Union Configuration

Admin and Payroll can edit a payee's engagement and use Mark rates reviewed. Adding or changing the company's unions and agreements requires Admin. Approvers can read the payee's rate-review information, but do not get its edit or review buttons.

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.

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. The payee's Union dropdown lists only the unions your company has onboarded there, and the note under it says Need another union? Onboard it first in company setup. (after approval, …in Settings → Unions) A union whose contracts all fall outside your production type is still listed, marked (outside production scope). 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)

In the dropdown each union reads as its short code and then its name. IATSE, for example, reads IATSE — Pink, and a code reads the way people write it, so Local 798 reads Local 798 — …, never LOCAL798. The union list in Company Setup (Settings → Unions once your company is approved) labels them the same way.

SDC and payee type are independent

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 an 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 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

1. Open the payee's Engagement & union section (part of Role & Pay).
2. Choose a Union from the dropdown, or leave it set to Non-union. Only unions your company has onboarded are offered, so a company with no contracts declared yet sees only Non-union; a union it hasn't onboarded has to be added in Company Setup first.
3. Pick the applicable Agreement. The choices are the contracts your company has declared for that union, so what this looks like depends on how many there are:
   • One contract for this union: the agreement is derived automatically and shown as a read-only line (Set at the company level), with the contract's production kind beside it when the company set one; there's nothing to pick.
   • Two or more contracts for this union: Agreement stays a real, required dropdown so you can disambiguate.
   • A contract outside your production type is still offered, marked (outside production scope). If your company hasn't set its production type yet, the section says Set your production type in company setup to scope these contracts. Configured contracts remain available. (once your company is approved, Ask Greenroom to set your production type to scope these contracts.)
   • If the company contract carries premiums that apply only on a musical or only on a play (Local 802 Broadway's, for example) and isn't marked either, a warning here says its payees aren't offered those premiums until it is, and says what to do. That depends on where your company stands: before approval you mark the contract in company setup; once payroll has run on it, only Greenroom can change it.
4. Choose the Job Title from the titles the selected agreement defines. A union payee needs a job title, either one from this list or a custom one typed into Alt job title, before their setup can be submitted for review or approved. Until then the payee's page shows Job title still needed. Pick a title from the [union] list or type a custom title, then submit again., with a Go to Engagement & union link.
5. Department only appears for a union whose configuration carries a department catalog. Today that's IATSE alone, with Carpentry, Electrics, Props, Sound, Moving Light Programmer, and Video/Projections. For IATSE it's a required dropdown, not free text, and a save without one is refused with Pick a department for this union. Every other union, and every non-union payee, simply has no Department field.
6. Alt job title is free text, shown on pay stubs when set. It's also how you give the payee a custom title when no listed title fits (Type a custom title here if no listed title fits. This also appears on pay stubs.), and the only way when the agreement lists no titles at all.
7. Set the Effective start date. New pay rows take this date as their start; see Role & Pay.
8. If the payee is on a term deal, tick Term deal: accrue weekly benefits and enter the Benefits start and Benefits end dates; see Role & Pay.
9. Save through the page's single save bar — Engagement & union doesn't have its own separate save.

If a payee's saved union or agreement is no longer among your company's contracts, it stays on the record and in the dropdown, labelled (saved engagement) or (saved agreement, outside current company contracts), so it can be reviewed rather than silently replaced.

There's no "Union member (dues apply)" checkbox and no "Minimum tier" dropdown to pick. Union dues are driven by the union's configured deduction rules, with no membership flag, and the applicable weekly minimum 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. To see which dues and employer contributions the agreement applies to a payee, look at the read-only Automatic union deductions card further down their page; see Role & Pay.

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.

On a payee whose engagement is already saved, switching to a different agreement under the same union also opens a new engagement. There's no dialog for this one: the form moves the Effective start to today, and when you save, the old engagement ends the day before. Check the effective start, the role, and the rates before you save.

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.

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.

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.

Three 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.
• A save can also touch union dues with our tax partner. Once a payee's union dues are set up there, saving their record also brings those dues up to date (when they stop follows the payee's union engagements). If that can't be done, the save is refused with The union deduction change could not be saved with our tax partner. Try saving again; contact Greenroom if the problem continues.

When your company's contract changes

If your company changes the contract it runs for a union in Company Setup (a different agreement, tier, or level), payees already on that union aren't re-rated automatically. Two things appear instead:

• The payee's page shows a Rates need review card (The company agreement, tier or level changed.) listing the stored amounts affected. Nothing has been re-rated: Payroll can continue and shows a warning until this review is complete.
• In the payee's Engagement & union section, a note says The company contract is now [agreement · production kind]. Use it from today, then review the effective start, role and rates before saving. Use company contract moves the engagement onto the new contract from today.

Once the engagement is on the company contract and saved, go back to the card and click Mark rates reviewed, then Confirm rate review. Until the engagement is updated, the card says Update the engagement to the company contract in Edit and save before completing this review., and the button stays disabled.

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. Every agreement's rates, title by title, are in Union rates.