By Kristin Marguerite Doidge
It’s fair to say that service on behalf of entertainment workers is in Cathy Repola’s DNA. After all, her father, the late Ernie Repola, played an important role at IATSE Local 683 decades before his daughter would become the first-ever female national executive director for the Motion Picture Editors Guild (MPEG).
“I was born and raised in a union household,” the Burbank, California native said. “My father held an elected full-time position at an IATSE local representing film laboratory workers, so I grew up in that environment, and I remember him talking about union things at the dinner table, and going to IA conventions, things like that.”
Still, working for a union herself wasn’t exactly part of her plan — at least initially. Even though her sister and both brothers were part of the film lab union, the younger Repola thought she might be an English literature professor or a writer.
After college, she said, she “sort of stumbled around trying to figure out how to make a living,” taking a position at what was then the MGM lot working under the jurisdiction of OPEIU (Office and Professional Employees International Union), Local 174.
“First, I got talked into being a shop steward, and I really mean talked into it, because I really didn’t have an interest,” Repola explained. “I was one of those people who always told my coworkers, ‘Well, you should call the union if you think that’s not right. You pay dues to them.’”
Her nickname quickly became “Norma Rae” after the heroine of that labor-oriented film. “I’d say, ‘Don’t let them treat you that way, don’t let them underpay you,’” she said. “And it inspired me from somewhere I didn’t know existed.”
That’s when, as she tells it, she first got into “a little bit of trouble.”
“I think I was a little overzealous in my representation,” she said with a laugh, adding, “I believed I was doing the right thing, and it kind of rattled some people. At the conclusion of those negotiations, I made a decision that I wanted to go work for a union. I was very young, and I didn’t know anything. I’d been a shop steward, and I believed in the cause — power to the people, all that kind of stuff — and I started taking labor courses at night.”
But soon, Repola was representing the bargaining unit during negotiations and fell in love with the process, the meaning behind it, and the experience. She took a position as Assistant Business Agent with her union.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
When she saw an advertisement in the trades for a job with the Editors Guild in 1992, Repola seized the opportunity, and after interviewing with her predecessor, Ron Kutak, at what was then Local 776, she was hired as assistant executive director. Over the years, his advice, experience, and knowledge proved invaluable.
Kutak oversaw the merger of the East and West Coast Editors Guilds and expanded the postproduction union community nationwide, which led to the Editors Guild becoming Local 700, a national union, in 1998.
As the Guild’s membership continued to grow, a particularly rewarding personal moment took place for Repola in 2010 when Local 683, the union her father had worked for decades earlier, was facing challenges as motion pictures and television shows started to be shot with digital cameras instead of film.
“The local found themselves in a position of having to merge into another local because they couldn’t really sustain themselves any longer financially,” she explained. “They were made up of about a thousand people, and they were reluctant because they didn’t want to be swallowed up and forgotten about.”
During a meeting to introduce the Local 683 members to Local 700, Repola got up on the stage and said her name, and people started shouting her father’s name from the audience.
“They loved him, he was very highly regarded,” she said. “So me being there kind of made people feel like, ‘This is going to be OK.’”
Since then, when she would attend retirees’ luncheons, she heard so many stories about his lasting impact — not just on their careers, but on their lives. “I’ll hear these stories about, ‘Your dad initiated me,’ and ‘Your dad got me my first job,’ and ‘Your dad straightened me out when I was going down a bad path, and he saved my life.’ It’s been one of the big highlights of my career at the Editors Guild — being able to have that kind of circular, familial experience,” she added.
Although her father Ernie had passed away before her career took off, she said she carries him — and his dedication to the cause — with her all the time.
A BEACON FOR WOMEN
Upon Kutak’s retirement in November of 2016, Repola was ready to take the helm as the national executive director. No woman had ever done that before.
For years prior, she had started organizing informal dinners with other IA women to connect, share stories, and informally support one another at executive board meetings. What began as a small group of 12 grew to include 25 to 30… 40, then 75 to 80, and still growing today. “I wanted the women to leave there taking something with them,” Repola said.
In 2015, IA President Matt Loeb acknowledged the importance of women within the IATSE and created an official women’s committee. “It was the first time the IA had a women’s committee, and he appointed me chairperson,” she said. “I’m extremely proud of that, because it has made a difference in a bunch of women’s lives. There are a number of women who’ve run for office because of it, who participate, who are feeling more empowered and less held back — and it just keeps growing.”
For her tireless advocacy work on behalf of women, Loeb awarded her the IA President’s Award for Outstanding Woman Leader in 2017.
There were indeed challenging times during her tenure. The 2018 Basic Agreement negotiations sparked a new sense of activism within the Local 700 membership. With that came a deeper call from the members for the union to do more and to be more. Repola embraced those challenges and sought new ways to be a leader of change. She was honored with the ACE Heritage Award in January 2020, drawing a standing ovation from the audience.
“[This award] is reserved for an individual of special merit, a person who has had an enormous impact on our craft,” ACE president Steve Rivkin said that evening, adding that ACE chose her “in recognition of her courageous leadership and dedication to the editing profession.”
Soon afterward, though, the COVID pandemic shut everything down, and many of the approximately 9,000 members of the Guild were experiencing the same things most of the world was: isolation at home, illness and fear, loss of loved ones, and most important, a loss of connection to each other. Repola wanted to help the membership stay hopeful and engaged, so she shifted efforts toward providing a space for a sense of community.
“We had done a lot of in-person Guild events for a long time, and then suddenly, those all stopped,” Repola said. That’s when she got the idea for what became known as “Coffee with Cathy,” a series of Zoom meetings in which members were welcome to stop by and chat, connect, or listen to a guest speaker, including a DEI expert, discuss important issues in a more intimate setting. The membership and board of directors underwent training as the Black Lives Matter movement took hold.
A LASTING LEGACY
As the world slowly returned to a new normal post-COVID, the dual labor strikes of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA (something Cathy has called “one big fight that all of us share”) has left many members reeling to this day. The lingering impact of those strikes — including projects that have been held or scrapped, budgets that have been cut, or runaway production to Canada or elsewhere — has made the past couple of years feel especially concerning for hardworking postproduction pros across many classifications.
To help those facing hardships, the Guild has created a number of initiatives to help members with everything from healthcare to financial support. As concerns grew about how AI will impact postproduction workflows, Repola asked the board of directors in January 2023 to create what became the Guild’s Emerging Technology Committee. She also restarted her “Coffee with Cathy” series to create space for members to have open dialogue with her about these and other issues.
After the difficult contract negotiations of 2018 and 2021, Repola said engagement and activism increased within the Guild’s membership, and she felt strongly that those sentiments would drive the negotiations in 2024, which proved to be correct when she successfully led a Basic Agreement contract negotiation with film and TV producers alongside other Hollywood locals.
Her successor, Scott George, has been mentored by and worked with Repola for many years and is a third-generation member of Local 683. He aims to continue to bring strength and stability to the union in the years to come.
Upon Repola announcing her retirement last August, Guild president Alan Heim, ACE used two words to describe her 32 years of service: grace and courage.
But she’s still her father’s daughter.
“To tell you the truth, the accolades and all this stuff makes me really uncomfortable,” she said. “It’s always been about the members to me.”
To read about colleagues paying tribute to Cathy’s work, please click here.
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