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EXCLUSIVE: I’m hearing that longtime IATSE president Tom Short may be leaving his position with an announcement coming as soon as this week. The union won’t confirm or deny, but below-the-liners are telling me they got word from their Union BAs starting last Friday that this was happening. Short is right now in San Diego at the Midsummer General Executive Board meeting which began yesterday and continues through Friday. In an unusual move, he began preliminary talks with Big Media’s negotiating clique AMPTP this summer, more than a year before the contract expired on July 31st, 2009. But I’m told those talks are now “suspended until further notice” when they didn’t reach a resolution. The IATSE is the labor union representing technicians, artisans and craftspersons in the entertainment industry, including live theatre, motion picture and television production, and trade shows.
Short has been alternately praised and criticized for his relationships with Hollywood CEOs. Either he’s lambasted for being too in their pocket, or he’s lauded for being able to successfully work with them. Before, during and after the writers strike, Short took up the AMPTP’s cause and blamed the WGA for the repeated breakdown in contract talks even though the moguls reps walked away from the negotiations. (For background on the terrible relations between the WGA and IATSE, see my previous, Bitchslapping Between IATSE & WGA.) Certainly, Short’s membership is hurting from the current stalement in negotiations between SAG and the AMPTP. Yet he’s remained quiet.
Short has been a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, its Territories, and Canada, AFL-CIO, CLC since January 9, 1968 when he was initiated into Stagehands Local No. 27, Cleveland, Ohio. In August 1988, Short was elected to the position of Eleventh International Vice President, moved up in 1993 to General Secretary-Treasurer, and in 1994 to International President when the late President Alfred W. Di Tolla resigned. Short was re-elected, unopposed, to his fourth term in July 2005.
Under Short’s administration, the union has been restructured to include five divisions – Stage Craft, Motion Picture and Television Production, Organizing, Trade Show & Display Work, and Canadian Affairs – and increased membership from 65,000 to nearly 110,000, with over 1500 national term agreements with industry employers. He was recently elected to serve as a VP on the Executive Council of the AFL- CIO – the first time in 31 years that the IATSE has held a seat on the panel.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Oh, no! If IATSE goes out and gets a real labor leader, the writers will only have the DGA to fuck them over in the next contract cycle.
I am truly disappointed that Writer Bob could not come up with something a little more imaginative for his usual flailing swipe at the DGA. As a writer by trade, one would think he had more in his arsenal than constant repetition and crude profanity.
In big media’s pocket doesn’t even begin to describe it. Tom and his cronies have made IATSE completely ineffective. GOOD RIDDANCE!
Nikki, I can’t wait until you post whatever gravy-train-multi-million dollar-per-year-job Short gets with big media after being their lackey for so many years.
the writers have nobody but themselves to blame for the crappy deals they get. maybe if they could learn to write……
Hmmm.
Secretary of Labor Wannabee?
I’m an IATSE member and am totally frustrated at the almost complete lack of correspondence from our leaders to the members on our current unemployment situation. Most of us on the film production side are now going on two months without work, and it doesn’t sound like anything will be resolved by SAG/AMPTP within the next two months. IATSE is NOT doing their part in putting on the pressure to get this fixed. We’re all suffering and the local economy will suffer even more.
TSK sums it up the best!
GOOD BYE, GOOD RIDDANCE!
Sorry, Kevin, but I’m with “Writer Bob” if his position is that the WGA’s negotiating efforts were in no way aided by Tom Short’s blatant antagonism, nor its prospects for a decent contract improved by the DGA’s line-jumping.
Oh, and let’s not fear words too much, shall we? Sometimes it is exactly what you term “crude profanity” that best expresses an author’s meaning.
Why was Tom beginning negotiations so early? And at such a time?Possibly to get IATSE a truly crappy deal while we’re all distracted by a possible SAG strike and trying to keep body & soul together. We artisans, technicians and craftspeople aren’t as cool as actors and writers, but we are the ones that get there work to the screen and with little credit or respect.
Now actors, who are made-up, costumed, properly lit and edited to look as good as they do, have yet to make a deal and end this de facto strike. Thus they keep us out of work and force several closer to the brink of financial collapse.
Short knows this and does nothing. He knows also that a united IATSE could be the most powerful force in the film industry. But instead of being a bulldog, he’s a lapdog and we are the losers.
