Industry networking Stateside

This week Tony Lennon and I have been visiting our sister union in the USA and Canada, IATSE, at their quadrennial convention in Orlando, Florida. This event is the equivalent of our annual conference, but the structure of their union means that they do this once every four years. Earlier this year, a delegation from IATSE, including international president, Matt Loeb, and his predecessor, Tom Short, attended BECTU's annual conference.

It is vital for workers in theatre, film and television, at home and abroad, that both of our unions are strong and work together to ensure that we combat the bad employers in our industries. We deal with many of the same employers, especially in film and theatre.

IATSE has 112,000 members across the USA and Canada working in motion picture, television, theatre and trade shows. Approximately 90 per cent of their membership is freelance. The permanently-employed work mainly in television and theatre box office.

Tony has attended a number of caucus meetings during the week; I found the Wardrobe caucus very interesting and reminiscent of previous discussions back home, as these skilled women fight to gain parity with their equivalents in male-dominated departments.

Outside of collective agreements, where they seem to favour long term deals of three - four years, the major topic here is the effect of piracy on our industries. BECTU and IATSE are committed to leading a trade union campaign for greater regulation and enforcement and indeed we are already active on this in the UK.  That said, the major motion film companies need to be more open about the effects piracy will have on the industry if left uncontrolled in the future.

I had the pleasure of addressing IATSE delegates on Wednesday and Tony is due to speak today (Thursday). We have been joined here by a good friend and colleague of BECTU's in Europe, Johannes Studinger, newly appointed director of Uni-Mei.