Did you know - contracting deadlines

As of the recently renewed CTA and ITA agreements, new provisions have been added to ensure contracts go out to the artists in a timely manner. These join a number of existing rules for executing and signing contracts. Here are the terms currently in effect:

8. 35:08  Execution of Engagement Contracts
   
   1. (A)  Issuing Of
      When the Theatre confirms to the Artist that agreement has been reached on the negotiated terms for an upcoming engagement, the Theatre shall issue a CTA Engagement Contract to the Artist within ten (10) business days. In any event an Artist must receive his/her CTA Engagement Contract no later than twenty (20) business days prior to the start date of his/her engagement.
      This provision does not apply to activities contracted under Article 56:00 or
      Article 57:00 in which the contracted engagement period is less than two weeks.
      
   2. (B)  Signing Of
      Unless contracts are signed concurrently, they must be signed first by the Theatre. If the contract is not signed concurrently the Theatre may in writing at the time of sending the contract to the Artist notify the Artist that unless the contract is signed and returned or postmarked, by the Artist to the Theatre within ten (10) business days (Saturday, Sunday and holidays excluded) after receipt thereof by the Artist, the offer of engagement is withdrawn and the contract shall be null and void. 

So, the long and the short of the recent changes is that CTA and ITA engagers now have a new obligation to issue contracts promptly following agreement upon terms, and contracts must reach the artist 20 days before the engagement begins. Except for certain small-scale projects, that means no more signing contracts on the first day.

As always, engagers are also prohibited from sending unsigned contracts to an artist for them to sign first. The engager must sign the contract before the artist, in order to confirm the terms being offered.

And, of course, artists have their obligations, too. If the contract is being sent out to you for signing, you may have only 10 days in which to do so and return it. If you don't get the contract back in time, the engager has the ability to withdraw the offer. Note, however, that the engager must specifically inform you of this time restriction; it does not apply automatically.

If you work under agreements other than the CTA and ITA, different rules may be in place. Opera and ballet agreements each have their own deadlines.

Remember, it you are working under the CTA, ITA, ballet or opera agreements and your contract is late arriving to you or your agent, please call staff for assistance. If an engager is not meeting the deadlines, staff can't address the situation unless they know about it.

Equity work patterns over time - 2015 update

Every year, staff prepares a report on work weeks from the previous year, and a condensed version appears in the EQ from time to time. There are certainly lots of numbers to sift through, but statistics are nothing without context – a comparison of those numbers over time. Are they climbing, declining, or staying steady?

In an effort to provide some of that context, I started charting the workweek numbers a few years ago, and here is what the picture looks like as of mid 2015:

Work weeks over time

Note: the reporting period changed from calendar to fiscal in 2011, and Jan-Mar 2011 is not reflected in this chart.

Over the past thirteen reporting periods, the typical year has generally hovered around and above 70,000 work weeks for our members - that's the bold red line at the top. Contracts under the CTA and ITA make up about two-thirds of that.

It's a bit hard to make out at this scale, but the cluster of lines immediately below the 10K mark are opera, dance and guest artist, all roughly at the same 6-7,000 level. Opera and guest artist have stayed pretty steady, but due in large part to the welcoming of the artists at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens into our membership, the dance number has risen over the past two years. 

Below that group, the orange line represents small scale and indie projects of all types, which have also seen a significant increase in the past several years. 

Finally, the line right at the bottom is actually two lines: amateur and other (a grab bag of miscellaneous engagements), both of which only account for a few hundred work weeks annually.

Although this year is down slightly from last year's record high, the trend is still very positive, and it will be interesting to see what next year holds in store.

Working in an Educational Setting

At its November meeting, Council concluded work on changes to how members may be contracted while working as educators at post-secondary institutions.

Equity has long excluded members working as educators from the requirement of being signed to an Equity contract, since teaching, even by an Equity member, is not within our jurisdiction. In most cases the division was quite clear. For example, a stage manager, SMing a show at a university, was quite clearly doing a job within Equity's jurisdiction, and expected to be hired under an Equity contract. The same member, however, serving as a coach to a student SM on a university show was quite clearly working in a teaching capacity, and could therefore be contracted under a suitable instructor's contract.

When the Directors, Choreographers and Fight Directors Committee brought the topic forward to Council for consideration, they pointed out that members working in those disciplines frequently had to manage both Equity and teaching responsibilities, e.g. directing a show and also doing a scene study class and grading students on their work.

In these dual-nature jobs, the contracting requirement was frequently a matter of some tension with the school. Existing unions within the educational institution, for instance, might prohibit the hiring of instructors on the contracts of another professional association. Or issues of bonding or prepayment might be administratively challenging for organisations that did not work that way for any other hires. In reviewing the matter, Council elected to open the discussion up to cover all disciplines, so that there would be consistent handling of post-secondary educational contracts for all members. 

Beginning this year, when working within the post-secondary educational sector primarily as educators, members may choose to be hired under either an Equity agreement or a teaching contract, letter of agreement or other document provided by the institution that provides at least the core workplace benefits and protections set out in our policies. We anticipate that this will relieve most of the issues. It will ensure that all members have basic workplace protections, and those members able to use Equity contracts will have access to those additional benefits as well.

Councillors and staff will be preparing an information bulletin on this later in year, but we wanted to give everyone a heads up on the change.

Preliminary results on CTA Level 1 / Level 2 review

At the Ontario RAGM on September 9, Executive Director Arden R. Ryshpan presented figures on her staff review of how the new two-level contract system is working so far.

Because the new two-level provisions in the CTA only took effect at the beginning of this calendar year, we have only six months of data to go on. Also, a good portion of recent contracts were offered under the old scheme. So, the results are preliminary, but they are positive. Staff will revise the report early in the new year, once a full 12-month cycle of contracts has concluded.

Arden has posted the results, along with an update on the two new independent theatre agreements, in her online journal.

Engagement document updates

Earlier this year, Council completed new policy on the review process for scale agreements and engagement policies. These are the core documents under which members are contracted. They take two forms:

• negotiated, where the terms and conditions of engagement are the result of mutual agreement with an engager or association of engagers; and
• promulgated, where Equity itself sets the terms, based on the negotiated terms of like-type agreements.

The new policy enforces two key requirements: members must be aware of and have the opportunity to contribute the review process for each cycle, and members must be informed of the results of that work. Policy details can be found in section EL-11 of our policy document.

Since agreements are reviewed/revised in different ways, these two requirements will necessarily have different implementation across the full range of engagement documents. In the case of the Ballet Agreement, for instance, the review cycle is quite apparent to all members engaged under that agreement. It's relatively easy to get the affected membership together in one place to discuss issues and possible changes, and to share information with them through the conclusion of negotiations and ratification

For many of the other agreements, particularly the promulgated ones, this process is much harder to replicate, since the affected membership is in constant flux and spread across the whole country.

Council's goal in establishing policy in this area was to provide a common-denominator standard to all reviews. Established processes that already exceed these expectations will continue to operate as before.

If you want to know what's coming up for review, and when, and how you can contribute, you can now find that information in one place, available to all members. Beginning with the Summer 2011 issue of EQ magazine, members will find a regularly-posted information block detailing upcoming contract reviews, a basic schedule for each, and information on how to contribute to the review or negotiation. All engagement documents are already dated to indicate the review cycle as a whole – review information will only be posted in EQ as the review dates approach.

We hope that members will make active use of this information, so that our engagement documents continue to reflect the expectations of our membership in this ever-changing business.