A group of production accountants employed by Netflix in New York and New Jersey has unionized with IATSE.
A third party certified that a majority of the group of key accountants, assistant production accountants, payroll accountants and clerks supported joining IATSE Local 161 in a card count on Wednesday. The move came after the group initially approached the streamer with a request for voluntary recognition on Monday, Nov. 13, and the streamer agreed to voluntarily recognize the group if a majority voted to join the union. IATSE Local 161 represents script and continuity supervisors, production coordinators and production accountants across 23 states and the District of Columbia. Prior to the Netflix unionization, clerks had never before been members of Local 161.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Netflix for comment.
Production accountants, whose department is broadly responsible for recording all financial transactions on a project, managing compliance and paying third parties, cast and crew on TV shows and films, exist in a strange in-between space in Hollywood labor. On the East Coast, employers are able to voluntarily sign on to a sideletter to IATSE’s Majors agreement to provide union coverage to production accountants on a project-by-project basis, but are by no means required to do so. (In other regions, production accountants also are not recognized by major IATSE-employer agreements and can only get union coverage via sideletters.)
Netflix, historically, had signed onto these sideletters with Local 161 for production accountants on its projects, but that practice changed after it joined the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers in 2021, according to the union. The union says that once Netflix joined the employers’ bargaining group and gained access to a “non-affiliate” program that provides non-union employees with health and pension benefits, it stopped negotiating sideletters in New York and New Jersey with the union, which became a catalyst for the union drive. Says Local 161 vice president and payroll accountant April Tafoya (Killers of the Flower Moon), interest in unionization “was already bubbling — that just added to the momentum that was already there.” (THR has reached out to the AMPTP for comment.)
Local 161 has attempted for two decades to have accountants included under the Majors contract as covered workers, not just in a sideletter that provides the option. Prior to the latest Majors negotiations in 2022, production accountants undertook a card-signing campaign to demonstrate their support for the union, which saw hundreds of cards signed, a gesture that did not end up having an impact on those contract talks. From that moment, says Local 161 staff organizer Dustin Belsha, “People realized if they wanted to have a contract, they would have to go through a more forceful route,” like organizing.
With their unionization at Netflix, accountants are seeking to collectively bargain for rates and annual wage increases and to “have a voice at the table” with the protection of a permanent union contract, according to Tafoya. Eventually, the group wants to push for all production accountants, across the country, to have a union contract. “We are one of the only crafts, if not the only craft, that is forced to work non-union except for sometimes,” says Tafoya.
Adds second assistant production accountant Ignacio Brea (A Murder at the End of the World), “I don’t think it gets mentioned enough within our industry the importance that the accounting department plays within a production. The goal for all of us involved in this campaign is really to empower accountants across the board to just take ourselves more seriously as well. Because accounting is an integral part of productions.”
Netflix and the group of production accountants will now work toward bargaining a fair contract.