IATSE Busts a Move, Openly Organizes VFX Workers

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“The IA,” according to organizer Peter Marley, “has become more political than it was in the past.” Marley was speaking over Mother’s Day weekend on a podcast at the redoubtable FXGuide website, more or less officially announcing an initiative that broke last week via the arrival of a website: Namely that after years of talk on the subject, IATSE is openly recruiting visual effects workers to come join a union.

It’s a propitious moment for such a move: FX extravaganza The Avengers reached the billion dollar box office mark this weekend, meaning all those freelancing digit wranglers in all those post houses are, perhaps, the most critical components to the future of studio box office.

At the same time, we’re also just a few days past May Day in a spring where worker and working class sensibilities have upended top down-imposed “austerity” programs in both French and Greek elections, and an emboldened sense of worker and citizen rights – encapsulated stateside by the “Occupy” movement.

So if the IA is more political than it has been in the past (or at least, since the 1930s), it wouldn’t be surprising. The times lend themselves to it.

Towards this end, the IA launched a website to inform and cajole many digital laborers toward union membership. You can find it at http://vfx.iatse-intl.org/. Among its front page mission statements is the admonition that the IA is “uniquely qualified to represent freelance employees. Most of our members work for multiple employers during the course of a year. For these workers it is critical to provide health and retirement funds that are portable.”

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http://www.btlnews.com/commentary/union-roundup/union-roundup-iatse-busts-a-move-openly-organizes-vfx-workers/

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