FIA-LA Meeting hosted by SAG-AFTRA in Miami

The Latin American delegates of FIA-LA met in Miami, Florida, in early December (4-5 December 2017) for a 2 day meeting kindly hosted by the North American union SAG-AFTRA. It gathered union representatives from Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Panama, Chile, Peru, Colombia and Brazil.

The first day of meeting was entirely dedicated to diversity and equality issues in the arts and entertainment sector. FIA President Ferne Downey (ACTRA Canada) opened the meeting by reminding the important commitment taken by FIA in Zagreb (during its Executive Committee Meeting,  26-27 October 2017) to fight sexual harassment and develop long term strategies towards zero-tolerance and harassment-free work environments.

The afternoon session indeed gave the opportunity to the Latin-American delegates to discuss their gender equality agendas and share good practices to tackle sexual harassment, discrimination or retaliation for the reporting of harassment. The discussion was facilitated by Adam Moore, national director of diversity and EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) for SAG-AFTRA, in presence of Rebecca Damon (SAG-AFTRA New-York President) and Duncan Crabtree-Ireland (SAG-AFTRA Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel).

The second day of meeting was dedicated to addressing common challenges for performer unions in the Latin American region. Some highlights among many subjects were the ratification and implementation of the WIPO Beijing treaty, health and safety matters in the workplace, the employment status of performers and related contractual issues in the region.

Discussion topics also included the collaboration of FIA-LA with Spanish and Portuguese speaking performers and unions outside the Latin-American region. In this context, the FIA-LA group reaffirmed their absolute support to SAG-AFTRA and the Telemundo performers in a new declaration.

All the resolutions adopted during the meeting are available for download in Spanish here under:

-       -  Declaration of Solidarity and Support to SAG-AFTRA and the Actors of Telemundo

-       -  Resolution on Hispano-Portuguese speaking group

-        - Resolution of Support to SATED-CE and Brazilian unions