Thursday, August 02, 2012

"Daily Show" Does IA Contract

Comedy Central's political laugh-fest went under WGA contract some time ago. Now, it seems, the rest of the staff is union:

IATSE technical employees of “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart have unanimously ratified their first collective bargaining agreement.

The contract is the culmination of negotiations between IATSE and the producers of the hit made-for-basic-cable series following voluntary recognition of the union by the employer.

The bargaining unit consists of camera operators, video technicians, audio technicians, graphic/chyron (character generator) operators, technical directors, audio assistants, video assistants, videotape/EVS operators, utility technicians, teleprompter operators, costume designers/stylists, and makeup/hair stylists. ...

The way these things usually go is: unions and guilds do campaign, collect cards, have an NLRB vote. And then, if they win, they sit down with the company and do an arm-wrestling match over a contract.

Good to see that it was (apparently) less stressful and confrontational than usual.

3 comments:

A. said...

Stewart seemed highly conscious of his staff's needs during the writer's strike in 2008... I'm sure this particular agreement sits under that umbrella as well.

David said...

Well, hey 'The Daily Show' has only been on the air since 1996 (with Jon Stewart since 1999) . Nice to see they finally got around to union benefits for their crew in 2012.

Of course, as Steve points out the show's producers didn't do it out of the goodness of their heart and if the employees had not taken action to fill out their cards it never would have happened.

But Stewart seems like a pretty genuine guy and I'm sure he doesn't begrudge his crew the union benefits (unlike the major hypocrites on the left like Nancy Pelosi who talks big in her public life about being a supporter of unions and "the little guy" , but in her private life is a 1-percenter millionaire owner of or major investor in various vineyards, restaurants, hotels, golf courses, that are all hostile to unions. )

Steve Hulett said...

Sometimes you have to put up with hypocritical politicains. Since most of them ARE hypocrites, to one degree or another.

Including: Politicians who thump their bibles on Sunday and their mistresses on Tuesday; politicians who rail against socialism and then bail out big banks; politicians who love war but avoided serving in the military, etc.

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