Vancouver: For years Vancouver has been marketing itself south of the border as a filmmaker’s paradise. A vibrant full-service production center offering a wide variety of scenery, year-round shooting conditions, enthusiastic, experienced crews, a cheap Canadian dollar. In short, the ideal location. And for years it’s worked. l.a. producers have been coming here in droves.

By the end of 1994, productions shot in b.c. reached a record-breaking 87 with production budgets spent in the province totaling $350 million. But what everyone seemed to forget is that while the growth is great, it also takes its toll on the production community, and for the first time the wear is starting to show.

Throughout 1994, the Labor Relations Board was a virtual revolving door of industry disputes.

The Union of B.C. Performers/ actra jurisdictional dispute peaked late in the year when the ubcp opted to ally with Teamsters Canada. Lawsuits and countersuits followed.

Teamsters Local 155 took a strike vote on the set of Universal’s television series, m.a.n.t.i.s. and they both landed at the lrb.

IATSE Local 891 and the Association of Canadian Film Craftspeople’s b.c. branch continued their turf war.

Dissension between the labor unions and producers, and within the unions themselves, reached such a low point that by December, the newly formed b.c. branch of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association held a day-long labor conference devoted entirely to labor issues.

Appropriately titled ‘The Search For Common Ground’ and moderated by lrb mediator Brian Foley, the conference brought all concerned parties – the Directors Guild of Canada, IATSE Locals 891 and 669, ubcp, actra, acfc, Nabet 700, the Writers Guild of Canada, the Musicians Union, and producers – together at one table to air their grievances and search for workable solutions.

Foley, who mediated the ongoing battle between the ubcp and actra as well as the Teamsters/ Universal dispute, knows whereof he speaks and didn’t pull any punches in his opening remarks.

‘Rife with rhetoric’

He assessed the industry as ‘rife with rhetoric,’ ‘suffering from complacency and smugness,’ ‘inclined to blame others for (its) shortcomings,’ ‘demonstrating poor reaction to change,’ ‘lacking in maturity in both employer and union groups,’ and ‘for all (its) outward professionalism, viciously combative in (its) disputes.’

In short, he concluded, ‘change has to be done with a co-ordinated approachÉthe infighting and petty politics must come to an end.’

However, at the end of the day only one concrete resolution had been agreed on.

Producer Richard Davis proposed that a task force be formed with attending participants (including Teamsters which chose not to participate in the event) ‘to provide a forum for discussion of issues that affect the short- and long-term health of the industry, to develop a coherent and codified platform to advance the b.c. film industry, that the group meet monthly, and that the group generate a working document within six months.’

The first meeting of the proposed task force is scheduled to take place in January.

‘It seems like every major production center at some time has had to fall on their collective butts to realize that it hurts before they wise up and take producers seriously when they call for more reasonable concessions from unions,’ says Mark DesRochers, production and location services manager for the B.C. Film Commission. ‘But the reality is when a production center gets as busy as Vancouver has been over the last few years, people become arrogant or even smug. It’s a matter of supply and demand.’

Too much work

Tim Hiltz, associate business agent for IATSE 891, contends the recent labor unrest is due, ironically, to too much work.

‘We’ve had such an exceptionally busy year; there is no other production center that has experienced this rate of growth. It’s a learning curve for everyone. So to say that one particular side is at fault is neither fair nor accurate. This kind of boom year was something that we didn’t expect,’ says Hiltz.

‘My perception of this union,’ he says, ‘is that we remain very amenable and negotiable. Where the problems occur sometimes is when the shows are not properly scheduled or have unrealistic delivery dates.

‘These conditions place added pressure on the producer and crew to work harder and longer to come up with the same quality of material. Show me any person on this planet that can consistently work 16-hour days of physical labor in the rain and the cold that doesn’t after a while get a little out of sorts.

‘I don’t think we recognize often enough just what these people endure on a daily basis. They have every right to expect to be fairly compensated for their time.’

Quality of life

Often it’s not about money, it’s about quality of life, says Hiltz. Money is frequently used by unions as a deterrent to keep the production company scheduling within a reasonable time frame. If a producer is suddenly stuck with having to pay an entire technical crew double time, he’s going to think twice about scheduling in that manner, he says.

Tom Milne, acting president of Teamsters Local 155, agrees many of the Teamsters’ problems with producers stem from poor time management.

