Vice Media Staff Seal New IATSE Pact

EXCLUSIVE: Dozens of Vice post-production staff and employees are about to receive a wage increase and a more stable work week.

By an overwhelming 97% margin, editors and other members of the Brooklyn-based unconventional outfit voted via videoconference yesterday for a new three-year agreement with the Hollywood union and the Editors Guild, Local 700.

“I believe I speak for all of us when I say we’re incredibly pleased with the achievements we made with this contract, in particular the implementation of a 40-hour week,” said union negotiating committee member and Vice News Tonight editor Ilaria Polsonetti. “I hope what we accomplished here can be a stepping stone towards reclaiming the healthier work-life balance that is so badly needed in our industry,” noted Polsonetti of a decrease from a 50-hour week for the staff members to the much more conventional 40-hour week.

Representing nearly nine-thousand members, the Editors Guild has approximately 100 staffers and free-lance post-production employees at Vice. The new agreeement between Vice and the IATSE local is a decrease in weekly hours, but no decrease in weekly pay as well as a significant structural double-digit pay increase for most employees. Additionally, staffers and employees will receive a $750 ratification bonus.

“We are pleased that, in Vice, we had a bargaining partner who recognized that time off the clock is critical to workers’ well-being,” said Cathy Repola, National Executive Director of the Editors Guild and the union’s chief negotiator in the talks. “Our first union contract at Vice just over three years ago broke new ground with unprecedented guarantees that an employer respect its employees’ gendered pronouns, and we hope this new agreement also proves precedent-setting. Other employers in our industry should aspire to offer their employees the sort of sustainable, healthy hours our members at Vice will now enjoy.”

This latest union agreement comes three months after IATSE and Hollywood producers, studios and streamers signed a mega pact that prevented a surely devastating tinsel town strike.