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."

Comments

One does not...

[Anonymous Coward]

simply walk into an audition.

Re:One does not...

[bhcompy]

Well, one does if they serve po-ta-toes

Re:One does not...

[inanet]

A big issue here in NZ is that it is illegal to force people into unions, and what the SAG and the other unions are trying to force,
is that everyone must have a union contract.

in NZ it must be an Opt-in collective, it cannot be compulsory. however that is exactly what SAG, FIA, et al are trying to force.

Re:One does not...

[ooshna]

God damned genetically modified food.

Re:One does not...

[MasaMuneCyrus]

A handy guide for the US:

"Liberal" in the US means "Democrat", which, as was elegantly stated before by Boberfett, refers to an authoritarian leftist. Democrats are notoriously pro-union, and unions are as important to Democrats as hard-line Christians are to Republicans.
"Right-winger" or "The Right" (you can usually add condescending sub-human remarks of any amount to that) are what the Left refers to the Right as, which is are basically authoritarian rightists.

A Centrist, or an Undecided Voter, is what the rest of us are -- typically socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The resounding problem with the US two-party system is that Republicans have to go insane rightist to win their primaries, and Democrats have to go insane leftist to win their primaries. In the end, the "undecided" voters usually have to weigh which they prefer -- social responsibility of some of the Democrats, or fiscal responsibility of some of the Republicans (note: not all Republicans are Christ-warriors, and not all Democrats are authoritarian-socialist nut jobs. In fact, most aren't.). Fortunately, the entire country is moving more centrist -- partly by necessity, but also partly because IMO, most of the country is more center than they are left or right (leftwingers have to face the reality that their utopian visions can't be funded realistically, and rightwingers face the reality that free market with no regulation results in the glory of Wall St.!).

On that note, most of this crap occurs with national-level politics. The national politicians always try to stir up partisanism and nationalism -- usually successfully. Most local races, and some state races, are remarkably level-headed.

Lots of internal reforms are also going on that a foreign observer might not notice: the economy is the elephant in the room, but there's a big freedom of speech and religion battle (i.e., NY mosque) that will force the US to become a little more liberal on the religion front; education reform is getting pretty big (78% or so give US public schools a "C" or "D" grade); immigration reform keeps coming up and is unavoidable (bring us your huddled masses longing to be free?); increasing attention is being brought to ailing infrastructure, and there are calls for "rebuilding America"; more and more people are paying attention on the energy and technology front as the US tries to become greener, and the national broadband plan; US products are getting a little better (e.g., Ford, Chevy) as people have grown increasingly tired of shit-tier products and we're trying to double our exports; we're trying to get along better with our neighbors and act more responsibly as a mediator in the world (instead of micromanaging it brutishly); and, most importantly, the vast majority of the US population is extremely fed-up with the federal government -- both parties -- which will hopefully force things to become more sane and responsible.

Unions

[Adrian Lopez]

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.

Re:Unions

[noidentity]

An organization is initially created for a specific purpose, but once met, it keeps on living, with its primary goal to justify its continued existence.

Re:Unions

[AK Marc]

Unions limit economic freedom and prevent progress.

Yes, we know. 100 shareholders get together and form a corporation and that's proper capitalist freedom. 100 workers get together to form a union and they are communist freedom-hating Luddites. Forgive me if I ignore everything that comes out of the mouth of someone who evidently has no grasp of reality. Both are bad. One is a reaction to the other. And both have morphed into something other than intended over the years. But unions are a valid and necessary reaction to corporations and their actions. They never would have existed if the corporations weren't screwing employees as much as possible, so blame unions on the corporations. They worked really hard to get them started.

Re:Unions

[BasilBrush]

Unions limit economic freedom and prevent progress. With collective bargaining, everyone is looked at as interchangeable when in reality they aren't. There are some people who need to be fired because they are bad at their job, while other people should be promoted because they are better at theirs. Unions prevent this from happening, and prevent the basic economic right of seeking employment wherever you see fit.

