Bectu is the union representing crew working in film and TV in the UK. Membership is voluntary and open to anyone working in the industry, and Bectu doesn't control who can or can't work on a given production.

What Bectu does do is negotiate on your behalf. It holds five agreements with Pact, the producers' trade body, covering things like working hours and conditions on scripted film and TV, including the Major Motion Picture and TV Drama Agreements (see our Contracts, MMP & TV Drama Agreements article for the detail on those).

Beyond the agreements themselves, department branches represent crew in ongoing negotiations, campaign for better terms, such as the workshop hours campaign covered in that same article, and give individual members somewhere to go if a production isn't following terms it's already agreed to.

IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, is the American equivalent of Bectu. It's set up quite differently, though.

In the UK, Bectu is split into a London division and a regional division, with branches representing each film department: Camera, Props, Art Department, Costume and so on. In the US, IATSE is divided into "Locals" instead, branches that represent different job roles in different areas. If you work as a set decorator, carpenter or propman in LA, you'd apply to join Local 44, which represents Affiliated Property Craftspersons in California. If you work as an Art Director anywhere in the US, you'd come under Local 800, the Art Directors Guild.

No, and this is one of the biggest differences from Bectu. Anyone can join Bectu, and Bectu doesn't control who can and can't work on a given job. In the US, the situation is very different: you have to apply to join IATSE and demonstrate relevant skills before you're accepted, and on many productions, you can only work if you're already a member.

This has advantages and disadvantages. Rates are much more tightly controlled in the US than in the UK as a result. On the other hand, it can be harder to get into the industry in the first place, and once you're in, it operates more as a closed shop.

Mostly, it comes down to that closed shop. Because you have to be an IATSE member to work on most IATSE-covered productions, producers can't simply route around the union by hiring non-members. That gives IATSE a lot of leverage in negotiations, since a production genuinely can't crew up without them.

Bectu doesn't control access to work in the same way, so its leverage comes from organising and presenting evidence, such as the workshop hours campaign, rather than from controlling who's available to work. That's not necessarily a weakness; open access keeps the barrier to entry into the industry much lower than in the US. But it does mean Bectu's negotiating position looks quite different to IATSE's, and it's part of why IATSE can push through changes that would take Bectu years of campaigning to achieve.

Wasn't 2023 the year of the big Hollywood strikes?

It was, but those strikes were called by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA (the actors' union), not IATSE. IATSE crew weren't on strike themselves, though many lost work as productions shut down around them, and plenty honoured the picket lines out of solidarity.

Has IATSE itself come close to striking? Twice in recent years, but it hasn't actually happened either time.

So IATSE has authorised strike action twice without it actually happening, which is part of why the union has a reputation for strength: producers know the threat is credible.

Bectu itself doesn't organise formal strikes the way IATSE or the WGA do, since membership isn't compulsory and there's no closed shop to enforce one. That hasn't stopped individual departments taking their own collective action when rates or conditions stall, though.

You can read more about this, and how crew are holding their rates more generally, in the notes from Filmbase and Bectu's "Holding your Rate" webinar.