As IATSE‘s contract ratification vote begins today, union members pressed leaders Saturday during a virtual town hall for details on the AI provisions of the contract negotiated over the past four months with Hollywood’s major studios and streamers.
IATSE held a nearly three-hour session with IATSE International president Matthew Loeb and other leaders for the roughly 50,000 members of the 13 locals that work under the Basic Agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Variety has learned. IATSE members began voting today to ratify the three-year tentative agrement reached on June 26. IATSE leaders vowed earlier this year to have the new deal ratified before the July 31 expiration of the current contract.
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Guild members will vote through July 17 on whether to approve the contract. The results are scheduled to be announced July 18.
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Sources who spoke with Variety are convinced that pact will be ratified this week. There’s hope that a swift passage will spur an uptick in work as production has been slow and many in the industry have been out of work for an extended period. The IATSE contract talks were carefully watched this year on the heels of last year’s long strikes by the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA.
On the thorny subject of AI, the big focus is how the technology will impact job retention. Loeb and members of the union’s contract negotiating committee effectively conveyed to members during the town hall that this deal is a starting point for how the union will address the fast-developing technology that promises to transform businesses. Per the language in the Memorandum of Agreements, “the parties agree to meet at least semi-annually during the term of the agreements at the request of the international union to discuss and review information related to the producers’ use and intended use of AI systems” and “each producer agrees to meet quarterly with the international union, on a company-by-company basis, during the term of the respective agreements, at the request of the international union. At such meeting, producer will identify any significant emerging technologies utilizing AI systems that the producer is using or intends to use in motion picture production which may affect persons covered by these agreements.” Topics include “the extent to which jobs may have been affected as a result of the use of AI systems.”
During the meeting, Variety has learned, union leaders urged members to report their experiences to their locals, in order to identify what will need to be addressed; it also was indicated that it may aim to move the AI portion of future negotiations to be handled by each local during the local- and discipline-specific portion of the bargaining. This time around, the AI component was negotiated at the end of the long process of local and national contracts. As members in the 13 locals that work under the Basic Agreement range from cinematographer and editors to art directors and set medics, AI is expected to impact different locals is dissimilar ways and at varying points in time.
The powerful tech, of course, was a key subject even before the tentative agreement was formally released on July 10. A few days earlier, members of Motion Picture Editors Guild (IATSE Local 700)–whose members include editors, assistant editors, sound editors and mixers–received an email from its leadership providing “further context” in light of “a few questions and concerns” that were raised about the AI portion of the provisional deal.
“Many of you are concerned about the prospect of a producer using your timelines, project files, concept art, or other expressions of your creative labor, to train AI models,” wrote Local 700 national exec director Cathy Repola in the July 8 email obtained by Variety. “While we were able to secure protections to prevent studios from taking advantage of the prompts you may supply to AI models … I understand how important it is, and how vital it is to you and your union, that your creative essence is not used to train AI models.” She continued that during the negotiations “the studios repeatedly expressed they were focused on, and most concerned about, potential legal action and lawsuits regarding copyright violations. They are involved in legislative lobbying to build stronger protections and these are their priorities. We repeatedly reiterated that we had no intention of allowing them to use IATSE members ttrain AI to eliminate our work and they acknowledged the importance of this to us.”
Repola included that per the provisional deal, “your work is within the union’s jurisdiction, regardless of the AI tool used. Our members performing that work and/or overseeing it, are confirmed to be covered under the jurisdiction of the collective bargaining agreements. While the wording may differ from the WGA and SAG, in essence, the intent is the same. Words in a collective bargaining agreement matter, but so does intent and intent can be relied upon if disagreements arise.”
In the email, Repola emphasized that the tentative agreement includes the aforementioned meetings with AMPTP and individual producers/companies, as well as the importance of members’ reporting their experiences. “We still have much work ahead of us,” she wrote. “I do believe what we achieved in these negotiations creates the foundation necessary to build upon for the future, not just until the next negotiations take place again, but most importantly, we made sure we won’t have to wait three years. … You all play such a vital role in this. We need for you to report everything associated with developing technologies so we can collect the data necessary to effectively address on-going concerns during these meetings. We must work together on this to achieve optimum success.”
The Editors Guild is the second largest of the 13 Locals that work under the Basic Agreement. As the ratification vote operates in a similar manner as an electoral college, this means the International Cinematographers Guild (the largest local) and Editors Guild carry the most weight.
