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This topic comprises 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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Author
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Topic: Questions about unions
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 09-24-2001 10:50 PM
Ken:
As a union member, you work under a union contract, a result of collective bargaining, which is a right under national labor laws,
where the employees have voted to form a union. This contract typically enables the union to control hiring on the basis of seniority at open meetings in the union hall. The jobs are listed in letters mailed to all members, and posted in the local office during
the job-claim portion during or following the meeting. Ideally, the union contract covers hours and pay scales, working conditions, grievances, training, holidays, sick days,time off, etc. The union
usually provides welfare and pension plans, including medical, dental,
optometrical plans for the projectionist and his/her dependants.
Ideally, local meetings should be conducted democratically, with elections governed by labor laws determining contract provisions,acceptance or rejection; and election of officers and representatives to the parent International, the IATSE parent union.
Although the strength of IATSE locals has been weakened in recent years, a look at union contracts I have worked under in recent years
included such minutia as:
* Overtime of 1+1/2 hourly wage for work on each of ten holidays per year. (Aday and a half pay for each day.)
* Overtime for hours past midnight or normal theatre closing hours.
(I think seven minutes beyond regular equaled an additional hour.)
* Extra pay for transferring a print from one platter stack to another.(As much as $22 per in one theatre.)
* Extra pay for each makeup and print breakdown. Later, for each beyond one per auditorium per week.)
* Regular hourly pay to $34 per hr, my top in a large multiplex with
full automation.
Many provisions have been modified or eliminated as management has
gained greater strength and control, and as licensing and labor laws have been ignored or unenforced because of political and economic
changes. Inefficiency or corruption in both management and union administrations is not unknown.
On the whole though, my theatrical projection career spanned 26 years,
and I could not imagine working without union rights, protection wages and support.
Gerard
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Charles Everett
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1470
From: New Jersey
Registered: May 2001
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posted 09-25-2001 12:22 PM
In Manhattan nearly all theaters have a union booth. The IATSE contract for Manhattan requires a union booth in theaters with 7 or more screens. Since most chains in Manhattan have large and small theaters they generally have all of them union to keep it uniform across the board. Even Regal had to go union when it made its ill-fated run in Manhattan.The Two Boots Pioneer Theater in the East Village (a twin) drew pickets when it opened last year as a non-union shop. Sites I'm not quite sure of on union status are the arthouses: Lincoln Plaza (6 screens), Quad (4), Film Forum (3), Screening Room (twin), Paris (single). Can anyone working in NYC confirm this?
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 09-25-2001 04:31 PM
To Charles Everett:
When I worked the Lincoln Plaza, Quad and Paris,they all had 100%
union projection staffs. During most of my years ALL theatres in all five boroughs [counties] of New York City did also. Even the screening rooms of production houses, cultural centers of foreign consulates,and museums large and small were union. We picketed porno
theatres which converted to 16mm or videotape until they contributed to the union pension and welfare funds in lieu of remaining union staffed. (Our men and women didn't relish such jobs anyway.)
When I entered the Local in 1970 I was about number 1,752 of the
active roster. When I retired in 1998, there were only about 600 remaining,even though we took in allied crafts such as TV, exchange, laboratory and editing workers by then. Multiplexes, megaplexes and automation, plus the managements' greedy push to cut payrolls, took a severe toll. The U.A. secretly convoyed busloads of management personnel to a location in the Catskills in an attempt to train them to replace projectionists. But when brought back to NYC to take the Licensing Exam (the performance half was traditionally given in the sub-basement of the Surrogates Court) ALL failed except it except the company technician!
Nonetheless, the company forced give-backs on the union and put
non-union employees in the booths. For example, in my neighborhood,
six union men were laid off and only one kept on serving three theatres with a total of five auditoriums. That man had to make and break for all, while non-union employees ran the shows. When reported that machines were run by unlicensed "projectionists", one quartet was fined $100 for each auditorium, but the theatre kept running as before. At a local meeting fifteen jobs were given to management by the members who showed up to vote, at the recommendation of the union administration "to save the contract."
Now the IATSE has taken in some ground floor employees, but what
was once a strong craft union is but a shadow of its former self.
Lucky for me the pension fund is still strong, though benefits for those working are not so plentiful.
--Gerard
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Will Kutler
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1506
From: Tucson, AZ, USA
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted 09-25-2001 07:03 PM
AZ is a Right To Work State.In AZ, you cannot be management and be in a union. In AZ, the demise of IATSE Projectionists started around 1978. There are quite a number of newspaper articles in the AZ Daily Star and Tucson Citizen about the demise of IATSE around Southern AZ. The demise and IATSE Union strikes were big news because Tucson was still really a small town back then--the picture show being one of the staples of entertainment! Most of the theaters were large one and two screen houses--most of which are either closed or have been converted to large multi-plexes. Unfortunately the demise of IATSE was a nasty affair. Theater owners accused the Projectionists of featherbedding big time! I have spoken with some of the IATSE guys who said that in reality this was true. Theater owners also claimed that IATSE Projectionists were no longer needed because of automation and safety film--that no one was needed in the booth and that it only took 60sec to thread a machine. When the IATSE Projectionists did strike and were finally laid off, there were reports of IATSE Projectionists vandalizing booths and equipment and having private security and police escort them from the booths and theaters. I also heard reports about inner racial tension within the union. The only (to my knowledge) IATSE projectionists working in AZ are the few guys at the DeAnza Drive In. Because AZ is a Right To Work State--heaven help the person who wants to bring the union into work. The exceptions being government workers/contractors for the most part!
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Gerard S. Cohen
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 975
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted 09-25-2001 07:38 PM
Ken:
You ask <So let's say you're a union member. You love your job. I love my job. Don't make much, but I don't really care. I'm happy.
What if the union wants to picket for some reason. Do you continue to work?>
I suggest you ask the picket captain whether the line is informational picketing to enlighten the public about anm existing situation, or whether jobs are at stake: i.e., are union workers locked out by management, or have they walked out and the line exists to keep out would-be strikebreakers (scabs)?
To a real union member, one who is familiar with the history of workers' struggle for decent pay and working conditions, and the brutality exercised against union members by hired gangs, police and militias in the USA and elsewhere, crossing a picket line of his fellow workers is unthinkable and impossible. If he cannot join the pickets at his own theatre he will be welcome at another, for while a single theatre may have as few as two projectionists, a picket line to be effective may need at least thirty pickets in two or three shifts. "The job you save may be your own."
Gerard
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) What if the union wants to picket for some reason. Do you continue to work?
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