The production company behind Food Network staple The Kitchen has been cooking up something quite unusual with the writers’ union.
On Monday the Writers Guild of America East announced that its members at Garden Slate Productions, formerly called BSTV Entertainment, had unanimously ratified a first union contract with the cuisine-focused entertainment company.
The deal covers some nonfiction workers that the writers’ union has represented many times before — like producers and associate producers.
But in a move befitting a shingle that’s behind shows like Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, Big Restaurant Bet and Feasting With the Stars, the pact also covers some unprecedented roles for the WGA East, like food stylist, culinary producer and culinary assistant. (Other atypical roles that are included? Art director, art production assistant, assistant art director and prop stylist.)
The company voluntarily recognized the whole bargaining unit in 2023, but the labor agreement means that contract language for these workers can officially go into effect.
In another unusual move, the deal covers set production assistants, which have been included in select bargaining units with the union in the past, but rarely. Overall, production assistants are a largely non-unionized group in the entertainment industry as a whole, even as that paradigm may be shifting. A recently-formed IATSE production workers’ Local including the group and a separate organizing drive from LiUNA Local 724 targeting production assistants on scripted film and television sets.
According to the WGA East, the deal raises these production assistants’ wages from recent rates of around $1,050 a week to a $1,200 a week minimum.
In addition, minimum wage rates will be increased for all workers by two percent between the second and third years of the contract and everyone in the bargaining unit who has worked a minimum of two seasons in the past year will receive a 1.5 percent raise in that same time period.
The deal also includes re-hiring language that will give union members who worked an immediately preceding season of a series first dibs to return to that series in the next season.
The contract also ensures employer contributions to the industry’s portable health insurance plan, the Entertainment Industry Benefit Plan (Flex Plan), and provides bargaining unit members with 12 paid holidays, up to five sick days a year and three paid bereavement days if an employee has worked four weeks or more.
The WGA East went public with its organizing drive at the production company in the spring of 2023, at a time when employees were alleging that their pay rates had been “cut or frozen.” The union claimed that some workers had lost their health insurance, some female workers and especially women of color had faced “pay and promotion discrimination” and employees were dealing with shorter timelines.
The union vowed to raise wages, bring more transparency to pay, institute portable health insurance and change scheduling practices. At the time, the production company did not return a request for comment but voluntarily recognized the group in July.
In a statement released on Monday, management at Garden Slate Productions said that the deal reflected their long-held values on how to treat employees. Management added, “We look forward to producing even more dynamic television programming in the years to come.”
