NEW YORK – Late Sunday, 23 Local Unions of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) reached a tentative three-year agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) for the 2021 Theatrical and Television Motion Picture Area Standards Agreement. The agreement was reached with the unanimous recommendation of the Bargaining Committee and achieves important gains specific to the Area Standards Agreement, as well as significant gains consistent with the Basic Tentative Agreement.

This tentative agreement comes after months of stalled negotiations, with the AMPTP only moving towards workers’ demands when the union held a near-unanimous strike authorization vote with 90% turnout, while workers also received unprecedented solidarity from industry leaders, over 120 members of congress, and other unions in America and around the world. “Our solidarity and unity gave us the power to change the course of these negotiations and as a result, we can present a package that addresses the core issues our locals collectively identified,” said IATSE International President Matthew D. Loeb. “Goals we have been pursuing, in some cases for decades, have been achieved in these negotiations,” said Loeb.

The proposed contract, which still needs to be ratified by members, covers approximately 20,000 film and television workers across the United States outside the West Coast workers in a wide variety of crafts represented by 23 IATSE local unions.

For the first time, members represented under the Area Standards Agreement will have the opportunity to vote directly on whether to ratify the agreement. Final language is still being reviewed by lawyers representing both the union and AMPTP, and IATSE members will be briefed by their local leaders on the full details and language of the tentative agreement in the coming weeks. Members were provided with an Economics Fact Sheet and a Working Condition Fact Sheet as information in the interim.