Julius Young — Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Vantage
Grips, makeup artists, costume designers, set decorators — flagged for removal because they haven't worked a union job since 2023. Not because they don't want to work. Because there is no work.
The Industry Experience Roster — the list of roughly 47,000 vetted freelance crew members on the West Coast that productions are contractually obligated to hire from first — is not a term that appears in coverage of the Paramount-WBD merger. It should. This week, Contract Services informed thousands of IATSE members they have been flagged for removal from the Roster because they failed to meet the eligibility threshold: one day of union work between April 1, 2023, and March 31, 2026. The three-year window encompasses the aftermath of the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, followed by a studio contraction in spending, followed by the acceleration of offshore production incentives that moved work to Canada, the UK, Eastern Europe, and Australia. The workers flagged for removal are not workers who chose not to work. They are workers who were not chosen — who watched the productions that employed them move abroad and watched the industry's employment base contract by 25 percent in three years while the boardroom conversation remained focused on mergers, streaming strategy, and the $6 billion in synergies a combined Paramount-WBD would deliver. Contract Services has offered an appeals process expected to take months. What it cannot offer is work. The Roster review is a symptom of a structural contraction that neither the review nor the appeals process is designed to address. Related: Hollywood Has Lost 25% of Its Jobs Since 2022