No SAG Strike! ...please
Wow, my first movie industry related post?
If you are a member of SAG, and you find yourself in possession of a "Go on strike? Y/N" type ballot, I implore you to vote NO...
No SAG Strike! PetitionTo: AMPTP & SAG ( Read more... )
If you are a member of SAG, and you find yourself in possession of a "Go on strike? Y/N" type ballot, I implore you to vote NO...
No SAG Strike! PetitionTo: AMPTP & SAG ( Read more... )
Not sucking it up to strike kind of guarantees a slow death. SAG is the strongest guild. That's both bad (they get things, the getting of which fucks everybody) and good - basically, if they can't get the studios to be honest about what they're doing with new media, who can?
There's a very strong argument to be made that the business is in a huge transition, and the money is going to be different, and come from different places. It hurts everyone for the guilds to argue for theirs when that retards the studio's ability to shift & find an optimal new model. EXCEPT: the studios have made their bed, as far as compromise goes. They've built themselves no good will. Perhaps part of their new business model should be to generate less bad faith with their employees/business partners (by being less fraudulent, maybe?), and one of the ways to encourage them in that direction may be a strike.
Also - what's wrong with trying to increase scale?
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The teamsters supported the WGA strike, which was hard for them, and smart of them, because unions make other unions stronger when they help each other strike, not when they encourage them not to. Encouraging another union not to strike is totally to defect in a game of prisoner's dilemma.
Also, even if SAG were not to strike on behalf of another union, there's no reason to believe it would help, because there's no causal link between actors not getting the money, and the teamsters/set guys getting it. SAG cannot control the money they don't spend.
You can say that increasing scale for production unions has forced productions out*, but I see no clear line - I see a high probability that's studio bullshit. The studios lie. Also, there have been rampant cost increases at the very top - extremely high payouts to some actors have distorted the pay structure, and many blame it for the destruction of small movies. I'm not sure I'll go with destruction, but I think it's been a significant factor. Ryan, no offense to you, you've argued exactly on behalf of increases here. But I don't know if your job involves many small films (?), so this doesn't put you at risk. I know people who are getting screwed by that (and I prefer small movies) so I have reason to feel differently. Not to mention that arguing for people at the top to have the right to bargain for more while scale stays put is asking the union to eat its young, which will weaken the union.
* Actually, I'll recant here. It may be true that this stuff got outsourced, because the teamsters are the easiest to fuck, when it comes down to it. Replacing crew by moving to Canada is easier than replacing Tom Cruise (who should always be replaced, at every opportunity!). But...knowing what those guys do, and what their jobs are, I wouldn't ask that they ask for less. I've seen sets where the rules fucked with just a little, and it can feel like a slave ship. Like, it can feel totally, hello, welcome to the dawn of the industrial age, would you like this five year old child to carry that 80lb sack of rocks for you? But this is just another argument against the pay structure being top heavy. Teamsters got expendable when one person could take home $20m. Or - they were always potentially expendable, but when the pay for one person got to $20m, that chance came to 1.
Speaking of cost increases at the top - another source has been the rampaging practice of giving agents and managers production credits (let's just leave aside the cost increases due to the proliferation of managers beside agents), and the increasing numbers of people listed as producers on all projects (especially TV, but everywhere). The increasing salaries paid to big actors has allowed their agents to get bigger shares for themselves - it's given them the leverage to get themselves paid twice, as agents and as producers. Add a manager, and a large star can be directly responsible for five large cuts of the available money.
To phrase the whole situation in the most extreme terms possible: it's like every band has become Metallica, the music industry is losing money, and the suits claim this is why they're cutting payment packages to new bands.
Actually, it's worse - it's not the suits making the proposal, it's the people who make the really modest salaries and who work with the new bands.
That the industry can just cut SAG out may be the best reason for SAG not to strike, but I'm not even sure about that. From everything I know about it, as a historian and a lawyer as well as a WGA member, these moments are some of the very few where there may just be two sides: workers and management. It's dicey - dicey to the point of being a defector in a game of prisoner's dilemma - to side with management against a union. It's hard and physics-defying enough for any union to decide to strike all on its own.
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::chuckle:: When I got home to my inbox my first thought was "I certainly hope those are all edits... otherwise this is a BOOK!" ;)
I completely agree that the topheavy nature of the industry is damaging to 90% [or more] of the participants. But it sadly will almost always be topheavy because so many people want to be a part of it. Whether it's the limelight they find appealing or the "drive a truck and sit for 10-16 hours a day playing with your PSP at megabucks/hr" reputation some of the production unions get, there's a LOT of people lining up to be a part of the workforce in this industry. When union members sit around unemployed as often as entry level union members do because the field is glutted, and the field's glutted because of the high wages they've negotiated over the years, I'm not sure increasing scale will fix the problem. I've seen similar problems in other unions totally unrelated to the entertainment industry - new recruits lining up for the membership/training because of the promise of easy, big money.
Now, certainly cutting back on blockbuster name pay and using lesser talent is a possible solution - but you know investors aren't gonna want to risk it. The sheeple who tend to fill blockbuster name sold seats are looking for their McDonald's of film - familiar and predictable and satisfying in its dependability if not its "nutritional value". So I doubt we'll see them opt for less expensive talent as an answer, much as we all might benefit from (and ultimately enjoy) it. The older studio contract model was also undesirable, of course - hence us moving away from it.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but considering what drives the market to be so oversupplied in the first place, I'm not convinced increasing scale is the solution.
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In my observation (but it's one of the things I'm trying to learn more about), industries have lifetimes (like ant colonies, like empires). When a system gets top heavy, the observation "there's nothing that can be done about that" may be less useful than, "that system is near death."
About 8 years ago, what I started noticing was that I had more money to spend on media entertainment than there was entertainment I wanted to spend it on. And now, in about the term of years it would take for other entertainment options to get up to sufficient speed to reach me (I'm no early adopter), they have. It used to be that I wanted to see movies, but there were no movies to see. Now I've found other things to do.
That wealth can't be redistributed back down the structure, to make the business more flexbile (and adaptable, and able to survive) is a real problem. Because then the only likely eventuality for that system is death.
And by that reckoning, in this country, we may currently living in a hospice. What are we going to do about it? Again, while trying to find solutions, I question the utility of the word "sheeple."
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It has been argued by many for a long time that the traditional structure of entertainment media is a dinosaur. The music and film industries have been shaking at their foundations for a long time now with the advent of digital formats and the prevalence of DVD usage. Even TV now is struggling to cope with the shifting balance thanks to commercial-less viewing habits and online streaming. It's very obvious to many that restructuring the industry to the lower level flexibility mode would be beneficial - in all sorts of industries - but our country is full of examples of upper level management in all sorts of industries ignoring or disbelieving this is the case. The major corporations (in which category the entertainment players largely fall) have been in a trend of ever-increasing instead of dropping back down to smaller, more agile configurations. Much of our corporate culture is looking like Aged Rome. I do hope that it doesn't all fall simultaneously - one industry at a time is enough, really. But is increasing scale going to make it easier or harder for smaller, more agile players to get into the game? It just sounds like a move that could be counterproductive to long term longevity of the industry for either the majors or the little guys trying to break in.
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