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Unions Urging Actors Not To Work On Hobbit Movie
lbalbalba writes "Last we heard about The Hobbit, Guillermo Del Toro dropped out, Peter Jackson was unofficially directing and secretly auditioning actors, the movie had yet to be green-lit, and Ian McKellen was getting super-antsy about the whole thing and threatening not to play Gandalf. This shouldn't help the long-gestating movie happen any quicker: Actors guilds including SAG issued actual alerts yesterday against working on any of the Hobbit films, advising their members not to take parts in the non-union production, should they be offered them."
simply walk into an audition.
Bah. While there's no doubt that, at one point, unions served a vital purpose in protecting workers from abuse, nowadays, they're merely another expensive middle-man cost. Paid for by the protection racket^H^H^H^union dues and ultimately by the consumer.
Thank you, no.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Aren't these the same movies (producers?) that used 'hollywood accounting' to turn virtually no profit and thus dodge paying a huge chunk of money to Tolkien's trust or what ever they call themselves?
>>>"The Do Not Work Order tells actors, "If you are contacted to be engaged on The Hobbit please notify your union immediately."
It should be up to the actors whether or not they want to work on a non-union film. But I guess this is what happens when you make megaliths like corporations... there has to be counter-balancing force like the union, and the citizen gets squashed in the middle.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
until Robert Rodriguez is chosen as director so this film can be done properly as per Tolkein's vision.
Unions are supposed to represent their members' interests, but the way unions behave these days I often wonder if it's not the members who are serving their unions. SAG prohibits is actors from working on non-union productions, and if it weren't for "right to work" statutes they would likely get away with it too. I do appreciate the need for pressure against employers who refuse to give fair treatment and compensation to their employees, but I often feel that unions are yet one more bureaucracy that employees have to deal with.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Anyone else initially read that as "Unicorns Urging Actors Not To Work On Hobbit Movie". I imagined Charlie's "friends" yelling "Don't make the Hobbit film! It won't end we-e-e-llll. Noooo, it won't. It'll end ba-a-a-a-d. You must kill them Charlie, before it's too late."
They have some really stupid restrictions. Take Sin City for example. Frank Miller was very unwilling to have any more of his work turned in to a movie, because he'd been badly screwed over by Hollywood. Robert Rodriguez figured he would win Miller over and in fact did. So they started work on the movie. Rodriguez felt that Miller did so much in directing the film that he was an equal, not an assistant director, but another director. However the Director's Guild doesn't allow that. All films have one and only one director. There can be assistants, but only one director. In the end, Rodriguez left the DGA so that Miller could have director credit. Because of that, he lost his position as director on another film.
The guilds in Hollywood are in every way as corrupt and stupid as the studios themselves.
By following the rules of the Film Actor's Guild(F.A.G.), the world can become a better place; that handles dangerous people with talk, and reasoning; that, is the fag way. One day you'll all look at the world us actors created and say, "wow, good going, fag. You really made the world a better place, didntcha, fag?"
I think that the union is trying to have US-style closed shops in New Zealand. Not a good plan.
"Closed Shops" are (from what I read) frowned upon (if not illegal) in New Zealand. It is up to the individual whether or not they join the union and pick up the collective contract. You can't force them, and you can't say, "You can only hire union members". This is different to the US and Canada which still allow "union shops" to exist.
Thankfully, Peter Jackson covers this in his statement:
"He always honoured actors' union conditions if they were union members"
You want to have a full union membership in the cast? Approach them and ask them to join.
We already have a reasonably good Hobbit movie. Sure, it's animated, but it will do.
SAG does not want non-union actors to work on the film. New Zealand's local actors are not unionized. Despite the first Lord of the Rings trilogy being filmed in New Zealand (maybe because Peter Jackson is from New Zealand), the SAG is now afraid that film makers will start making films in New Zealand without union support. Did they object during the first 3 films?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
In some cases, the unions simply have enough force. Part of their "collective bargaining" is to bargain that nobody gets to hire non-union employees. So even though there may be no real legal prevention, there is effective prevention. Join or you get no work in that field. In other places, there is legal protection. In non "right to work" states if a given field is unionized, membership is non-optional. You work in that field, you MUST join the union by law. You get situations like where the UAW is forcing independent daycare providers to pay dues. See the UAW represents daycare workers in that state, and membership is non-optional. So they are forcing it even on people who are working for themselves, and thus a situation where a union has no relevance. See: http://current.com/news/92664102_day-care-workers-are-now-uaw-workers.htm.
