Twelve workers on several Apple Studios shows voted unanimously to join the union in a National Labor Relations Board ballot count , an NLRB spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter and IATSE confirmed.
The The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and Apple now have five business days to raise any objections before the election results are certified, but the employer is required to begin negotiating with the union.
According to IATSE, the workers are keen to address wages, working conditions and benefits issues in a first contract. “We deserve rights and representation equal to others in our industry,” VFX lead data wrangler Liam Mazarra said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. Added VFX coordinator Valerie Wicks, “Apple is a wonderful place to work, so I participated [in the union drive] partly to keep it that way… But most of all, I participated for the greater goal of unionizing all of VFX, across every studio. That’s the dream, and we are now one step closer.”
The NLRB is an independent federal agency created in 1935 and vested with the power to safeguard employees’ rights to organize, engage with one another to seek better working conditions, choose whether or not to have a collective bargaining representative negotiate on their behalf with their employer, or refrain from doing so.
The IATSE was founded in 1893 when representatives of stagehands working in eleven cities met in New York and pledged to support each others’ efforts to establish fair wages and working conditions for their members.
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