Tom Short abandoned IATSE and it’s members years ago. Let us pray that we get a president with the balls to represent the members. Hilary? You tired of the Senate yet?
Good riddance. Don’t let the door kick ya. That guy was the worst and a shill for the studios. The only thing sad about this news is that he wasn’t thrown out on his ass in an election.
Mr. Short isn’t just stepping down, he’s dying. It’s typical of the IA that no announcment has been made, but anyone who takes one look at him needs no announcement. He hasn’t just lost a serious amount of weight, he’s wasting away — a process that once underway is irreversible. His anger and rage however are still intact and no doubt he will carry them to his grave. He will leave behind many enemies and many who fear him, but few if any genuine friends. By any yardstick of leadership he has failed miserably. Every single Basic Agreement he negotiated was worse than the last. His habit of belittling, threatening, and publicly humiliating his own membership is unpardonable and unforgivable. His attacks on our sister unions demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of labor solidarity. What goes around comes around. He will not be missed by the rank and file.
At our union’s June board meeting, our president and BA told us that Short would be out very soon (even though he said he would not retire before the next contract negotiation). He will appoint a successor, no doubt someone who will continue the pathetic status quo of the current regime. We were also told that because of the WGA strike and the SAG negotiations, the IATSE would not be looking to improve the contract. They would just be trying to preserve what already exists. DP’s will be able to operate even more than they did before, there will be no rates for production coordinators, don’t go lookign for any cost of living allowances…Say goodbye to your fabulous healthcare – hello co-pays @ the motion picture clinic.
The problem with the International is that it thinks its just about labor while in individual locals think that its just about craft.
I for one will not miss President Short.
Other than the Teamsters, the IATSE is the only union that has any real power in the film and TV industry — and, unless I’m mistaken, they’ve never gone out on strike, even though they could win any concession if they even threatened one. Given the way they have conceded jurisdiction of projection booths to theatre managers (and sometimes even ushers), however, it’s an open question whether they have any influence any more. But what’s the alternative, Roy Brewer?
Yes, he does seem to be wasting away. But maybe he’s just evolving and will soon shed his human form to become the pure energy ball of hate he was always meant to be.
So glad to hear that our “esteemed” IATSE Prez, Tom Short, will soon be “retiring.” (I only hope that this actually turns out to be true…) As was mentioned in an earlier comment, because of his personal “bargaining” with the AMPTP, we’ve GIVEN UP many, hard fought for benefits in every contract cycle for YEARS!! What’s the point of having a union with over a 100,000 members if you don’t represent THEIR best interests?!?!?
Wonder of wonders-Tom Short, (just one in a long, long list of “thugs” who have eroded our family’s union benefits) is finally leaving (with a nice FAT union pension no doubt!)
As the wife of an IATSE member for the past 26 years, I have watched the IA dwindle in its stature, paid dues through the nose only to support the likes of these slimy, mafioso types. We are people with families, not statistical data. We are not “represented”, we are sheep who have bled on the bargaining alter. I say good riddance Mr. Short.
Why can’t IATSE members choose a decent president, one who represents their needs? As an outsider reading these posts, I have to wonder — wasn’t he voted in? Has no one better run against him? It sounds as if the union has a chance to find a better leader soon. Can they? Will they? I hope so.
What everyone fails to recognize or mention is the herded sheep quality of the IATSE membership. It is we who have rubber stamped all of Tom Shorts give-away contracts with a favorable vote. Maybe if we quit blaming someone for short-sheeting us and spread the word among the rank and file we could finally send one of these contracts back where it came from.
As an animation writer, I ask Short’s successor the same thing Moses asked of Pharaoh: Let my people go. Please work with the Writers Guild to find some way to transfer jurisdiction over writers on your animated series to the WGA.
To those of you who wonder why this is so important to us, it’s not a “turf” thing, we simply want to be able to have our animation earnings count towards our WGA pensions.
You WGA and SAG pussies have no idea what a real union is. Your so-called strikes are nothing more than circular firing squads. Like it or not, the IA has more than doubled it membership in the motion picture area and its benefit funds have grown geometrically. When SAG shits itself and calls a strike, all it will accomplish is hastening the migration from film to HD which is AFTRA’s jurisdiction. And SAG will pull the trigger. When you have 90% of the membership who wait tables and tend bar for their primary living, why would they care about the health of the industry.
If someone could only organize all the waiters in L.A. Oh yea, you did.