by Martin Levenstein, Guild 2nd Vice President

It’s near the end of 2003 as I write this. This is often a time when people look back on the past year and make resolutions for the new one. I’m going to take the liberty of looking back five years, to November 2, 1998, when New York Editor’s Local 771 merged with locals from Los Angeles and Chicago to create Local 700, the national Motion Picture Editor’s Guild.

Not everyone was in favor of the merger. There were many questions and concerns. Would members lose jobs to workers traveling from other areas of residence? Would the Hollywood local overwhelm New York and Chicago through the sheer size of its membership? Some New York members felt that interests strongly supported by Eastern Region members might be overruled and that our regional uniqueness might be lost.

There were also questions about whether we could actually administer a national jurisdiction. How would the separate local offices be integrated into one national office? Could the differences in our health and pension plans and producer-guild agreements be resolved? Could we ever hope to negotiate a national editorial agreement with the major studios?
Many of these questions could only be answered speculatively until a merger was in place, but the memberships of the individual locals became so positive towards the idea that a referendum in support of such a change was passed overwhelmingly.

Five years later, it’s apparent that the merger has been a great success. The timing was perfect. As the use of digital technology has become more commonplace and widespread, post production has become less centralized and films are often shot in one location and edited in another. Post services on one movie may be completed in many different locations, often in different cities or on different coasts. It is essential that we have a union that can provide oversight of collective bargaining agreements on a national level. As Local 700, we have successfully negotiated a national agreement with the Association of Motion Picture and Theatrical Producers (AMPTP) and negotiated into that agreement a merger of the New York Producers and the West Coast IA health and pension plans.

The Eastern Region has retained its regional identity and has active representation through a Second Vice President and Eastern Region directors who are strongly committed to working as a part of the larger national board. Not only have we kept our office in New York, but the national board has shown its commitment to the Eastern Region by supporting the purchase of new office space in lower Manhattan. In addition, we now have a full-time organizer and an enthusiastic and competent office staff.

Being part of a larger guild has also allowed us to open a training room for members to sharpen their skills, and to initiate an annual retiree luncheon that has become one of the premiere events of the year.

The Union Today

Five years after the merger, I encourage individual Eastern Region members to focus once again on union basics. We can each do our part to help create an environment that attracts new jobs and helps maintain existing collective bargaining agreements or develops new ones. Before beginning a job, call Paul Moore or a member of the office staff and find out if it is covered under a Guild agreement. You might find that a job you thought was non-union actually is covered. If there is no agreement, discuss the feasibility of obtaining one. If the job is covered, ask about the details of the contract. Too many times, the producer explains the project’s collective bargaining agreement to the editor as they are negotiating their deal. Does this make sense? Call the Guild before you negotiate. If you are in a supervisory position, you owe it to your crew to obtain full and correct information.

Guild membership benefits everyone when members actively create an environment where the Guild administration, working through collective bargaining agreements, can ensure fairness, safety, professionalism and just compensation in the workplace. With an effective national union, we now have the infrastructure that will allow us to create better working conditions for all of our members.