Using the example of this story, it's easy to see that this is so oversimplified it is untrue. There are those that are not interchangeable - big actors whose name on a poster will increase box office. But there are many more - e.g. the actors playing orcs - that are are very much interchangeable. They are very poorly paid - to the extent that they typically need to work as waiters or behind bars between acting jobs. This doesn't necessarily come from being bad at their jobs - many very good actors can't get much work. It comes from the fact that the public can only remember a limited number of stars at any one time. And those that manage to get there do so from a mix of hard work, talent, nature's gift of good looks, luck, breaks etc. Not just hard work.

Supply and demand is what makes the interchangable actor's rewards low. Not lack of effort or being bad at their job. It's perfectly reasonable for such people to group together to create collective bargaining situation where they are less exploited.

Re:Unions

[SolarStorm]

I can

I worked as a prof in a local college that had a "Professional Association" (read expensive union)

When I stated that I would prefer not to join, I was told it was a requirement. But they asked why. I told them, I would rather negotiate my employment conditions as I could do a more effective job representing my skills and their value than a simple grid that listed years of experience and years of education. As an example. I earned the same salary teaching Advanced C Programming (yes this was a while ago) and earned the same salary as the prof teaching a high school math upgrader. My marking alone took many more hours than the multiple choice exams my office mate had.

In 1996 the college went through a downsizing. Since I was the last man hired, I was the first man to be released. The students actually demonstrated to keep me. ( I was the only prof who had actually done real development work in C, the others that they kept actually sat in my lecture in the morning and attempted to reteach in their afternoon block )

At one point, I thought I would try and work with the system. I booked a meeting with my union rep and made a proposal for a 3rd dimension on the salary grid. Course difficulty. I actually had it mapped out quite well with research from the colleges own industry reports where salary would now be based on length of employment, education, and teaching load. Where the classes were ranked on load. This would then become the 3rd dimension to the grid. I even volunteered to present it at the next meeting.

The answer I got was, "This looks nice, but you elected me as a representative, it is my job to decide what should be put in collective agreements. You then vote on what your union officials decree". My proposal never got a second meeting, nor acknowledgment anywhere.

When the downsizing happened, students complained (in numbers) to the dean, I even suggested to some that they try the union. The information I got back from the union was that they agreed with the college about downsizing so that they could maintain the current salary grid for those remaining. Now if you look at this politically. If you want to maintain your rep seat, keep the people that are staying happy. To bad for those released, but they wont be paying dues next year.

Another example of a real union was the Transit Union. When I was going through school, I drove a bus at night to pay for my college. If a driver called in sick, dispatch could force you to drive a double shift, and once I drove a triple shift. However, because money was important, you were allowed to drive a shift for another driver and he would pay you. The only difference was, if you drove more than 48 hrs that week you were not allowed to pick up another shift. Here is the catch, Say you traded your Tuesday night shift to study and picked up someones shift on the weekend, and then on Wed, dispatch forced to drive an extra shift, you would not be allowed to drive the shift you traded for on the weekend because the time system said you had too many hours.

Off I went to the union meeting, asking that this be looked into. The membership in attendance voted almost unanimously, a couple of abstainers, in favor of discussing this with management and looking at it during the contract negotiations. This was the last I heard of the proposal. When I asked about it, I was told more important issues came up. Some of the items that did get negotiated were absurd at best. "Seat covers for the drivers seat" for example.

In the end any union or prof association I have ever belonged to has only managed to lower my salary to what I have been able to negotiate myself, collect fees from me, and not carry forward any of my concerns. Most were more interested in keeping their own rep posting.

Last example. My father owned a tin smith shop. He employed approximately 30ish tradesmen. One day a few of them got together and decided that it was time that the shop become a union shop. Sometimes you have t

Re:First Union?

[Improv]

Unions still serve the same role they ever did. It's an important role.

It may impose cost, but whatever costs it imposes are the other side of keeping it being a reasonable and workable thing to be an actor.

In modern times, we don't need less collective bargaining, we need more. If, for example, medical interns had a union to prevent 16-hour shifts, I imagine we could agree that to be a step forward. Cost to consumer is not the only thing worth optimising in society, and harmful competition still exists.

Re:First Union?

