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A video starring the actor and “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” singer faced a picket line on Friday after crew members attempting to unionize were fired.
By Katie Kilkenny
Labor & Media Reporter
Producers of a Will Smith music video have reached a deal with IATSE over a union contract after facing a picket line from dismissed workers.
The shoot, which was taking place at Quixote’s West Hollywood studios, fired workers on Thursday night after they attempted to unionize the project, sources told The Hollywood Reporter. The workers responded by picketing the Breathe Entertainment production on Friday morning. Non-union crew members that had been brought in to replace the dismissed workers also joined the picket line.
As of Friday afternoon, at least some members of the original crew had been allowed to return back to work on the shoot in a sign that the union and the production were collaborating. A few hours later, the union and the producers reached a deal allowing the 35-member crew to continue work under a contract that allowed for health and pension benefits.
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THR has reached out to Breathe Entertainment for comment.
With their unionization push, crew members were focused on gaining union pension and health benefits. When a show “flips,” or turns from a non-union to a union project, workers can apply their hours worked on the project toward the threshold that is required to have access to the union’s health plan and the production helps support the unions benefits plans.
At a moment when production work is down in Los Angeles, with one IATSE union leader recently saying that some Locals are at nearly 50 percent unemployment, even short shoots can make the difference for crew members seeking to stay on their unions’ health plans.
IATSE went public with the strike on Friday morning, posting on the social-media platform X that the crew would be picketing at Quixote Studios “unless a fair contract is offered to the crew.” The union also informed members not to accept work on the shoot, as it became a struck production.
Smith, whose film and television career is still recovering from the 2022 Academy Awards, where he slapped presenter Chris Rock following a joke about wife Jada Pinkett Smith, released his first album in two decades in March. Titled Based on a True Story, the album addresses the controversy several times in songs like “Int. Barbershop” and “You Lookin’ for Me.”
May 23, 2:28 p.m. Updated with news that a deal had been reached.
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