Members of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a pair of contracts with the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, thus averting a threatened strike. Earlier this month, Lindsay Dougherty, the local’s principal officer, threatened to take “a commercial break” if the AICP didn’t offer a fair contract. “If we are provoked,” she said, “we will strike.”
The new three-year contract covering drivers, wranglers, animal handlers/trainers, and hyphenated drivers was approved by an impressive margin of 94.12%, while the contract covering location scouts and managers was approved by an even higher margin of 96.9%. These two agreements, reached last week, cover about 500 members who work regularly in commercials, although more than 1,000 Local 399 members have worked at least one day in the last year under the pacts.
“This contract fight has set a strong tone as we prepare for bargaining with the AMPTP next year,” Dougherty said Friday. “Teamsters don’t back down and are always ready to fight. We are proud of these two units for fighting alongside one another and for raising the industry standards and expectations for all.”
To view the memorandum of agreement for the drivers, click here, and for the location managers, click here.
“I want to take a moment to thank all of our members in commercials for standing together to achieve one of the best AICP contracts our Local has ever seen,” Joshua Staheli, Local 399’s vice president and chief negotiator for the contracts, told his members. “This is because our members stood together. You made your priorities known, you participated in our quarterly Commercial meetings, you rallied on Commercial sets during our contract campaign, and you gave us the leverage of being willing to call for a strike if needed.”
According to the union, the new pacts include: [unchanged]