‘Producers are trying to break our collective agreements because they don’t like quad time. Well hell, that only kicks in after 18 hours, so don’t work the crews that long and they won’t have to pay it. Fifteen hours a day is enough for anyone.’

‘No one begrudges the fact that we have to work long hours to get a production done, it’s the nature of the business,’ adds Hiltz. ‘But I frequently hear the comment, `Be a film worker or have a life.’ There’s that constant conflict between loving the work they do and wanting a personal life as well.

‘So these problems we’re experiencing are not about being confrontational, they’re about looking after the well-being of our workers and trying to come up with solutions that work for both parties.’

Producer Matthew O’Connor, president of Pacific Motion Pictures, Vancouver’s largest indigenous production company, admits the fatigue factor has a lot to do with the union’s unwillingness to make concessions. However, he says that’s something the industry can cope with.

The real problem, says O’Connor, is the ongoing dispute between the ubcp and actra and the disruption that’s created when a production has to deal with certification and the ensuing hearing before a labor relations board.

He says the essence of that dispute doesn’t have to do with performers themselves but with the executive of the two unions which are both fighting for their lives.

‘Unwilling to concede’

‘Everyone would like to see it resolved, but no one is willing to concede,’ says O’Connor. ‘To me the only way to start to find a solution is for there to be a free vote among performers, for them to decide who they want to be represented by, and then for everyone to really live by that binding decision. This is something that the lrb has proposed in the past, which unfortunately has not been done for one reason or another.’

actra spokesperson Mike Old says, ‘The issue is really who would be voting.’ He says actra members have not agreed to such a vote because they have no way of knowing who the members of the ubcp are.

‘There are rumors that the ubcp has been recruiting people who do not meet the membership requirements of six professional credits. We just wouldn’t trust a vote like that. The Teamster vote passed by 70%, but when we did a survey of actors, we found 70% didn’t want to be associated with the Teamsters, so we can’t figure out who’s voting on these matters.’

Steve Adams, president of actra b.c., says he sees virtually no hope for one performers union in b.c.

‘Now that we have Teamsters Canada involved, we have 100,000 Teamsters against 10,000 actors across the nation. It’s become very difficult to see our way out of this dispute,’ says Adams. ‘It quite frankly threatens the industry in b.c. There has been increasing talk in l.a. that they just won’t do business in b.c. anymore. The union hassles here just aren’t worth it.’

This fall, the ubcp voted by 70% to affiliate with Teamsters Local 155, a move many in the industry saw as a bid by the three-year-old ubcp to garner more clout in ongoing merger talks with the 10,000-member actra national.

Not so, says ubcp secretary Peg Christopherson. ‘Our reason for affiliating with the Teamsters was to achieve our long-term bottom-line objective, which is to allow our members in b.c. the right to run this union, make decisions locally, and retain financial control in the province. We had hoped to achieve these goals within the actra organization, but unfortunately we weren’t able to.’

How is all this labor unrest affecting b.c.’s ability to attract production?

‘On the surface it doesn’t look like it is,’ says the film commission’s DesRochers, ‘but maybe union members don’t realize that production incentive schemes such as those offered by Vancouver’s Beacon Group and Monarch Entertainment are actually having a larger impact on production coming to Vancouver than most really know. If you were to consider a level playing field with other locations, I wonder just how competitive we could be.’

O’Connor, whose company owes its existence to service production, says when a production decides not to shoot in b.c., the unions immediately get the blame, and that’s not always the case.

‘It’s very difficult to discern the real reason why projects come here or not,’ he says. ‘It can often be that the lead actor or one of the key components of the production team refuses to leave l.a. That’s common. Or the economics of a project, which are not just based on labor.

‘But everyone we deal with is still talking very optimistically and I don’t think we are going to see a substantial drop-off in production for the following year. Let’s wait and see what happens to the collective agreements that are passed; then we will start to potentially see some productions lost.

O’Connor says the recent revival of the B.C. and Yukon Joint Council of Film Unions should help to sort out the labor problems, as will having a united producers organization in b.c. under the cftpa.

‘Now we’re able to sit down with all the unions and say, `Hey look guys, this isn’t going to fly.’ I think the era of unions getting together and voting among themselves on what a contract will be and presenting it to producers is soon to be over. That potentially could get ugly for a while.

‘But if we work together to find effective ways to reduce costs while at the same time recognizing that there is inflation and people do need a little more money to get by, and if we sit down and look at how we can better manage our productions through the collective agreement, there will be other areas than just wages where we can collectively find savings.’