After several months of complaints from its Toronto-based members and less than two weeks after rival union iatse Local 873 launched its ‘membership drive,’ Nabet 700 has been placed under trusteeship by its mother organization, the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada.

On Oct. 1, the local’s executive board was frozen in its powers, the national union’s Kim Ginter was appointed trustee and a handful of employees were suspended with pay, including secretary-treasurer and business agent Linda Gardon and membership service rep Edward Jeffre.

Ray Stringer, formerly of actra and the cftpa, has been recruited to hire the personnel to perform the functions necessary to keep the local union operating as usual. And operating as usual it is, confirms Alex Brown, spokesperson for Alliance Atlantis Communications.

The trusteeship is to last up to six months, in which time investigations into all the local’s operations, financial and otherwise, will ensue.

An inside source reveals that, ‘there are permittees that have been permittees for years. They work all the time, but they can’t get full membership….There is no objective criteria to become a full member.’

As a result, an increasing number of complaints from members has been flooding the national and Ontario cep offices and dissension was growing within the local.

Investigation

underway

A preliminary investigation by cep national has been ongoing for the last several months.

Nabet 700 represents roughly 850 full-time members and an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 permittees – a number that is, at this point, almost impossible to calculate because those working with the trusteeship have not been able to find accurate records.

‘If there’s 4,000, maybe 2,000 of them are from 10 years ago and don’t even work in film anymore,’ says the inside source.

Permittees are like temp members who pay dues based on a check-off percentage, which are higher than the annual flat-rate fees ($400 to $600) for full-time members. They are eligible for the pension plan, but not for the separate benefit package – which includes medical, dental and disability insurance – that full-time members receive. Also, full-time members have priority in hiring.

No evidence

of financial fraud

Although Cecil Makowski, cep’s vp of Ontario region, refused to disclose any of the reasons for the trusteeship, he was quick to dispel ongoing rumors of financial fraud. He says, ‘We know of no such thing. That was not a factor in our consideration for trusteeship.’ Neither, he says, was iatse’s current ‘raid’ on the local union.

‘We felt compelled to act now because there was significant frustration within the union, making it fertile ground for iatse’s raid,’ says Makowski.

Conversely, iatse Local 873 president Paul Harding says it was just a ‘fortuitous coincidence’ that the international union decided to launch its membership campaign, specifically targeted at nabet members, at such a time.

The membership drive, initiated on Sept. 19 and running through to Dec. 31, is not a raid, contends Harding. ‘We’re not signing up contracts. We’re not pressuring producers. In fact, we’re recommending that if any nabet member wishes to join iatse that they live out their contractual obligations to the producer that they’re working for,’ says Harding. ‘In a nutshell, we’re trying to bring all of Toronto film technicians under one protective umbrella. We’re both in a spiral-to-the-bottom on wages and conditions and I want that to come to an end.’

Harding also denies any initiative by iatse to deter ‘runaway productions’ in the u.s. ‘That would be dga and sag,’ he says.

Meanwhile, iatse has set up a new membership office, through which it has managed to contact all nabet members, and even some of their relatives, through a mail-out campaign. Along with multiple Publisher’s Clearing House-type brochures featuring an ‘opportunity guarantee,’ which promises automatic membership to all nabet members, a 10-minute video has been sent out, accusing nabet of undercutting general wages and upholding the virtue of having one voice represent all Toronto film technicians.

The insider, who is working closely with the trusteeship, claims that nabet membership has not dropped off as a result of either the iatse initiative or the trusteeship, but that ‘there’s always some movement going back and forth between the two unions.’

However, Harding, who would not disclose numbers due to confidentiality issues, says nabet member-migration has been ‘significant.’

Currently, iatse represents 1,200 members (no permittees or part-timers).

As a response to both the trusteeship and the iatse initiatives, nabet has been calling regular information meetings to keep members abreast of the most current situations and to address their questions and concerns.

Despite the recent disarray, the local will have done 90 shows by the end of the year, including Nikita, Traders and Sci Fi. On the day it went into trusteeship, there were 22 shows filming and altogether 34 in some stage of production, confirms the insider. ‘It’s not like they are just going to fall apart and go away.’