IATSE Is Already Living in Labor’s Future

The problem is that labor still does not know what to do with that fact.

Part 1

The future of labor is already here. The problem is that most of organized labor still does not know how to recognize it.

Part One

This article argues that labor’s future is not some abstract theory waiting to be discovered, but something already being lived in real time inside IATSE. It opens by confronting the slow, bureaucratic habits of the modern labor movement and the outdated legal architecture that helped build them, then shifts into a larger point: workers still want collective power, but most unions are still structured for a world that no longer exists. From there, the piece uses IATSE as a living example of what a more adaptive, modern union can look like, showing how its breadth, complexity, and bargaining realities reflect the conditions more and more workers now face across the economy. The article makes clear that this is not just a story about one union or one industry. It is a warning, a blueprint, and a challenge to the rest of organized labor to recognize that the future it keeps talking about has already arrived.

Beyond The Workforce

Issue 25

By David Thomas Graves

The problem is that labor still does not know what to do with that fact

I have spent most of my adult life in the labor movement in one capacity or another.

Long enough to know the script. If you are young, angry, and asking why the machine is so slow, why the institutions are so bloated, why every attempt to move gets treated like an act of disrespect, you get the same lecture every time. You are impatient. You are green. You do not understand how the system works. You are not ready for the big time.

That line gets old.

I am 39 years old. I have been doing this for a long time. I have sat on an executive board. I have served as a delegate. I spent the last two years on the board of my local in Los Angeles trying to move people who were not stupid, not malicious, and not anti-worker, but still fundamentally attached to a labor model that no longer matches the world workers actually live in. That is the problem. Not a lack of caring. A lack of adaptation.

The labor movement is old. Slow. Overbuilt. Bureaucratic.

That did not happen by accident. In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act, creating a federal framework for private-sector organizing and bargaining. That law protected workers’ right to organize. It also moved labor into a formal federal structure built around elections, bargaining units, procedure, and administrative control. Then the Taft-Hartley amendments of 1947 narrowed the tactical field further by restricting secondary pressure and adding new controls on union conduct. Labor got federal protection. It also got a cage. The arrangement helped labor flourish in a slower industrial economy. It fits a lot worse in the economy workers have now.

That is the point too many labor institutions still refuse to face.

Workers did not become less necessary. Unions did not become less necessary. The economy just started moving faster than the labor model most unions are still using. The National Labor Relations Board received 3,286 union-election petitions in fiscal year 2024, more than double the number filed in fiscal year 2021. Workers are still reaching for collective power. At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the private-sector union membership rate in 2025 was just 5.9 percent. That points to the gap between worker demand and labor’s current institutional reach.

That is why this series is not really about nostalgia. It is about architecture.

Because one of the clearest live models for what labor has to become is already sitting in plain sight.

That model is the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees says it represents more than 170,000 entertainment workers across the United States and Canada. Its public directory lists 326 United States locals and 40 Canadian locals. Its own public description of the membership includes stagehands, front-of-house workers, wardrobe attendants, hair and makeup artists, motion picture and television production technicians, broadcast technicians, scenic artists, designers, animators, and audiovisual technicians.

Even that list is too neat for what the union actually is.

Because when you are inside it, you see the real spread. You see the people cleaning floors, hauling cases, moving wardrobe, running props, supporting camera and broadcast, maintaining network infrastructure, keeping communications stable, managing playback, and doing the invisible technical work that keeps productions and venues from falling apart. This is not one narrow craft silo. It is one of the most operationally varied labor environments in organized labor.

Here is the part the rest of labor keeps missing: the employer logic inside entertainment is not exotic.

A studio, a construction contractor, a hotel operator, a retailer, and a warehouse company are not the same business. Nobody serious says they are. But they live inside the same broad American rulebook. Employers still deal with payroll withholding and employment-tax responsibilities. They still deal with federal wage-and-hour law. They still deal with workplace-safety obligations. Different outfit. Same gravity. Different branding. Same pressure of labor cost, scheduling, liability, classification, and operational risk.

That is why the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees is not a niche case. It is a prototype.

Its 2024 bargaining record shows exactly why. The Basic Agreement and the Area Standards Agreement had to deal with streaming categories, advertising-supported and free ad-supported programs, local and nearby hires, prep time, production-center rules, benefit contributions, and artificial-intelligence language. The Area Standards Agreement memorandum says employee consent to scanning cannot be made a condition of employment, that the consent itself must clearly say that, and that employers must bargain over the impact of artificial-intelligence systems on employees. The union’s 2025 federal issue agenda pushes the same direction, calling for safeguards around consent, compensation, credit, and training-data transparency in artificial intelligence. This is not factory-era bargaining. It is fast-cycle bargaining inside a fractured labor market where the work moves, the employer shape changes, and implementation is part of the fight.

Those are exactly the kinds of bargaining conditions more unions are walking into now: unstable worksites, shifting employer forms, technology disruption, and fights over implementation rather than just contract text. The rest of labor keeps talking about project work, rotating employers, mobile job sites, and unstable bargaining environments like these are some problem on the horizon.

They are not on the horizon.

They are here.

The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has already been living there.

That should make it one of the most studied unions in the country.

Instead, labor mostly treats all that experience like office clutter.

That is the first failure.