How the International Documentary Association worked with unionized employees to ratify a contract in the course of a year

Public support for unions reached its highest level in the US since 1965 in 2022, and dropped four percentage points to 67% this year. Petitions for union representation rose by 53% between fiscal years 2021 and 2022, according to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), representing the highest number filed since 2016.

Still, just 10% of wage and salary workers in the US were represented by unions across the public and private sector in 2022, meaning few HR executives likely have experience working with them. Due to an overall decline in US union activity over the past four decades, “HR professionals transitioning to unionized workplaces in the US are more likely to encounter complex union-management dynamics,” according to a SHRM resource published last September.

These union-management dynamics can turn contentious, as seen in high-profile organizing efforts at major companies such as Starbucks and Amazon. In recent years, though, some companies have sought to voluntarily recognize unions, a decision that may open a path to more fruitful negotiations.

The International Documentary Association (IDA), a nonprofit with just over 20 employees that provides grants to documentary filmmakers, is one such organization. After voluntarily recognizing its workers’ union, they reached a contract deal in about a year, management and organizers told HR Brew.

Why IDA workers unionized. IDA employees formed a union under the Communications Workers of America in March 2022 amid a period of internal upheaval. In the months before the union was announced, seven employees resigned, including four senior staff members, according to IndieWire. Executive Director Rick Peréz, who was at the helm of the IDA during this period of unrest, stepped down the following December.

In a mission statement published that March, workers with the union (called Documentary Workers United) laid out a series of goals for their contract, including “fair compensation” for additional work staff takes on, and transparency in the promotion and hiring process.

The issues the union sought to address stemmed in part from a lack of HR infrastructure at the organization, said Anisa Hosseinnezhad, membership and individual giving program manager, who is a member of DWU bargaining committee. Although the IDA is currently hiring for an HR manager, the organization had not previously had “meaningful” or “easily accessible” HR, Hosseinnezhad told HR Brew. “And so there were a lot of issues happening in the workplace with no real recourse to them.”

Ken Ikeda, interim executive director, agrees a lack of HR infrastructure was one animating concern of the union drive. He said the IDA had protocols in place for employees to follow in order to address their concerns about the workplace, but there was at times a lack of understanding about them. Even now with a union contract and a third-party HR compliance partner, he said, some confusion remains—though he argued “the best way to protect yourself is by addressing matters through the [union] shop.”

Negotiation pain points. Management ended up voluntarily recognizing the DWU, and negotiations for a union contract were underway by September 2022, according to Gabriella Ortega Ricketts, a manager of artists programs who is on the bargaining committee.

The main sticking points around negotiation centered around money, Ikeda and union organizers told HR Brew. Hosseinnezhad described “a lot of back and forth” around the union’s wage proposal before the two sides agreed to raise base pay for full-time staffers to $30.25 an hour, from $20.

Ikeda, who was one of the employees representing management during negotiations, said the IDA had to navigate a “disconnect” between requests made by the union and the organization’s actual fiscal capacity. As a nonprofit, IDA operates with both restricted and unrestricted funds, the former of which operate under the conditions of a donor or grant.

Being a nonprofit, Ikeda said, “requires really educating folks on how we operate.” Hosseinnezhad, for their part, said even though the wage proposal “was more ambitious, it was nothing outside of the realistic living wages of somebody who could be living in California.”

Takeaways for HR. Management and the DWU ultimately came to a compromise, voting unanimously to ratify their first contract this July.

The two-year contract includes an average 20–30% pay increase, a guaranteed annual rate increase, a comprehensive reproductive health policy, as well as differential pay for additional work taken on by unionized staff.

“It was challenging, there’s no question…the steep learning curves are still somewhat in place mutually,” Ikeda said of the financial impact of the changes. But ultimately, there was an understanding on both sides of improvements to working conditions that should be in place across the documentary field, and a hope that this contract would place pressure on other players in the industry to raise their wage floors, he added. Ikeda said he doesn’t view the potential of competitors raising wages as a threat to talent, but rather as an opportunity for the IDA to broaden their talent pool.

Hosseinnezhad said they understand union drives place an additional burden on management and HR staff. In the long run, though, “the sense of unity, retention, and commitment that a union contract brings for the workers of an organization is unparalleled to anything else.”