After two years of negotiations, the Canadian Media Producers Association and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 362 have struck a deal.

The CMPA and the labour union, which represents nearly 7,000 members across several industries, including transportation and animal wrangling, signed a collective agreement outlining terms and conditions for all Alberta-based productions employing Local 362 union members.

The three-year deal covers both the economic and physical terms and conditions of every production that employs the Teamsters union members.

Tom Cox, managing partner of Calgary-based production company SEVEN24 Films and Chair of the CMPA’s bargaining committee told Playback Daily that prior to signing this agreement, the two organizations signed a promulgated agreement on an annual basis. That meant that, in the past, producers couldn’t accurately predict production budgets because terms and conditions of the promulgated agreement could change from year to year.

“We’ve been anxious to move from a promulgated agreement system to a pre-negotiated system for a number of years,” he said, adding that master agreements help to create a more sustainable industry.

Local 362 vice-president Wayne Garner added that while the negotiated agreement, which is modeled after the B.C master agreement between IATSE 891, Teamsters Local 155 and IATSE 669, will benefit local producers, the goal is also to attract international productions to the province. “We made the decision to make the look similar [to the B.C. agreement because] Hollywood producers are familiar with that collective agreement, so that way they’d be familiar with our collective agreement.”

Alberta’s screen-based production industry generated $246 million in production volume in 2016 and more than 5,000 full-time jobs.