“Canada’s labour movement has a long history of improving workers’ everyday lives. We fought for and won many of the rights enjoyed by all workers today – minimum wages, overtime pay, workplace safety standards, maternity and parental leave, vacation pay, and protection from discrimination and harassment.”
IATSE 891 was chartered in 1962, representing technicians in the film and television industry. In 2022, IATSE 891 has over 10,000 members, in addition to being a key member in the BCCFU (British Columbia Council of Film Unions) securing a powerful role within the industry.
However, for years, and never more apparent than during the COVID-19 pandemic, the union has strayed from the fundamental purpose of a union; to protect workers’ rights and fight to win new rights for all workers. This slow breakdown of the fundamental understanding of a union can be seen in the lack of participation and engagement with our members.
On average, only 1% of IATSE 891 members attend General Meetings and between 24-32% of members regularly vote in elections for positions on the Board elected to represent the membership. Where did this lack of engagement begin? One of the largest causes of this is that members are unaware of the power that the membership as a whole has in the larger union. Many members believe that the President and Executive Board hold all the power in a “top-down” style of governance. This is simply not the case. The General Membership of any union has the ultimate control and ultimate decision making ability.
For years, the Leadership (whichever administration you choose) have subtly encouraged the fact that the President and Board have the ultimate say within the union structure, as well as participated in the prevention of organising between departments within the local.
On a recent call with the union hall, a member spoke to a Support Coordinator to find the contact information for their Department Chair. The member was trying to address some concerns that had been approved at the Executive Committee. The Coordinator told the member that the President's Office has the final say in union business so speaking to their Department Chair was unnecessary as they have no say over decision making. Either this was poor wording by the Support Coordinator, poor training by the Union for its staff, or the people who are supposed to represent us and assist us truly believe that the members are not the ultimate power within IATSE 891.
How do we move forward? It is important to be involved in the union, as stated above, even a small, well organised group can have their voices heard at the union through petitions and General Meetings. Unfortunately these rights are not being exercised. The members must participate in the Local to ensure their voices are heard and the Leadership is properly representing the membership.
The members of this committee created this on-going newsletter to organize and build a movement that will give us back control of our union and to assert our rights as workers. So please subscribe to this Substack and share it widely so that others can do the same. Together we will grow stronger and make effective change.
In a clear example of how this has impacted the membership, the COVID-19 Letter of Understanding (LOU) was written and ratified without the input of the larger membership, and then extended on May 1, 2021 - again, without membership input.
The Leadership of IATSE 891 and IATSE International have openly encouraged members to get vaccinated without a survey or membership voice, even though as more information continued to be released, the vaccines were proving to be ineffective against transmission and spread of the virus, and in documents recently released from the Pfizer trials of COVID-19 Vaccine (BNT162b2), there was a 3% mortality rate in the trials versus a 0.8% mortality rate (UK) from the COVID-19 virus itself. This does not take into consideration the 9 pages of side effects documented by Pfizer in their own studies.
The Leadership’s personal views on the vaccine are not a representation of the overall membership nor is it reflected in the scientific narrative or current data on vaccination, and should not be promoted as such. The union claims that they cannot prevent a production from putting in their own safety policies (this is questionable under labour law) however, they CAN strongly oppose those policies and file grievances with the B.C. Labour Board. If the union leadership truly represented all members, they would not be allowing productions to implement these stringent, wasteful, and frankly, virtue signalling policies that violate the members’ medical privacy and bodily autonomy to begin with.
A recent memo from the production Superman & Lois dated February 22, 2022 was sent out informing workers that “moving forward there will be NO flags … displayed on the production set, including worn by any person.” Stating that “the flags have become a distraction on the production set”. How did our Leadership allow a production to ban the Canadian flag on a production without so much as a word to the membership about it?
Transcribed to protect member
In fact, the union has been allowing a gross overreach of members’ personal time and property outside of work. Many productions have sent out memos dictating the behaviour of members outside of work hours in relation to safety from COVID-19, and if these instructions are not followed, members are threatened with disciplinary action and loss of employment. Some productions extended these same restrictions to members’ families.
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When did employers get the ability to dictate and regulate the lives of their workers outside the paid working hours? How is the union allowing these memos to be distributed and enforced without being challenged?
Understanding How Our Union Works
In our Local, any decision can go to the membership at a General Meeting and be overturned by a majority vote. The decision making process is as such; the President reports to the Executive Board who can overturn or accept any decision; the Executive Board reports to the Executive Committee (department chairs plus the Executive Board) who can vote to accept or overturn any decision and finally, everything goes to the General Membership who can overturn or reinforce any decision by a 2/3 majority.
In essence, the membership, if well organised and active, can effectively direct the entirety of the union’s decisions and strategies.
Unions within the film industry need to stand behind the members and stop bowing to the employers' every demand, often at the expense of the membership. We should not feel like we are being dictated to by our employers, and we should certainly not feel unrepresented by those elected to represent the members.
Remember - the President, Business Representative and Senior Steward are full-time, salaried positions, and according to the wage grid, they receive a 4% increase in salary each year, even if the members do not get a raise in our contract.
In Closing
Moving forward, we insist that our union actively oppose policies that target member's medical choices and the overreach of productions. This Committee is working towards putting together a motion, as well as other proactive approaches to hold the Leadership of IATSE 891 accountable to the members, and to ensure that mechanisms are put in place to prevent our employers from overstepping our workers’ rights again. Please join us in rebuilding our collective worker rights that have been lost over the past few years.
The members are the power behind a union. Every elected or hired member who works at the hall works at the pleasure of the members, and occasionally the membership must remind them of that.
We encourage everyone to subscribe and share the Substack: Workers’ Rights United, and to get in touch with the union hall to tell them how you feel about their representation and support of the members. Through your subscription you will be informed about new and up to date newsletters and information on how we will be organising in the future.
I have a brother who suffered a series of strokes three weeks to the day almost after his second vaccination, he spent over six months in the hospital, he used to work construction but he now walks with a walker, I had to clean feces off his toes and become his legal guardian at 46 years old
My daughter, 32 years old, after her second dose her lymph nodes swelled up the next day, she was diagnosed with stage three Hodgkins lymphoma three weeks later, started chemo three weeks after that, went septic on her second chemo treatment, spent three months in a coma on three different life-support machines over Christmas, Doctor said she had a 5% chance of survival, had half her bowel removed from an incidental infection, still can’t walk.
There are very very legitimate reasons some of us won’t take the death jab. We deserve to work In the field we love.