The Labour Politics of Factual TV
AN HISTORIC MOMENT has been reached in labour relations this fall in Canada’s factual TV industry, precisely at the moment when the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts (IATSE), the union behind entertainment production, succeeded in forcing a game-changing set of concessions in Hollywood. The class-action suit launched in October 2018 against Cineflix Productions by the lead litigant, screenwriter Anna Bourque, has been settled successfully and is bound for court approval in December 2021. This sorry tale (with, hopefully, a happy ending) shows us how gross disparities came to fester for over 20 years between scripted and factual content-making conditions.
In 1991 a mere handful of Canadian independent producers were creating drama and comedy series and the occasional feature film, often—though not always—under union contracts. The Directors Guild
