Lindsay Dougherty Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Editor’s note: This is the second installment in the Deadline series Hollywood Contraction, which examines the job losses caused by the ongoing, industrywide cost-cutting.

The writers strike ended seven months ago, but memories of the picket lines were fresh at the WGA Awards tonight.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large The Writers Guild of America is honoring the best of 2023’s television and film via its annual WGA Awards, held this year at the Hollywood Palladium for the West Coast edition and at New York’s Edison Ballroom for the East Coast ceremony. In Los Angeles, Niecy Nash-Betts, who recently won an Emmy for her role on Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” hosted this year’s event. L.A.

They’re baaack. We retired Strike Talk, the Deadline podcast by Billy Ray and Todd Garner Deadline hatched to lend perspective and serve as a beacon of hope to the industry during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. We’ve put the band back together because a potential standoff between the signatories and the negotiators for the Teamster and IATSE guilds looms just up the road when their contracts expire July 31. Are the signatories going to repeat last year’s failed strategy of keeping the CEOs out of the room until too late to stop another disastrous Hollywood shut down? Ray and Garner pose that question to Lindsay Dougherty, who’s leading the negotiation for the Teamsters, and who here reveals she has not had even a passing chat with any of the CEOs that finally solved the last round of labor strife. Dougherty figured into the last strike when she pledged the commitment of Teamsters to stand in solidarity with the striking guilds, which put pressure on the AMPTP to get serious. Here, she discusses the production downturn that followed the return to production, the resolve that these guilds have to get a proper deal and her hope that the signatories don’t once again “trip over dollars to save pennies.” Buckle up.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Niecy Nash-Betts, who recently won an Emmy for her role on Netflix’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” has signed on to host the Los Angeles portion of next month’s Writers Guild Awards. The 2024 event, which was pushed back in the wake of the Hollywood strikes, will take place on Saturday, April 14 at the Hollywood Palladium.

Using fiery language like “solidarity is the solution to corporate greed” and “if we don’t get what we want, we will shut it f–king down day one,” union leaders on Sunday held what was dubbed a “unity rally” to rev up workers before joint negotiations begin Monday between IATSE and Teamsters Local 399 with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.

In many ways, longtime International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees president Matthew Loeb is the personification of that Teddy Roosevelt adage of “speak softly, and carry a big stick” …well, maybe except for the speak softly part.

IATSE President Matthew Loeb did not mince words today when asked if his local unions were willing to strike if this spring’s contract negotiations with the AMPTP did not go well.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer Writers returned to work two months ago, and the SAG-AFTRA strike has been over for nearly a month. Production has restarted but won’t be back to full strength until mid-January. But even as Hollywood tries to return to normal, dark clouds are forming on the horizon.

This is day 97 of the SAG-AFTRA strike.

“Look who’s running Hollywood right now, corporate America,” declared Teamster president Sean O’Brien on the WGA and SAG-AFTRA picket line outside Amazon’s LA HQ. Big corporations, they don’t care about their people. They care about the bottom line and the balance sheet,” he added with Hollywood Teamster leader Lindsay Dougherty by his side.

Members of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a pair of contracts with the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, thus averting a threatened strike. Earlier this month, Lindsay Dougherty, the local’s principal officer, threatened to take “a commercial break” if the AICP didn’t offer a fair contract. “If we are provoked,” she said, “we will strike.”

Deadline’s Strike Talk podcast is now in its ninth week, coming at a critical day with the expiration of the SAG-AFTRA contract. Deadline has revealed a high likelihood that the union agrees to kick the can down the road and beyond the holidays, but the tension is growing after more than 1000 major actors signed a solidarity letter that they are serious and will go on strike. That development would put every part of Hollywood in a deep sleep, because there will be no one to make projects, or promote the ones that are done. The Emmys also are threatened.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has approved a $2 million fund to support motion picture Teamsters impacted by the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike, which is now in its 56th day. The aid package was approved unanimously by the IBT’s General Executive Board.

Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Independent Commercial Producers on terms for two three-year contracts, thus averting a threatened strike.

EXCLUSIVE: As the Writers Guild strike enters its second month and the Directors Guild’s talks with the studios come down to the wire with looming SAG-AFTRA negotiations set to start next week, the under the radar battle between the Teamsters and the Association of Independent Commercial Producers could get explosive.

The leaders of the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and the Teamsters have issued a “joint statement of solidarity” with the Directors Guild in its final scheduled week of contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, saying that they “stand alongside our sisters, brothers, and kin in the DGA in their pursuit of a fair contract.” Their statement comes on the 30th day of the ongoing WGA strike and 21 days after the DGA began its contract talks with the AMPTP.