[Magic5Ball]

Unions have also claimed to attempt to secure equal pay for equal work, which remains an outstanding concern for particular genders and races. Since unions have not succeeded in closing such gaps over decades since the industrial safety problems were resolved, but instead have installed a seniority regime that systematically ignores workers' performance of their duties in determining wages and job security, we should be open to breaking the unions' monopoly on representing worker rights.

Re:First Union?

[Adrian Lopez]

What sort of amendment to the First Amendment would you have in mind to prevent collective bargaining by employees with their more powerful employers^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^W^Wprotection rackets?

If freedom of association means employees have the right to join a union and engage in collective bargaining, then surely it also means they have the right to either join a different union (which the law often prevents under "sole bargaining agent" provisions) or not be represented by any union at all (which, again, is not always possible).

Union Shop/Closed Shop.

[Jason Pollock]

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.

Re:First Union?

[jpate]

ok (and citations therein). If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, search the page for "344:1" for the pay gap, and see the third-to-last paragraph for some discussion on unions and a reference.

Re:First Union?

[bhcompy]

Because the wrong people invariably end up with the job security and ridiculous pension. There is no real method in typical US union contracts for weeding out the bad, since they're seniority based rather than performance based when it comes to job security.

Re:The guilds are even dumber

[braeldiil]

1) The Director's guild rule is there for a reason - it keeps the money-men from insisting of directing credit. Director's decided they wanted to get credit for their work, instead of living with a legal type system, where the headline billing goes to the biggest name, not the people who did all the work. Judges don't actually write most of their work, but they get all the credit. And the same goes for big law firms, where the people doing most of the work (paralegals and researchers) get no credit at all. Anyway, this was a big problem (for the directors, at least) when Hollywood was young, so when they unionized it was one of their basic principles. And its a reasonable position, even if you disagree with it. 2) Rodriguez knew the rules when he joined the guild. He knew the rules when he tried to name Miller as co-director. He was given multiple chances to back off, and chose instead to thumb his nose at the guild. It became an ego issue with him, and the guild reacted as they had to. Remember, the guild cares deeply about their members getting proper credit, and bending here immediately opens the door for other to claim director's credit (J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter, for instance). This wasn't a case of a guild be capricious - it's a guild protecting a (or perhaps the) core value of their members - that the director of the film deserves credit (or blame) for his or her film.

Re:First Union?

[mjtaylor24601]

but how frequently do employers bargain collectively with the unions?

All the time. Ever heard of a public corporation? That's just an embodiment of a group of partial owners (aka stock holders) joining together to gain, among other things, the benefits of collective bargaining power.

Re:See how destructive unions can be?

[Sycraft-fu]

Ya well few problems with that:

1) Talented people have no difficulty finding other work, and thus the competition keeps pay high. You may notice that there are a lot of non-union jobs out there that are quite good. I don't see CCIEs needing a union, they seem to be able to find work for lots of money. When you have a talent that is in demand, that alone takes care of compensation. People have to pay to keep you. This is the case with actors. They are in demand.

2) Much of the "Race to the bottom" you talk about has been taken care of by the government. If you research labour unions you find they came about because of industries with extremely exploitative and dangerous practices. That is now handled rather efficiently by oversight agencies like OSHA. They can bring more heat on an employer than a union ever could. In particular with Hollywood we aren't talking about minors who are perpetually in debt to the company store and working in dangerous conditions. We are talking about rich people working in the environment they choose.

3) Unions often crease a "race to the bottom" for employees. The protection of any and everyone leads to a situation where bad employees cannot be gotten rid of. That increases costs over all, and thus mean less compensation for good employees. In particular, many unions favour seniority over all else. So no matter your talent, no matter your work ethic, you are forced in to the same pay as everyone else at your level.

4) You have to deal with the realities of the world, and that there is non-union competition. I am not just talking about 3rd world sweatshop labour. Have a look at the American car companies. They compete with companies who are non-union, and build their cars right in America, like Toyota. Companies that pay well, have good working environments, but are not union and lack that overhead. You have to compete with that and unions tend to be bad at it.

