Nonfiction leisure employees who’re members of the Writers Guild of America East have ratified a primary union settlement with status documentary firm Story Syndicate.
Story Syndicate workers who belong to the WGA East, roughly 30 in whole, lots of them producers, unanimously voted to greenlight the deal after it was reached on June 6.
Based in 2019 by husband-and-wife inventive duo Liz Garbus and Dan Cogan, Story Syndicate has turn out to be a go-to producer of shiny streaming documentaries in recent times, from Netflix’s Icarus and Britney vs Spears to Hulu’s Stolen Youth: Contained in the Cult at Sarah Lawrence. The corporate’s newest is Titan: The Oceangate Scandal, which premiered on Netflix on June 11.
In an announcement, Garbus and Cogan known as the corporate’s first WGA contract a “win-win.” The deal, they stated, “opens up entry to transportable healthcare for our freelancers, in addition to many different provisions that help our employees’ well-being” whereas on the identical time becoming “inside the constraints of present market realities, enabling us to stay extremely aggressive within the budgeting of our productions.”
Past providing staffers entry to the leisure trade’s so-called “Flex Plan,” which freelancers can take with them from job to job, the contract establishes minimal wage charges and supplies for annual pay will increase. The deal enshrines relaxation durations of 9 for exempt workers or 10 hours for non-exempt staffers, in addition to extra time pay for working a seventh day in per week and partial pay if an worker is knowledgeable of a “darkish day” — or a day when a manufacturing is on hiatus — inside lower than per week.
The deal additional gives paid trip, bereavement and sick days, paid holidays and two weeks’ paid paternal depart, amongst different language.
Story Syndicate voluntarily acknowledged, or agreed to work with the union with out each events collaborating in a proper Nationwide Labor Relations Board election, in August 2023. On the identical time, the corporate acknowledged a union of postproduction employees that sought to hitch the Movement Image Editors Guild, an IATSE Native.
Whereas negotiations with the WGA East produced an settlement inside the two years since, the Editors Guild remains to be at odds with Story Syndicate over its talks. In early June, postproduction employees protested the premiere of the Titan documentary, decrying alleged delays and retractions in negotiations. The Editors Guild at the moment has an unfair labor apply cost pending in opposition to the corporate on the Nationwide Labor Relations Board.
In an announcement about their deal, the Story Syndicate bargaining committee stated that they hope it can “assist set precedents all through the nonfiction TV/movie trade.” The group added, “We stand in solidarity with our colleagues at Movement Image Editors Guild IATSE Native 700 (MPEG)’s ongoing contract negotiations with Story Syndicate.”