ACTRA and the CFTPA went to court today (Tuesday), after talks failed to produce results the day before. Details are soon-coming.

UPDATE (1/24): A decision on the legality of the ACTRA strike will be handed down early next week.

UPDATE (1/27): Playback Daily reported on Friday (1/26) that, in court, a lawyer for the CFTPA argued that ACTRA “was acting in bad faith” as early as October 24, 2006–a day after collective bargaining began for the renegotiation of ACTRA’s contracts–when they filed “for conciliation in Ontario under the Labour Relations Act, while starting to sign individual deals with producers.” The lawyer argued that this went against IPA protocol.

Conversely, ACTRA’s lawyers contend that they did follow protocol according to provincial labour laws, and…

“It is ACTRA’s position - a position that it has consistently taken before the Ontario Labour Relations Board - that the IPA is a collective agreement and that ACTRA’s members are employees who are subject to the Ontario Labour Relations Act,” argued ACTRA lawyer Paul Cavalluzzo of Cavalluzzo Hayes Shilton LLP.

Also, according to ACTRA, the continuation letters that over 120 production crews have signed are legal, adding that when the IPA was up for bargaining in 1995, it was producers that time that asked ACTRA members to sign similar letters. In 2001, ACTRA had filed with Ontario court about re-establishing continuation letters at the insistence of the producers’ unions in Canada, as well as some producers Stateside, who were accusing ACTRA of “fostering industry instability and driving production out of Canada.”

Playback Daily (1/24)
CBC Arts
Globe and Mail/Canadian Press
Playback Daily (1/26)