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Hollywood’s Covid protocols expire on May 12, and the vaccination mandate – which gave producers the right to require Covid vaccinations as a condition of employment – ends for all productions except those made before May 12, which continue to be requested can the rest of the production or the season.
The return-to-work agreement expired on Saturday.
The protocols, first enacted in September 2020 as part of an agreement between the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers and Hollywood’s unions — SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, Teamsters and others — allowed productions to align themselves after an industry-wide to recover from lockdown at the start of the pandemic. The protocols were originally scheduled to expire on April 30, 2021, but have been extended nearly a dozen times, including in June 2021 when producers “were given the option to implement mandatory vaccination guidelines for cast and crew in Zone A on a production side-production.” Zone A, where unmasked actors work, is the most restrictive of the safe work zones on sets.
The last extension of the protocols was in January.
A statement issued today by the AMPTP reads:
“The Return to Work Agreement, which expires on April 1, 2023, will now remain in effect until May 11, 2023. On May 12, 2023, the return-to-work agreement ends.
“The date coincides with the end of the federal COVID-19 public health emergency declaration by the US Department of Health and Human Services on May 11.
“All employees have a total of five (5) days of temporary paid COVID-19 sick leave per Producer to be used in the period April 2, 2023 through December 31, 2023 to cover one or more eligible COVID-19 events
“Any production that implemented a mandatory vaccination policy for Zone A employees prior to May 12, 2023 may continue to use that mandatory vaccination policy for the remainder of the production (or season, in the case of a series).”
Unions signing the Protocol Ending Agreement include the DGA, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Teamsters Local 399, IBEW Local 40, LiUNA! Local 724, OPCMIA Local 755 and UA Local 78.