IATSE: “The tragic shooting of one of our members on the set of “Rust” has made the work of raising safety standards on sets even more urgent for the California IATSE Council (CIC). IATSE’s charge as a union is to make sure our members are safe so they can go home to their families at the end of the day. That was our top priority in bargaining this past year and it remains our top priority in legislation in 2022.
2 comments:
Thank GOD the rust shooting did not get swept under the rug like I thought it did. Due to the lack of large scale media attention, I was kind of worried that nothing would happen in her memory. In Rusts’s production, the lack of codified firearm safety in legislation for entertainment was so glaring it ended in a cinematographer’s death. It is so important that rules around firearms safety not only be explicit and written, but also enforced. In the Rust shooting, multiple complaints were filed around the lack of safety procedures for firearms on set, but due to a lack of written law and a lack of safety enforcement, a woman lost her life. Making the use of multiple trained armorers mandatory makes me feel much better about the use of firearms on set, not to mention the other safety precautions IATSE is advocating for. The proactive nature of this legislation is what will keep production staff much more safe in such a weird and dangerous industry.
I’m very glad to see the union leveraging its political power to ensure the safety of technicians on film sets is codified into law instead of just giving empty apologies and promises. While we don’t know exactly what happened on the set of Rust that led to the shooting, there absolutely was a gross oversight in safety protocols that needs to be remedied. I also appreciate how swiftly the legislature moved to enhance safety protocols after one single death, because policy changes usually (undeservingly) take multiple incidents and years of a pattern to be implemented. Another exciting thing about this legislation is how it implements a requirement for an on-set safety supervisor to be hired and do daily risk assessments for shoots, which I think will be critical in keeping technicians safe. We are often asked to do things that are unsafe in order to keep a production on schedule, and having a safety officer that keeps producers in check to keep us safe is greatly appreciated.
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