The Writers Guild of America West received the most robust support from their sister unions in Los Angeles at the “Unions Strike Back” Rally on Friday evening.

Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 has hired former Netflix senior counsel Kay Kimmel to serve as the local’s in-house counsel, where she will also assist as counsel to the Teamsters Motion Picture and Theatrical Trade Division.

SAG-AFTRA, which starts its contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on June 7, is in “the same boat” with the Writers Guild as it strikes for a fair contract, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland told a cheering crowd Wednesday night at the WGA strike rally at the Shrine Auditorium.

Hollywood labor presented a united front last night at the Shrine Auditorium in support of the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing strike, which is now in its third day. That included Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399, whose secretary-treasurer and chief negotiator Lindsay Dougherty had the biggest mic-drop moment in front of the crowd of 1,800 WGA West members.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer The Writers Guild of America West held a rally Wednesday night to demonstrate solidarity with the other Hollywood unions in their collective contract battles against Hollywood’s major employers. About 1,800 guild members attended the meeting at the Shrine Auditorium, and heard from WGA leaders about the reasons behind the two-day old strike. One of the stars of the show, however, was Lindsay Dougherty, the 39-year-old leader of Teamsters Local 399. “We’re all sticking together,” Dougherty told Variety outside the event. “We have an opportunity to change things in this industry, and the only way we’re going to do that is if we’re together.”

EXCLUSIVE: “There are folks that are working in the motion picture industry that are not making enough money to have a sustainable life, to be able to buy a home — which is just insane,” says Hollywood Teamsters leader Lindsay Dougherty of the hard economic realities her members and other Hollywood unions like the Writers Guild of America are being squeezed by.

Teamsters leaders, saying their members “do not cross picket lines,” have joined the chorus of unions supporting the WGA in its ongoing negotiations for a new film and TV contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Those talks are now in their final week, and a strike, if it comes to that, could come as early as next Tuesday.

Leaders of SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 showed their support for the WGA on Monday, posing with WGA leaders shortly before the 11 a.m. start of the Writers Guild’s contract negotiations with producers at the AMPTP’s headquarters in Sherman Oaks.

An NLRB administrative law judge has ruled that two Hallmark movie productions violated federal labor law in 2021 when nine of its drivers were interrogated about their union activities, were threatened with job loss, and were then fired for attempting to unionize the projects under a Teamsters Local 399 contract.

The WGA West on Saturday will hold its first membership meeting to discuss its upcoming negotiations with the AMPTP for a new film and TV contract. Two other membership meetings are scheduled in Los Angeles later this month, and one will be held in New York.

Lindsay Dougherty, the principal officer of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 – and the top movie Teamster in the country – is urging her members to start saving money in case of a strike later this year by writers, actors or directors.

Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 is calling on Hudson Pacific Properties to voluntarily recognize it as the bargaining representative of nearly 120 workers employed at Quixote, Zio Studio Services and Star Waggons.

EXCLUSIVE: Lindsay Dougherty, the newly re-elected leader of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399, sees the Teamsters becoming “a more militant union,” and is already looking ahead two years to when the local’s film and TV contract will be up for renegotiation. The current contract, which she negotiated last summer with Carol Lombardini, president of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, expires July 31, 2024.

Lindsay Dougherty, leader of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399, has been reelected to a full three-year term as the local’s secretary-treasurer and principal officer. Dougherty, running unopposed, was first elected to the post by the local’s executive board in May to fill out the unexpired term of Steve Dayan, who retired after nine years in office.

The shakeup at Teamsters Local 492 in New Mexico continues with the resignations of two of the local’s top officers: Trey White and Melissa Malcom-Chavez. White had been the local’s principal officer and secretary-treasurer, and Malcom-Chavez had been the local’s business agent for the movie industry.

Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 has been granted the film and TV jurisdiction of Teamsters Local 492 in New Mexico following an investigation by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and an audit of Local 492’s financial records. Effective immediately, Local 492 members working in the motion picture industry will become members of Local 399.

A tentative agreement has been reached for a new three-year contract covering casting directors and associate casting directors in Los Angeles and New York.

Members of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 have voted overwhelmingly to ratify a new Location Managers Agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. The new contract, which takes effect March 13, covers location managers, key assistant location managers and assistant location managers.

Hollywood Teamsters Local 399’s Lindsay Dougherty has been named director of the Teamsters Motion Picture and Theatrical Trades Division, which represents thousands of Teamsters working in film, television, commercials, and live theater across the U.S. and Canada.