Contract Negotiations
Go On All the Time

by Cathy Repola,
Assistant Executive Director
 

During the course of normal business conducted by the Guild, many contracts other than the IATSE Basic, the Videotape Supplemental, and the Local 776 Agreements, are also negotiated and administered. They are not

Many contracts, other than the IATSE Basic...are also negotiated.

with AMPTP represented companies and most of these companies do not utilize the roster and do not participate in the MPIP & HP. We thought it might be of interest to you to outline some of the contracts here, and to discuss the various classifications they cover.

We have a contract with Century Southwest Cable Television where we have three technical directors employed. Negotiations were just concluded last year, with a contract now in effect until 1999.

Under our Editel agreement, there are approximately five staff editors working there, some for many, many years. Editel is a post-production company which does mostly commercials, but also some cable shows and MOWs.

Many years ago we had a large number of members working under our contract at ABC. As everything moved over to tape, we gradually lost more and more work because NABET has the jurisdiction there. We have only one staff employee still there.

We have just concluded negotiations with KTTV again. There too, NABET has most of the jurisdiction but we do have two staff employees who've worked there for years. Their main function is editing feature movies for airing.

At a company called Landsburg our contract only covers videotape editing. We have a couple of members employed there. Their current contract expires in January 1998.

Laser Edit is also a stand-alone contract. It is a videotape facility employing some staff people and some freelance when specific editors are requested by clients.

At KTLA we have more than twenty editors and a couple of technical directors. They work in both programming and news. Their contract will expire again in 1998.

There is also a contract in effect with Northwest Mobile Television which is a mobile sports company. We have technical directors employed there. A mobile truck is sent out to games for the Lakers, Dodgers, Clippers, Kings and Mighty Ducks (among others); the cameras are set up and our technical directors oversee the feed which is broadcast live from the game.

We have also just recently organized a very small home shopping network which is broadcast via satellite. The technical directors there will be in our Guild. We are still in negotiations for the first-time contract.