Lindsay Dougherty, Leader Of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399, Sees Union Becoming “More Militant”

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Lindsay Dougherty, the newly re-elected leader of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399, sees the Teamsters becoming “a more militant union,” and is already looking ahead two years to when the local’s film and TV contract will be up for renegotiation.

The current contract, which she negotiated last summer with Carol Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, expires July 31, 2024.“We have a lot of work to do in terms of organizing, which is always a priority, but also just getting ready for the next contract, which is in two years,” Dougherty said in an interview with Deadline. “We’ve restructured a lot of things in terms of business agents and trying to make certain that we’re enforcing the contracts to the best of our ability, which is always a difficult thing to do in our industry, since it’s very transient.

That’s what our focus has been, because we don’t know what is coming in two years. Obviously, we saw what happened with IATSE’s strike authorization vote last year.

So we anticipate that that’s not subsided completely.”IATSE members voted almost unanimously (98%) to authorize a strike last October, but only ratified the deal they eventually got by the slimmest of margins.“That unrest has not subsided, specifically in regard to inflation and things like that,” Dougherty said. “So I think there are some members that are looking for a lot more change than they’ve seen thus far in contract negotiations.