MPTF To Host Meals Drive; Nears $1M In Monetary Help Payouts Throughout Strikes – Deadline

The Movement Image & Tv 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 supplied by IATSE and Teamsters Native 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 Might 2 and SAG-AFTRA on July 14. “MPTF is closing in on whole monetary help in the course of the work stoppage of $1 million,” he mentioned. “Previously 30 days alone, we’ve obtained greater than 4,500 requires assist with monetary help. To place that into perspective, in a typical month, pre-strike, we’d obtain 200 requires help. 

“Many are contacting us as properly with different psycho-social points or are figuring out these points in consumption/case administration conversations with our social employees. A giant shout-out right here to the MPTF social employees who’ve been completely flooded with these requires help and have carried on, a few of them seven days per week, to case handle their current excessive acuity shoppers together with the tough consumption course of to assist business members with the required paperwork and work together with their very own excessive acuity wants. As they did with the pandemic, they’ve met the urgency of the second with poise and dignity and professionalism and exhibited the ‘taking good care of our personal’ 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 instances greater than what they have been for a similar interval final 12 months. 

“There are two elements to level out right 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 12 months, and consequently, our crew neighborhood was working and incomes much less, and thus went into the work stoppage with a lowered monetary buffer.

“And distinguishing between the 4,500 calls up to now 30 days and people who really obtain monetary help from MPTF by way of the assorted funds we’re administering, 92% are crew members. These embody IATSE, Teamsters and Primary Crafts, and sure DGA members. Grants of help most often are $1,500. We’re additionally administering a fund for The Union Solidarity Coalition, a writer-director group, particularly to assist crew members who not qualify for union-provided medical insurance, with their medical insurance premiums. We additionally present medical insurance counseling by way of the Leisure Well being Insurance coverage Options program.