Film Guilds and Unions

Film guilds and unions engage in collective bargaining on behalf of media workers in the United States and around the world. Historically, the word “guild” was associated with craft and professional training, but in the US film industry it is often interchangeable with “union.” The exception to this rule is the Producers Guild of America (PGA), which is a professional organization that maintains professional standards and provides its members with networking opportunities. In Hollywood, unions also exist alongside craft organizations such as the American Society of Cinematographers, which help to advance the art and establish professional norms, but do not negotiate wages or provide health and retirement benefits. Some film unions (such as those in the United States, Canada, and England) are historically more well established, in contrast to nations where production is not unionized or unionization has only recently begun. Film unions and guilds in the United States, which include the Directors Guild of America (DGA), the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), SAG-AFTRA (the union that represents screen performers), and the Writers Guild of America (WGA), have been the most well-studied. Since the first Studio Basic Agreement in 1926, unions have contributed to the professional development and well-being of Hollywood workers, but they have historically been marginal institutions within cinema and media scholarship. There has been abundant writing on union activities in journalistic sources and union magazines, all of which are essential reading for scholars of film guilds and unions. Those looking for scholarship on unions and guilds will need to read across disciplines, as the work on film guilds and unions is methodologically diverse and comes from labor historians and political economists of communication, in addition to cinema and media scholars.