AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler delivered the following remarks as prepared for the IATSE 70th Quadrennial Convention:
Thank you so much Matt [Loeb] for that introduction. Thank you to this leadership team, your Secretary-Treasurer Jamie Wood, your International Vice Presidents and assembled delegates!
I'm so honored to be with you all [joking] not only because it’s the most Hawaiian shirts I’ve ever seen at a convention.
No, it’s about this union. It's about the pride in your crafts. The excellence you carry. It’s about IATSE embodying so much of who we are and where we need to go as a labor movement.
There is a lot I want to talk about when it comes to this moment; to our politics, our country, and our path forward right now.
But I want to start with that word we use a lot in the labor movement: solidarity.
Two years ago, when we went into that first Hot Strike Summer, it may have been our SAG-AFTRA and WGA families who were the first up. But I don’t need to remind anyone in this room: It was our brothers and sisters and siblings at IATSE who wore just as much of that burden every day of those strikes.
We knew there would be pain; productions shut down; all of that coming just on the heels of a pandemic that already left so many workers and families stretched thin.
And we knew: that was exactly what they’d try to use against us, isn’t it? These studio heads and executives — who make billions and billions of dollars off our hard work — would try to get us to sell each other out.
And yet every picket line I would go to, every interview I saw, it was the absolute opposite. IATSE members wouldn’t cross the picket line, and so many had to risk their own paychecks. I walked those lines alongside your members who said: ‘I’m standing with my entertainment union family.’
And I remember reading about a set decorator named Andi out of Local 44. She was teaching high schoolers to make ends meet as Hollywood slowed down. And the L.A. Times asked her about it; basically tried to get her to say our writers should cave.
And she said: ‘No. This is a fight worth fighting for. This is not just about the writers, this is about all of us.’
That’s the true meaning of solidarity.
We’ve all seen this movie before: Where the studio execs, the billionaires and the politicians try to divide us.
If they can turn us against each other, and we divide ourselves based on our job, our age, our immigration status, our identity, our religion, our orientation — they win.
They tell us that entertainment is in a desperate moment; that there’s too much upheaval and then the Paramount CEO walks away with $87 million a year in compensation, while the people who do the work fight over the scraps.
That’s how they try to play us!
I’ll tell you something, though. As much as they try to divide us, every conversation I have with workers right now across every job and background, what I hear is this: Working people could not be more united on the things that matter to us right now.
I have not met one person who says, ‘Yes, it makes sense for a CEO to make 288 times what the average working person makes, especially when half our country lives paycheck to paycheck!
I have not met one person who says, ‘Yes, let’s round up peaceful, hard-working, tax-paying immigrants who are doing critical jobs that keep our economy moving!
I have not met one person who says, ‘Yes, gut Medicaid and Social Security so that Jeff Bezos and David Zaslav, and the richest people on this planet can buy another yacht they do not need!
It doesn’t make any sense.
[Pause]
This fight that we are in — to build an entertainment industry that works for all of us — it is the exact same fight we’re seeing play out over our whole economy right now. The exact same fight our federal workers have been in for months now.
It’s about whether we’re going to reward the workers who make the magic possible.
Sinners does not make $366 million worldwide and counting, without our brothers and sisters at Local 478 down in New Orleans!
The Lion King is not selling out Broadway every night without our make up and lighting and electricians and carpenters and riggers and technicians and special effects and wardrobe and set design at Locals 1 and 645!
Entertainment does not work without IATSE, and this country does not work without working people.
[Pause]
Right now workers all over the country are waking up to that idea.
Waking up to the idea that our fight is not Republicans versus Democrats, but workers versus billionaires!
Waking up to the difference a union can make in their lives.
Unions are what unites this country right now. 70 percent of Americans approve of unions. We are more popular than ice cream! Almost 90 percent of young people under 30 approve of unions.
We are the ones who are going to chart the course for the future of this country. The Democrats aren’t going to save us, the Republicans aren’t going to do it. It’s up to us to save ourselves.
It is time to go big.
It is time to do what IATSE has led the way on and organize everywhere. We have never had this kind of opportunity with so many people looking at the kitchen-table issues that they’re dealing with and finally seeing: the union is how I build a better life.
We’re trying new ways of working together with the AFL-CIO and unions like we did in the Pacific Northwest. The President’s Organizing Initiative partnered with IATSE and several other unions, and organized 3,000 workers at T-Mobile Park and Climate Pledge Arena. Think about the power we can build when we tear down those barriers and work together.
We’re going into new spaces — the way IATSE has Off-Broadway. At places like the Atlantic Theater and Public Theater in New York where more than a hundred production workers won a life-changing union contract. At Marvel and Disney where VFX workers are now getting their fair share of the billions they help generate.
In Columbus, where sports broadcast workers at Program Productions make sure we have the best damn sports telecasts in the country, they now know the union difference. [joking] Even if it does hurt that they broadcast the Ohio State beat-down on my Oregon Ducks last year.
And when the World Cup comes here next year — when the eyes of the world are on us — we’re going to make sure they look up and down every host site and see good union jobs, from Houston to Atlanta to Vancouver!
[Pause]
When we organize and build that strength, it bolsters everything else we do for our members.
I’m talking about legislatively, leveling the playing field for motion pictures work, with a tax incentive that lets the U.S. compete globally, which I know IATSE is leading on.
