IATSE Just Voted 98.7% to Strike. In 2021 They Voted 98.6% and Got a Concession Instead.

On October 5, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees announced that members across 36 locals voted 98.7 percent in favor of authorizing a strike, with 90 percent turnout — 52,706 yes votes out of 53,411 cast, against an eligible membership of 59,478. Every single local voted yes, the lowest margin among them still 96 percent. President Matthew Loeb now holds the authority to send 60,000 below-the-line film and TV workers — grips, camera operators, makeup artists, script coordinators — onto picket lines for the first time in the union's 128-year history, should he choose to use it.

Here is the part the press releases won't say: these are almost exactly the same numbers IATSE posted in September 2021. That vote also hit roughly 90 percent turnout, with 98.6 percent in favor. It was historic then too. And what followed wasn't a strike — it was a tentative agreement reached two weeks before the strike date, one that gave workers a 10-hour turnaround instead of the 12-hour shift cap they'd actually organized around, and that ratified so narrowly the Basic Agreement itself was voted down by the membership and only passed through IATSE's delegate system, which lets the 36 locals' leadership override a popular 'no.' A mandate built on near-unanimous rank-and-file anger got converted, at the bargaining table, into exactly the kind of modest concession a union leadership can point to as a win without disrupting a single shooting schedule.

The conditions that generated both votes haven't moved. Below-the-line crew are still working 12-to-16-hour days with meal breaks skipped and penalty pay substituted for actual rest, because producers have done the math and found it's cheaper to pay the fine than staff the job properly. A worker's death on set was part of what drove the 2021 fight, and it still took a second unanimous strike vote five years later to get here. That isn't a sign of a healthy process being repeated — it's a sign that the first mandate was never actually spent.

This is the structural trap every union facing a concentrated employer bloc like the AMPTP runs into: the strike vote is the leverage, but the leadership deciding whether and how to cash it in answers to different pressures than the workers who voted. A delegate system that can ratify a contract the membership voted down in the popular count isn't a technicality, it's a release valve built to prevent exactly the kind of disruption a 98.7 percent mandate is supposed to deliver. Workers in 36 locals just told Loeb, again, that they're ready to shut down the industry. Whether that happens or gets quietly managed into another incremental turnaround-time tweak is now entirely a leadership call, not a membership one.

None of this means the vote was pointless — it is still real leverage, and real leverage used badly is better than none. But solidarity work here means watching what happens to this mandate as closely as we watched it get won, and naming it clearly if 2026 turns into 2021's rerun: a historic vote quietly absorbed into a few hours of turnaround time while the 16-hour days and the Fraturdays keep running.

Sources

IATSE members vote to authorise nationwide strike (BigNewsNetwork, Oct 2026)

IATSE movie and television workers vote overwhelmingly to strike (WSWS, Oct 2021)

IATSE leadership prepares betrayal of entertainment industry workers (WSWS, Oct 2021)

IATSE film & TV workers narrowly ratify contract with producers (Hey SoCal)

Shocking Death on Set Shows What's at Stake in IATSE Contract Fight