Demonstrations that have bedeviled film and TV shoots in Toronto will continue and possibly escalate, says Teamsters Local 847, as the union enters its sixth week of protests against the Directors Guild of Canada and the CFTPA, claiming those groups have interfered with a membership drive.

‘We think we cost the film industry maybe $1 million in the last six weeks,’ says Local 847 spokesperson Gil Davis. ‘We did enough of these films to show we can disrupt them; now we’re going to stick on one film for the whole day and hopefully not let them film for the whole day. Then maybe the producers will sign a contract with us.’

Some 10 protestors were at a Blue Murder shoot in downtown Toronto on Nov. 12, jeering cast and crew of the Barna-Alper series during location work on King Street West while two police officers kept watch.

‘There isn’t a production in this city that is safe from us. No one is safe. We can change these placards in a minute,’ said Grant Clarkson, a location support worker with Boogeyman Productions, pointing to his ‘Barna-Alper unfair’ sign. Teamsters also recently protested at shoots for Queer as Folk and the Whoopi Goldberg feature Good Fences.

For several months Local 847 has been seeking to represent location support workers in Toronto, and claims to have signed up some 300 members at approximately 20 previously non-union companies. But in September, the DGC, acting on complaints from its Locations Department, filed a grievance with the CFTPA against the ‘contracting out’ of location work to such companies. The matter went to an independent arbitrator, who ruled on Sept. 27 that typical support work – lettering neighborhoods, cleaning, watch duty, etc. – falls under the existing DGC/CFTPA agreement.

In the 20-page ruling, arbitrator Rick MacDowell makes only passing reference to the Teamsters, commenting that the union had, at least at the time, no apparent jurisdiction over the film and television industry in Ontario.

The Teamsters have since staged sporadic protests at area shoots, some of which have been loud enough to delay shooting for as long as an hour, according to CFTPA national vice-president of industry relations and counsel John Barrack, who dismisses the Teamster complaints as ‘just a lot of noise.’

‘Production has gone on but we had some disruptions…very loud protests and sets were shut down for short periods of time,’ says Barrack. ‘Otherwise, it’s business as usual.’

The Blue Murder protest, although often loud, went quiet during filming. Asked about previous alleged noisemaking, Davis had no direct comment, but suggested the disruptions had been caused by traffic noise.

But despite the September ruling, the Teamsters appear to have gained a toehold, having won in October the right to represent watchmen at Boogeyman Productions. There are six similar applications pending, says Ontario Labor Relations Board lawyer Voy Stelmaszynski.

The DGC/CFTPA clash echoes a similar dispute in April between Local 847 and IATSE, when the Teamsters sought to take over that union’s representation of some 500 area transportation workers. That effort has since been abandoned, but some suspect all the recent activity is part of a larger, cross-border effort by the Teamsters to stop runaway productions.

‘I question their motives,’ says DGC executive director Marcus Handman, pointing to the strong support by U.S. Teamsters of the anti-runaway Film and Television Action Committee. ‘Clearly the Teamsters in Canada answer to the American authority. So what’s their real interest here?’

Davis says the suggestion is ‘ludicrous’ and insists his members want more films brought into Canada. ‘That’s the only way we can increase our membership,’ he says.

-www.teamsters-canada.org

-www.dgc.ca

-www.cftpa.ca