All of this is just the legal reasons who joining unions is often non-optional. There are also less savory cases of intimidation and violence.
They also work hard to keep it that way. For example right now there's a measure coming up on the ballot here to force all union votes to be secret ballot. Just like actual election votes, and most other votes, the identity of people voting would be protected, you wouldn't know who voted what way. The unions are fighting it extremely hard. Now why would they do that? What reason is there to not want a secret ballot? That system is well established.
The reason, of course, is pressure. If you know how people voted, you can pressure them to vote the way you want. That's the whole reason we use secret ballots in political elections is so that can't happen. However the unions are concerned if it happened, people could vote to disband the union and they'd not be able to pressure them out of it.
If it was just as simple as "Don't join if you don't wanna," it wouldn't be nearly such a big deal. However it isn't.
Some states allow for that kind of thing. "Right to work states," have less employee protections in general (you are usually at will) but also less union protection. You can work a job that has a union, but not be a member and all that. However a number of states, in particular those with big unions with lots of power, are not that way. You are required to join the union that represents you, like it or no, if you work in a given field.
In some cases it is technically legal not to be a member but impossible as a practicality because the union forces places not to hire non-union workers.
This is part of the reason why you see so much ill will towards unions from some in the US. Many of them, in particular the larger ones, have a "Our way or the highway," situation. If you work in an industry they control, you have to be a member and play by their rules. That leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many.
Bad Taste was bad, but its so bad its good. Its sort of like watching "Plan 9 from Outer Space". It has an appeal to Troma lovers as well. My take on the movie was that Peter Jackson wanted to make something like a Troma movie to appeal to a particular sense of humor.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
The unions aren't in any way attempting to secure equal pay for equal work. It's just a ploy to raise some salaries without real reason. If it weren't they'd be willing to "equalize" pay by lowering that of those they seem to feel are overpaid.
I live near Philly. We've seen, first hand, unions try to impose insane work rules. It's almost as if they were hell bent on bring down our region.
It's not just that they are more expensive, but their work rules and protection of ineffective workers hurt businesses.
Killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is just not a concern to them.
At least that perception I have (and others) is the reason why we have an anti-Union attitude. Seeing constant strikes for relatively sane reforms in France doesn't lend support to the perception either.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I think the anti union feel comes from unions acting like asses in many cases. For example in Michigan if you are in child day care you must, by law, be part of the union. Actually it's more cryptic than that. If you have a day care You are a government employee and get union dues deducted. No choice on the matter even if you're a sole proprietor running your own small day care.
Or even been to a tradeshow? Want to plug something into an electrical outlet, like you have done countless times in your life? Sorry, wait for a union electrician to show up because it's part of their union contract (Not an insurance matter most of the time).
Or maybe a Production engineer at a plant, with an assembly line down to something stupid like a tripped breaker, valve stuck, one of the normal reasons for a lockup. You could get the line going within a heartbeat but instead waste lots of manhours waiting for the one certified union worker to push the button for you.
It's because of these stupid rules, that while the intention may have started as good, hurts the company as a whole and gives unions a bad rep. Now I do have a history in the trades and I thing the formal journeyman / masters process is a very good thing. The bureaucracy is an entirely other thing.
There are 29.6 million small businesses in the United States. 70% of all jobs created in the past 10 years were due to small business. More than half of the non-farming US GDP is from small businesses. And this percentage can easily change. Think of all of the Japanese mega-corporations and all of the office workers working for huge faceless corporations. 90% of Japanese are, in fact, employed by small businesses.
The evil super-rich who own the means of production and all the wealth on the planet represent not even a fraction of all of the businesses and not much of the jobs that are out there. People only remember the truck driver that ran them off the road, never the tens of thousands of truck drivers that changed lanes for you.
If unions are to be organized, let them be organized and protected like they are in Japan -- on a per-company, per organization basis. Under no circumstances should there be an "auto workers union", or a "teachers union", or an "actors union". Perhaps there could be a "Ford union", a "Southern Ohio District Teachers Union", or a "Paramount Pictures Actors Union". And different unions could talk to each other to compare their conditions.
But as it stands, unions are too large to accurately represent anyone, they are literally bursting at the seams with corruption, they have zero checks and balances, you are forced to join the union for most union jobs (unless you your administration to be pressured by the union to fire you or you like working 2 hours per week), they destroy companies or at the very least make them extremely uncompetitive from their often ridiculous demands, and most of their assets are private and completely unscrutinizable (unless you like be demonized by unions).