One small anecdote I neglected to recount about the recent IA negotiation.
During contract talks, you do a lot of sitting around and waiting. And while you wait, you talk. During one such lull I fell into conversation with a representative from a live-action union who told me the following:
"We've had problems with unpaid overtime for years. Producers expect our people to take work home, or work until two in the morning, and show up for work again at 7:00 a.m., all without extra compensation. Our union didn't even try to police the contract violations for a long time. Now that we are trying to police them, production companies are getting mad.
If our people refuse to work off-the-clock, they get accused of not being 'team players'."
I responded with: "It never occurs to these people that their company agreed in a contract to pay overtime. So maybe they're not team players when they refuse to pay wages that corporations have pledged in writing to pay."
But hey. Many companies make a practice of ignoring state and federal labor codes. Why should collective bargaining agreements be any different?
(And aren't you glad to know there's so much of this crap going around?)
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I don't doubt the truth of that story, but what kind of people on a live action shoot can take work home? Costumers? Property people etc. are pretty vigilant about stuff on a hot set/production staying at the studio, I'd thought. What then?
This is very interesting because for years many of us 839 guys have assumed that maybe our union is a bit soft at times(no offense), but damn, those other iatses are tough cookies who don't put up with squat, ever. I guess we were wrong. Too bad to hear that.
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