The Motion Picture & Television Fund will host a meals drive on August 24 to assist out business members effected by the continuing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Volunteers are being offered by IATSE and Teamsters Local 399, with donations from the Matthew 25: Ministries.
MPTF president and CEO Bob Beitcher says the charity has been “flooded with calls” for the reason that Writers Guild went on strike on May 2 and SAG-AFTRA on July 14. “MPTF is closing in on total financial assistance during the work stoppage of $1 million,” he mentioned. “In the previous 30 days alone, we’ve acquired greater than 4,500 requires assist with monetary help. To put that into perspective, in a typical month, pre-strike, we’d obtain 200 requires help.
“Many are contacting us as well with other psycho-social issues or are identifying these issues in intake/case management conversations with our social workers. A big shout-out here to the MPTF social workers who have been absolutely flooded with these calls for assistance and have carried on, some of them seven days a week, to case manage their existing high acuity clients along with the difficult intake process to help industry members with the required paperwork and interact with their own high acuity needs. As they did with the pandemic, they have met the urgency of the moment with poise and dignity and professionalism and exhibited the ‘taking care of our own’ mission that MPTF embraces.”
Out-of-work crewmembers account for 81% of these consumption requires monetary help, Beitcher mentioned, noting that requests for monetary help for the primary seven months of 2023 are six occasions greater than what they have been for a similar interval final yr.
“There are two factors to point out here,” he mentioned. “One, clearly, is the impression of the work stoppages on the monetary welfare of our crews; and the second, much less well-publicized, is that the general quantity of manufacturing within the final quarter of 2022 and the primary 4 months of 2023 was considerably decrease than the identical interval the prior yr, and because of this, our crew neighborhood was working and incomes much less, and thus went into the work stoppage with a diminished monetary buffer.
“And distinguishing between the 4,500 calls prior to now 30 days and people who truly obtain monetary help from MPTF via the varied funds we’re administering, 92% are crew members. These embody IATSE, Teamsters and Basic Crafts, and sure DGA members. Grants of help most often are $1,500. We are additionally administering a fund for The Union Solidarity Coalition, a writer-director group, particularly to assist crew members who now not qualify for union-provided medical insurance, with their medical insurance premiums. We additionally present medical insurance counseling via the Entertainment Health Insurance Solutions program.
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