Employees of Deluxe Entertainment’s Culver City postproduction facility are voting today on whether to unionize the shop with the Motion Picture Editors Guild and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), in an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The bargaining unit at Deluxe Culver City consists of about 30 postproduction artists and technicians. The facility is located on the Sony Pictures studio lot in Stage 6, the former site of Sony’s Colorworks postproduction facility. Many of the Deluxe Culver City employees are former Colorworks staff who took a cut in pay and benefits when Sony transferred control of the formerly unionized facility to Deluxe earlier this year.
A yes vote would compel Deluve to sit down and negotiate in good faith with its employees as a group, through the union as their elected representative.
The guild claims that Deluxe management has actively campaigned to discourage employees from unionizing, requiring employees to attend mandatory anti-union meetings, distributing anti-union campaign materials via company email, and having managers pull employees aside for one-on-one conversations to urge them to vote no.
Ballots will be tallied by the NLRB immediately after the polls close at 5:30 p.m.
Deluxe Entertainment is owned by MacAndrews & Forbes, the holding company of investor Ron Perelman.