) has contended that while SAG and AFTRA have jurisdiction over TV commercials that are then used on the Internet, the actors’ unions do not have such authority over ad forms that are produced exclusively for the Internet. The JPC represents the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the American Association of Advertising Agencies (4A’s) in labor talks.
SAG and AFTRA have refuted the JPC’s stance. And in a recent open letter to union membership, SAG and AFTRA negotiators cited the AICP’s willingness to recognize IATSE’s authority over commercials on the Internet as an indication that the JPC should do the same when it comes to the actors’ unions.
However, Miller contended that he doesn’t see any parallel between the AICP-IATSE agreement and the SAG/AFTRA-JPC situation. "Their dispute is over usage performance, not nuts-and-bolts production," noted Miller.
Short conjectured, though, that IATSE’s gaining Internet recognition sets a helpful precedent for unions generally, including SAG and AFTRA. "I don’t see any downside to it. I suspect and hope that it probably will help them [SAG and AFTRA]." Short noted that Internet jurisdiction was a key objective for IATSE going into the commercial negotiations.
Miller related that among other new wrinkles in the recently ratified IATSE contract is a raising of the threshold from $100,000 to $150,000 in terms of what constitutes a low-budget spot. The AICP-IATSE agreement allows for individual negotiation on a per-project basis for a low-budget commercial. Short and Matt Loeb, IATSE division director of motion picture and television production, said that the low-budget designation increased from $50,000 daily for two days (a total of $100,000) to three days ($150,000).
The new AICP/IATSE pact serves in some respects as a validation of the aforementioned original precedent-setting contract reached four years ago (SHOOT, 11/8/96 and 11/15/96). That original deal was historic on several levels. Since 1969, IATSE commercial agreements on the West Coast had been supplements to the union’s basic feature/TV contract. The four-year commercials contract entered into in ’96 marked the first time that the spot industry had a stand-alone IATSE agreement totally separate from the long-form Hollywood contract. This separation also led to the development of an expanded spot labor roster, opening up options beyond the longstanding basic feature/TV industry experience roster.
