Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1531371
CAT Wranglers CAT Wranglers The MPC 705 Contract Action Team "I'm always negotiation-minded. Everything's a negotiation. From rates and budget to department staffing and vendor relations. Every single thing we do is a negotiation." Lisa Gardner, a Local 705 Finished Costumer, is the founder and Co- chair of the MPC 705 Contract Action Team (CAT), which burst onto the scene for the 2024 Basic Agreement negotiations, along with similar teams at other IATSE Hollywood Locals. To say that the membership of Local 705 was unhappy with the 2021 Basic Agreement contract would be an understatement. The negotiations that summer dragged on. The IATSE had called for a strike authorization (which was approved with overwhelming support), and members were gearing up to walk off the job: getting picket signs A C T I V I S M By Wendy Gough Soroka PHOTO: ALICE PICO dropped out. "I was on the [WGA and SAG-AFTRA] picket line, making a lot of interunion connections with our WGA friends, our SAG-AFTRA friends, and interlocal IATSE members. I learned a lot that I didn't expect, a strategy that surprised me." As the WGA strike concluded, she read writer David Slack's open letter crediting the WGA's success to their strike captains, but more than that, to the system of communication put in place even before their negotiations began, a way to organize communication about the negotiations throughout their membership. Gardner says, "I give a lot of credit to my friend Nora Meek at 839 [The Animation Guild] for wrangling me into this group of like- minded interlocal individuals that were really concerned with organizing rank- and-file members. The conversation about the Contract Actions Teams started coming up. The strikes afforded us the time to do this organizing work that collectively, we would not ready and preparing to shut down the industry. In the eleventh hour, however, a deal was struck, and the strike was averted. Leadership believed they had achieved terms that members said they wanted. Conventional wisdom would describe reaching this deal as a good outcome, but these were not conventional times. "I was ready to strike that first day. I had my picket sign ready. I was ready, I was fired up … and then it didn't happen. A lot of us felt the same way, had this built-up angst that just never had an outlet." Rather than disengage and stew in her anger, Gardner decided to lean in. "I want to be involved in negotiations. I was so mad about what happened. I said, 'I want my eyes on this process.'" She became involved as an alternate with the 705 Contract Negotiations Committee (CNC), eventually securing a seat when another committee member Members of the CAT at the IATSE 2024 Negotiations Kickoff Rally. 8 SPRING 2025