I'm sorry but I just see a massive divide between the sort of pay and conditions that lead to unions back in the day, and the places where there are unions now. When you have a good work environment and make good money, you do not need a union.

Re:First Union?

[FuckingNickName]

In short of course you have the right to assemble and collectively bargain all you want, but your employer shouldn't be forced by law to assist you with that.

Unfortunately, this thread is full of people starting off with the premise "there is a problem with union law" (including single-union laws which are effectively anti-union) and assuming the conclusion "there is a problem with unions". Disney copyright extensions are bad, but that doesn't necessarily mean all businesses which make their money with the help of copyright protections are pure evil.

That is often not an option

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:First Union?

[Reverberant]

The Upper Big Branch mine was a non-union mine. In union mines, workers have the power to stop the types of unsafe working practices that contributed to the UBB fatalities.

Re:So let me get this straight

[AK Marc]

The union in NZ was apparently abandoned. They didn't file necessary paperwork, so it ceased to exist. Now, when something big is going to be filmed in NZ, they are requiring that an NZ production file proper paperwork in Australia. The NZ production company rightly stated that was not strictly legal (legal to sign, but not binding to anyone, so quite pointless). The Australian company pressed the US company to make it a union issue. If the union had properly maintained its NZ presence, this wouldn't be an issue. Peter Jackson isn't trying to block the union. There doesn't exist any he can sign with.

Many of the NZ actors are unionized, but the union doesn't exist in NZ. It's that problem that's causing the issues. The union existed in NZ for the first films, so there was no problem. The union disappeared between then and now.

Re:First Union?

[Aquitaine]

I am an AEA member (the stage actor's union) which means I can join SAG if I want. But my point is the same for both unions.

We do not need more collective bargaining. Both SAG and AEA spend a truckload on things like lobbying for health care. You should have seen our newsletters when congress was debating it -- first it was 'call your congressman and support this bill!' And then when it seemed like the 'Cadillac' plans would be taxed, it was 'call your congressman and fight this bill!'

As a professional actor you do not have a choice when it comes to joining the unions. If you just act on the side then there are plenty of non-union stage jobs at dinner theaters and that sort of thing, and some professional tours every now and then (though the unions have pretty much successfully unionized these). When I got my first professional stage job, I forked over about 1/5 of what I was going to make over the 4 months of the tour for the $1400 initiation fee (and then paid a couple percentage points out of my pay check each week). You can't choose not to do it.

Having said that, the acting unions, like most unions, perform a number of great functions. Before they existed, you couldn't make a respectable living as an actor -- now you can but it's just very hard (which is probably always going to be the case). There are lots of really helpful people who do things like go over all the time sheets because your stage manager didn't keep track of the hours you spent driving / assembling the show / acting the show, and you get a check in the mail 3 months after the fact because your union is looking out for you. They also help you with taxes and do a lot of fairly simple 'here's how the business works' type programs for new actors.

But like most unions, they never ever give anything up that they've won in past negotiations. Before, the producers controlled the business; now the unions do, though of course they wouldn't put it that way. What's happened is that there's now a huge divide between the very small (99 or fewer) seat theaters and the 'professional' ones where they have to do everything according to union rules -- that means actor's union, the electricians' union, the stagehands' union ... because the unions stick together and if you get one on board, then you get 'em all. It's very, very difficult to make money running a theater, and as a consequence most bigger theaters won't produce anything unless it's a big hit show. So lots of fad musicals and less original drama. To some extent that's how the business would be anyway, union or not, but it's exacerbated by how expensive running an AEA theater is.

Compared to groups like the SEIU, the entertainment unions are pretty tame, and as I hope I've made clear, I'm grateful for what my union has done for me -- but if I could, I'd tear them all apart and start from scratch, because we have the same big, bloated, self-serving unions just grabbing for the biggest piece of pie they can (an actual headline from Equity News last year: 'How AEA Will Get a Piece of the Stimulus Pie,' as if actors needed federal stimulus money!) in the same fashion that big business used to do it before the unions. No union leader stops and asks 'just because I CAN do this or demand that, should I?'

It's all just a matter of degrees.