REPORT ON THE FERA-FSE-UNI MEI Workshop #3
(Text credit FERA)
The third workshop in the series Promoting Fair Remuneration and Collective Bargaining for Creators in the Digital Single Market, organized jointly by FERA, FSE and UNI MEI, took place on 5-6 June 2019 in Brussels.
The workshop gathered some 50 participants from 22 countries keen to discuss and strategize about the main topic of the meeting, Negotiating the Implementation of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital single Market: Transposition in National Law and Collective Bargaining Opportunities.
The workshop was opened by FERA Honorary Treasurer Sverre Pedersen and FSE President Robert Taylor, who briefly outlined the goal of the meeting, transnational cooperation among audiovisual authors’ representative organizations in Europe for the purpose of getting the best out of what the Copyright Directive has to offer to audiovisual creators.
The first session focused on a presentation of the European Directors and Screenwriters Contracts Database, a collaborative tool for guilds, followed by a group discussion about the possible uses and promotion of this database as a resource for improving contracts’ provisions across Europe and for negotiating collective agreements. The session also featured the presentation and discussion of the Final results of the study on EU audiovisual authors’ remuneration by FERA CEO Pauline Durand-Vialle and FSE Executive Officer David Kavanagh.
The second session comprised of an interactive presentation by Janine Lorente from Jlorente Consulting: “Copyright Directive: How it could help local guilds and associations to negotiate economic and creative rights on behalf of writers and directors” and a group exercise where participants were divided in regional groups and worked on mapping the current situation of the audiovisual sector in their country and testing suitable implementation strategies for the Copyright Directive.
The third and final session of the workshop featured a presentation by Erkan Ersoy, director of Organizing for Europe, Uni Global Union : “Membership growth strategies. How to mobilize to build representativity and strength as a representative organization”. The presentation was followed by a discussion on how to apply these principles to the specific case of audiovisual authors’ representative organizations in the context of the implementation of the Copyright Directive.
The workshop concluded with a summary of the discussions and the announcement of the development of a negotiating toolkit for audiovisual authors’ professional organizations to make the most of the opportunities brought about by the Copyright Directive.