Freelance Casting Assistants Launch Attempt to Unionize With Teamsters

Freelance Casting Assistants Launch Attempt to Unionize With Teamsters

Freelance casting assistants are launching an attempt to unionize with the Teamsters.

Nearly 150 New York- and Los Angeles-based casting assistants are supporting the drive to unionize with Teamsters Local 399 and Teamsters Local 817, the former union announced on Thursday. The group has requested voluntary recognition from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents major Hollywood companies in collective bargaining and negotiates a casting director agreement with the Teamsters, and Netflix, which has its own casting director contract with the union. By taking this two-pronged approach, the Teamsters are seeking to represent casting assistants at most major Hollywood companies.

With this organizing drive, the Teamsters appear to be attempting to fill out the union’s representation of the casting department: Locals 399 and 817 already represent casting directors and casting associates, but non-union casting assistants also have an “integral role in production,” Local 399 stated.

“Teamsters have long represented the Casting Directors and Associate Casting Directors of Los Angeles and New York. It is reasonable and right to see the freelance Casting Assistants stand together to seek representation as well,” Teamsters Local 399 leader and Teamsters Motion Picture Division director Lindsay Dougherty said in a statement. “By unionizing, the Casting Assistants are able to work towards securing the protections, benefits and compensation they deserve for their work in the Casting department.”

The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the AMPTP and Netflix for comment.

More to come.

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