I’m talking about our right to collectively bargain. Look at what has happened to federal union workers. The president of the United States eliminated their collective bargaining rights with an executive order. Think about that. With the stroke of a pen, your contract is gone. And an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us! And that means the rest of the labor movement standing up right now, in support of our brothers and sisters in the federal workforce. We’re fighting to pass the Protect America’s Workforce Act, where we have bipartisan support — so those rights are restored, because we know if we let this stand, they’ll come after all of us next.
And while we’re fighting back against the attacks on collective bargaining, we have to battle a whole new frontier ahead, the one that will define the future of our work and our movement, which is A.I. and automation.
I know a lot of people like to paint labor as “anti-tech.” “Anti-innovation.” I think everyone here knows that’s a bunch of B.S.
We are not “anti-innovation.” We are anti-greed. We are against tech billionaires and studio heads scraping the Internet, using our work, to train their models and then replace us.
And, okay, maybe some of these will prove to be good tools. But let me ask you: When is the last time that something forced on working people — without our voice, without our input — has ever been used for our gain?
Right now there is nothing standing between these Big Tech CEOs and whatever they want. They have Congress. They have the White House. They have a hell of a lot of money.
And yet if you go back to that Big Beautiful Bill, the thing they so desperately wanted, what would have been a huge overreach, was a little provision they tucked in under the radar to eliminate our states’ abilities to pass or enforce any kind of guardrails on A.I. For ten years! Imagine the gall to even try something like that.
They were sure it would pass because they have all the power, the lobbying, the influence.
But they did not get it. They did not get it because labor went to work. Because we fought like hell to mobilize, to make sure our members knew what was at stake. To make sure our elected officials knew: There would be hell to pay if they even thought about giving these people free rein over our lives and taking workers’ voices out of the game.
Does anyone know what the final vote on the Senate floor was on this AI power grab? 99-1 against! A giant middle finger to those Big Tech CEOs on behalf of working people everywhere.
And even as this president rolls out his new A.I. plan, what I’m sure will be a “big beautiful plan,” we will stand strong. On every piece of legislation, every contract. So that we can write our own futures, on our own terms.
[Pause]
There’s a great lesson in that win in the Senate. The same lesson so many of us see out there when we’re organizing, or on strike, or in our work everyday: The power of collective action and our labor movement when we stand united — as stagehands, and technicians, and artists, and craftspeople, and working people everywhere.
When we join together, when we stand together in those fights, we are so, so much more powerful than we are as individuals or even as individual unions.
This is the moment to tell our story, talk about what our movement stands for, the three things that unite us as working people.
We stand for Freedom, Fairness and Security. For all working people. #FFS.
When I say freedom I mean the freedom to organize a union and bargain collectively; to have control over our own lives. To be like our 300 brothers and sisters at Local 938, in Vancouver at WildBrain Animation who just voted overwhelmingly to ratify their first contract after six years of organizing; which gives them more sick leave, more flex days, more paid time off. Do we stand for that kind of freedom?
When I talk about fairness, I’m talking about our VFX siblings at Saturday Night Live — who have fought just to be recognized for their contributions to this storied institution — and just won their historic first contract, establishing wage scales, and good health care, and a robust grievance process. Do we believe in that kind of fairness?
And when I talk about security, I’m talking about our basic right to live and retire with dignity. Knowing those benefits we work so hard for, that we earn, going to be there when we need them. Knowing that we have our seat at the table, when it comes to these technologies that directly affect our jobs and our lives.
[Pause]
Freedom. Fairness. Security. For F’s sake: We deserve those three things, don’t we?
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of people talking about unions and about working people. Telling us what we think. Explaining how the world works when we are very very clear that it's not working. We’re going to speak for ourselves! Make sure our voices are heard loud and clear.
Every day from now until Labor Day , we are taking our message on the road — on a nationwide summer of action, with our “It’s Better in a Union” bus tour. We are going to the communities that our politicians have ignored for too long. And we’re going to hear what’s going on in people’s lives.
We’ll be on picket lines, in communities where our rural hospitals are closing, at workplaces where people are organizing, in neighborhoods where housing is too expensive for a working family to afford,
Wherever workers fight for basic rights, we will be there.
And we’re building up to a Labor Day unlike any we’ve had in the history of this movement — with an entire week of action. It’s going to be a Labor Day by workers, for workers where hundreds of thousands of people across the country will be out in the streets, sharing with their communities why It’s Better In a Union.
And I’m going to ask you to do one thing. Go to our website, look at that bus map and these Labor Day events coming up, all over this country. I guarantee you you’ll be close to one. And I damn sure hope we will see you out there! Are you all ready to build the biggest, baddest Labor Day we’ve ever seen?
[Pause]
There’s one more thing I want to ask of you all right now. The single most important thing we can do in this moment, is keep building trust and solidarity. With our members, with other workers as we organize, and with each other.
None of us is perfect, including the Federation.
But finding ways to build trust, go deep into the issues and find common ground in this moment, where everyone seems so divided, is the most impactful thing we can do together.
Let’s commit to leaving here and talking to our members about the issues. Have deep conversations and find common ground.
Let’s keep building that trust! And let’s keep growing this movement together! Thank you IA!!