Producers Guild Unveils Healthcare Initiative For Qualified Members

The Producers Guild Announces Groundbreaking Initiative To Fund Health Insurance For Producers PGA / Getty Images

Nearly 74 years after the Producers Guild of America was formed, its members learned Sunday night that they finally be getting closer to getting healthcare coverage.

PGA presidents Stephanie Allain and Donald De Line announced at the trade organization’s 35th annual Award ceremony that the group has launched an initiative to eventually see every health insurance benefits for all full-time producers in the film and TV biz.

“Producers, unlike unionized creative professionals in the industry, lack guaranteed health insurance benefits,” Allain and De Line said onstage at the PGA Awards in Hollywood. “Until now,” Allain declared.

“No one should go without these essential benefits. Producing is challenging enough without the added anxiety of wondering how you are going to obtain health coverage for you and your family,” they added.

Stephanie Allain & Donald DeLine at Sunday’s PGA Awards (Getty Images)

On this long march toward achieving industry consensus and providing coverage, which Allain and De Line call a “groundbreaking step,” the PGA says powerhouses Blumhouse, Legendary, Charles D. King’s Macro and Berlanti Productions already have signed on and pledged to include health insurance contributions in their budgets.

“Producers are the only group of creative professionals without a union on set, so we have to look out for each other,” Blumhouse founder and CEO Jason Blum noted Sunday. “Taking care of our own is good business, good for families and good for our industry, and I’m proud to be part of the group leading this initiative.”

Taking a multi-prong stance with what is essentially a non-binding approach, the PGA is looking for companies, streamers and studios to contribute to the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan for eligible producers. If MPI isn’t an option, the alternative is for producers who lack any union, guild or other plan benefits to see a line item in production budgets that would allow them to buy health insurance directly.

Unlike the WGA, DGA or SAG-AFTRA, the Producers Guild of America is not a union and doesn’t participate in collective bargaining, due in no small part to the dual roles as managers and otherwise that many of its members have. In fact, the PGA exists as a guild literally in the medieval definition of the term — which limits its ability to offer consistent protections and benefits to its membership.

As Blumhouse, Berlanti, Macro and Legendary are now doing, the PGA is recommending that companies put forth a production budget line item contribution of “at least $3.33/hour/producer for eligible full-time producers to be used towards the purchase of a health insurance plan.”

No timeline has been set yet for the PGA’s move to get more companies on board.

However, after years of health insurance efforts by the likes of former board members Harvey Wilson, I hear that the organization is intending to give the at least a year to achieve critical mass. The big-picture aim is to see the majority of qualified members covered by 2026.

While a number of members and leadership have long advocated for such healthcare, the PGA’s status has left the group left pushing for MPI eligibility or partnering up with other organizations. It’s a reality that in good times and not-so-good times is far from ideal or stable for the more than 8,400 members the PGA has across the scripted, nonfiction, documentary, animation, and emerging-media fields.

Health insurance has been one of the major gains for Hollywood guilds in various contracts over the decades. Eligible hours and contributions have changed over the years, but, as the most recent WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and subsequent new agreements made very clear, healthcare access remains one of the vital tenets of Tinseltown economic security.