With huge amounts of money going north to Canada in recent years, Hollywood north of the border is starting to falter by the fighting between two unions over who is going to represent the technicians. This has kept numerous major productions from going to Montreal.
The fight is between Quebec film technicians' union and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees where negotiations have broken down between the two.
Brendan Kelly, from The Montreal Gazette writes:
"Celine Daignault, interim president of the Alliance quebecoise des techniciens de l'image et du son, said the Quebec union's board of directors decided this week to suspend negotiations with the International Alliance. The Alliance quebecoise's board has called a special meeting of its members Thursday to vote on what to do. Daignault said she felt the two sides were too far apart to continue talks.
"Until now, the International Alliance, one of the leading North American film technician unions, has not represented technicians working on Quebec film shoots. But in the last year, it has signed up about 800 technicians, most of whom are also members of the Quebec union.
"Daignault has previously said it is illegal for the International Alliance to come onto the Quebec film scene. But the Quebec union leadership has had to soften its hardline stance under pressure from its members, who are losing income as a result of the lack of shoots."
On Friday the Quebec union contacted mediator Francis Fox that it had suspended negotiations. A spokesperson for the International Alliance would not comment on the negotiations.
This is strange to me. Here you have members of a union signing up with another union while remaining in the old one. Why? The only ones seeming to win in this is the unions who get dues from the members. The technicians should drop both unions and get to work.
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