Union Configuration
Setting up a payee's union status, agreement, and job title
Union configuration is managed within the Engagement & union section of Role & Pay on the payee detail page. This page covers union setup and what actually happens when a payee's union changes.
Note: Union status and configuration apply to any payee type — there's no payee-type restriction on whether union fields are shown.
Union Status
Each payee is either assigned to a union or marked non-union, which determines how their payroll is processed.
| Status | Description | Implications |
|---|---|---|
| Union | Payee is assigned to one of your company's configured unions | Union rates and agreement rules apply; union reporting includes them |
| Non-Union | No union selected | Standard rates apply; a department assignment is how they're grouped instead |
Union Selection
Which unions you can assign depends on which contracts your company has declared on the Production & unions stage of Company Setup — see Union Setup. Greenroom ships with rule sets for eight unions:
- Actors' Equity Association (AEA)
- ATPAM
- IATSE
- IATSE Local 764 (Theatrical Wardrobe) — a separate union code from IATSE
- IATSE Local 798 (Hair & Makeup) — likewise a separate union code, not a sub-option under IATSE
- Local 802 (American Federation of Musicians)
- SDC (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society)
- USA 829 (United Scenic Artists)
Performers who also play
A payee who is both AEA cast and a Local 802 musician isn't assigned two unions. They get one AEA engagement with an Actor/Musician job title, and a Local 802 wage attached to it. See Actor/Musicians.
SDC and payee type are independent
Assigning SDC does not change a payee's tax treatment
A payee's type — Employee, Loan-out, Contractor, or Vendor — is what determines whether Greenroom creates them as a W-2 employee or a 1099 contractor in Check, and that's set once, at creation (see Payee Types). Assigning an SDC (or any other) union to a payee does not change that. If you need an SDC director or choreographer treated as a 1099 contractor, their payee type has to be Contractor or Loan-out from the start — assigning the SDC union to an Employee-typed payee does not convert them.
What SDC (and USA 829) assignment does affect is narrower: for a payee who is already a Contractor, Loan-out, or Vendor and is on a Broadway-type SDC or USA 829 agreement, certain earnings — advances and royalties, specifically — are reportable on 1099-MISC instead of the usual 1099-NEC, while ordinary fees still report as NEC. That's a box distinction on the 1099 form for a payee who's already a 1099 type; it has no effect on an Employee-typed payee, who stays W-2 regardless of union.
The same applies to one person doing two kinds of work. Every engagement on a payee shares that payee's classification, and the Engagement & union card now says so beside it — pointing you at Add payee to create a second record if the same person also needs paying as a 1099 contractor (or the other way round). See Payee Types.
Configuring Union Membership
- Open the payee's Engagement & union section (part of Role & Pay).
- Choose a Union from the dropdown, or leave it set to Non-union.
- Pick the applicable Agreement. What this looks like depends on how many contracts your company has declared for that union:
- One contract for this union — the agreement is derived automatically and shown as a read-only line ("Set at the company level"); there's nothing to pick.
- Two or more contracts for this union — Agreement stays a real, required dropdown so you can disambiguate.
- No contracts declared yet (a mid-setup company) — it falls back to the full agreement catalog for that union.
- Choose the Job Title from the titles the selected agreement defines.
- Department only appears for unions whose configuration carries a department catalog — today, that's IATSE Local 798 (Hair & Makeup) only. For those unions it's a required dropdown of that union's specific departments, not free text; every other union simply has no Department field.
- Alt job title is an optional free-text field, shown on pay stubs when set.
- Set the Effective start date.
- Save through the page's single save bar — Engagement & union doesn't have its own separate save.
There's no "Union member (dues apply)" checkbox and no "Minimum tier" dropdown to pick — both were removed 2026-07-21. Union dues are driven by the union's configured deduction rules regardless of a membership flag, and the applicable weekly minimum now resolves automatically from the company's declared contract for that union (the same agreement-derivation described in step 3) rather than a hand-picked tier.
Changing a payee's union
You change a union the same way you set one — the Engagement & union fields, saved through the page's single save bar. There's no separate acknowledgment step and no "transition period" view showing before-and-after configurations side by side.
What's different is what happens underneath, and Greenroom asks you to confirm it.
An engagement is ended, never overwritten
A payee's union, agreement, job title, and dates together make up an engagement. Changing the union doesn't edit that engagement in place — it ends the existing one the day before the new one starts and opens a new one alongside it. Nothing is deleted.
A confirm dialog says so before you commit:
This ends the current engagement the day before the new one starts and opens a new one — nothing is deleted. Pay rates stay with the engagement they were agreed under, and any 802 reportable wage stays with it too, so it stops applying.
Clearing the union entirely (moving someone to non-union) works the same way, with its own dialog: the engagement is ended rather than removed, and the payee computes as non-union from today forward.
This matters in two practical ways:
- Pay rates stay with the engagement they were agreed under. They don't follow the payee onto the new union. If the new engagement needs a rate, add one — see below.
- History is preserved automatically. Past payroll stays anchored to the engagement it was actually run under, so a union change doesn't retroactively rewrite what a previous run computed.
Greenroom doesn't currently offer a screen that lists a payee's past engagements. The history exists and protects your past runs, but if you need a human-readable record of union changes, keep your own.
What the form clears when you change a pick
Everything on the Engagement & union block is derived from one of four facts, from broadest to narrowest: union → agreement → job title → sub-type. Changing one clears the values pinned to it and to anything narrower — so the form never carries an AEA rate forward onto an ATPAM engagement.
| You change | The form clears |
|---|---|
| Union | Agreement, job title, tier, sub-type, pay rates, and premiums |
| Agreement | Job title, tier, sub-type |
| Job title | Sub-type |
| Sub-type | Nothing else |
Two things this deliberately does not clear:
- A saved 802 reportable wage. It belongs to the engagement, so it stops applying by itself; clearing it in the form would delete it on the next save and make the confirm dialog's own promise false. The role-change dialog says as much: "stays saved, but stops applying until the role is Actor/Musician again."
- Anything already saved on the old engagement. This is form state only. The ended engagement keeps its rates and history exactly as they were.
Two more things worth knowing
- Pay rates are effective-dated. If a union change means a new pay rate, add a new rate row with its own effective date on Role & Pay rather than editing the old one — payroll resolves whichever rate is active for a given run's pay period.
- A below-minimum rate warns, but doesn't block. If the active weekly rate falls under the new agreement's contractual minimum, Greenroom flags it — but saving isn't prevented, so it's on you to catch and fix it if the warning appears.
Best Practices
- Verify union membership status before configuring the payee
- Coordinate with your production's union liaison when configuring union settings
- When moving a payee to a different union, add a new effective-dated pay rate rather than relying on anything to carry it over automatically
- Double-check payee type separately from union — union assignment never changes it
- Keep records of union status changes for your own audit purposes; Greenroom doesn't produce a change history view for this
Next Steps
Return to Role & Pay for the full section overview, or see Company Union Setup for configuring unions at the company level.