Vancouver: When the 10,000 members of Vancouver’s major film unions ratified their latest multiyear labor deal with Canadian and u.s. producers late last month, they also approved a new rate for cable and syndicated mows.

Total above- and below-the-line costs must be less than us$3.75 million ($5.5 million) for cable and syndicated mows to qualify for a 13.5% rate discount offered by technical union IATSE Local 891, camera union IATSE Local 669 and Teamsters Local 155. The three unions comprise the B.C. Council of Film Unions.

Producers who want to do more work in Vancouver pushed for the discount deal, says Council executive director Tom Adair. The new incentive and added budget certainty are expected to add six to eight new mow titles per year.

mows, once the mainstay of Vancouver production, have fallen off in number in the past two years, Adair explains, with many prospects going to Toronto.

According to BC Film statistics, the total number of mows, miniseries and tv pilots was 168 in 1997. Last year, the comparable number was only 120.

Over the same period, there has been a marked improvement in the volume of features, which helped to propel b.c. production spending tallies past the $1-billion mark last year.

‘We are still getting the high-end mows,’ says Adair. ‘It’s the lower-end productions we seem to be losing.’

However, it’s the low end of the production market that Adair calls a training ground for new film workers to gain on-set experience and collect crucial credits that help them move up to the lucrative feature productions.

Without that low-end market to feed the production talent pool, the trained workforce for features begins to get thin.

Meanwhile, all three unions approved the new three-year master collective agreement with u.s. and Canadian producers that runs April 1 to March 31, 2003.

The collective agreement gives the Council exclusive jurisdiction over abc, cbs and nbc series and mows and features with below-the-line labor costs of $4 million or more.

Rates will increase 3% each year of the three-year term, while fringe-benefit rates are bumped up 5% in the first year.

The rate of approval for the deal was ‘not overwhelming,’ says Adair, who declined to say precisely what percentage of members support the new agreement. Three years ago, when the previous collective agreement was ratified, the Teamsters voted against the deal but were forced to fulfill it because the partner unions approved it.

This collective agreement, the third since the Council was formed in 1996, is expected to generate more than $700 million in wages over its term.