Negotiations will continue next week regarding modifications to Hollywood’s COVID-19 Safety Agreement, which expires this weekend (April 30). The protocols in the current agreement between the industry’s major guilds and studios will remain in place until a new agreement is reached.
But even without an announcement, insiders don’t expect drastic changes to the latest version of the nearly two-year-old health and safety agreement as COVID spread remains in flux and local production continues to surge.
This round of discussions is unlikely to yield significant updates to the deal, say two union sources. “It’s just going to continue; they’ll just extend the end date of the agreement,” says one union insider, who preferred to remain unnamed. IATSE Local 871 business representative Patric Abaravich, who is not one of the agreement’s labor-side negotiators but has been kept in the loop on conversations, also says he’s heard the talks have been heading in the direction of maintaining the current status quo. “We’re trying to keep those protocols as high as possible for our members because we work in an environment where transmission can run rampant,” Abaravich says. He says the general attitude is, “When in doubt, extend it” to “keep the job site and work sites the safest possible.”
While most measures are expected to stay in place, a third person familiar with negotiations expects testing requirements to become more lenient, both in terms of frequency and the type of testing. The person says there’s been a push to accept cheaper and faster antigen testing “across the board.”
“As we’re coming out of pandemic as [Chief Medical Advisor Anthony] Fauci has said, productions still want to ensure that people are safe and they don’t want productions to shut down because that’s very bad for everyone, but at the same time, they’d like to now start getting costs down providing for all of these Covid protocols,” the person added.
Changes in February to the return-to-work agreement okayed the use of additional antigen tests to supplement those that were previously authorized.
The latest changes to the agreement were announced in February when the deal’s definition of what it means to be “fully vaccinated” or “up to date” on vaccines was modified to include booster shots. The modifications also incorporated greater use of antigen tests and replenished workers’ paid COVID-19 sick leave, giving them 10 days if they had already taken days on an ongoing production. Masking guidance was also changed to require employers to provide KN95, KF94 or N95 masks.
The joint management-labor deal has been extended several times since it was first struck in Sept. 2020. In July of 2021, both sides incorporated vaccines into the agreement for the first time, allowing producers to mandate vaccines in “Zone A,” which includes on-camera performers and those who work most closely with them.
Ivy Kagan Bierman, chair of Loeb & Loeb’s entertainment practice, says that any easing of protocols may boost on-set morale, which has suffered due to resistance against what some consider overly stringent requirements.
“What I have seen in working with all kinds of productions during COVID is that there is not only an increased cost to all of these protocols, there’s also increased levels of anxiety and, in some cases, even disruptions as individuals are pushing back on productions that, either for philosophical reasons or political reasons, oppose some of the protocols,” Kagan Bierman says.
Over the past week, Los Angeles County has averaged 1,669 new cases per day. The figure has been trending up in April because of the spring break holiday season and proliferation of Omicron subvariant BA.2, though it’s a far cry from infection rates in January when there were 42,000 new cases daily. There were 2,335 new cases and eight deaths reported on Thursday, according to the county department of public health.
Mitigating transmission rates, 79 percent of county residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine. 73 percent are fully vaccinated.
On April 21, Los Angeles Public Health director Barbara Ferrer announced that L.A. County public transit systems will again require users to wear masks after a Florida judge struck down the federal mask mandate for public transportation (the Department of Justice is appealing the ruling). Local authorities have said that the infectious BA.2 subvariant is currently driving transmission in the area.
As of April 29, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health registered outbreaks of three or more COVID cases at DreamWorks Animation in Glendale, Fox Sports in Century City and a Sony Pictures Studios building in Culver City.
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April 30, 2022 at 11:01PM
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Hollywood’s COVID-19 Set Protocols Stay In Effect As Talks Keep Up Over New Agreement - Hollywood Reporter
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