Shifting Tides

Fifteen-plus years ago, when cgi work began coming into the Animation Guild's wheelhouse, there were a lot of cg artists who were fiercely independent and not used to being members of a labor organization. I heard from many, "We don't need no union! We make our OWN deals!" But now, close to two decades later, hearts and minds are changing:

... I am fearful of the time when I am told "goodbye and thanks!", even when I know it's coming... and even when I have work lined up elsewhere.

Living with the fear of not having my family covered by insurance is perhaps the toughest thing affecting my life right now. It's not burn-out. I am a cg stud. I know the drill. If we had universal health care, my life would be sooo much different.

That's why I am no longer scoffing at the idea of a union. Storing insurance hours I am not nuts about, but at least I wouldn't have to face COBRA costs at layoff time, which for my family are upwards of $1,700 per month (to maintain PPO level insurance). Two months of COBRA almost kills any savings one has saved up with all the overtime taken in. ...

There are, it seems, only so many cow-flop sandwiches that people are willing to eat. When a management exec says "Long hours? No overtime? That's the way the industry is. It's standard practice," the song-and-dance begins to get old.

"Standard practice" isn't immutable. When editors, make-up artists, grips and other on-set employees had no unions, they came into work and moved sets and pushed cameras "until they fell down." (The words of an old-timer who was there to witness the unending hours and total exhaustion.)

Standard practice. Then film-workers got unionized and the conditions of employment got better. When somebody tells me that "This is just the way things are," I always smile and nod and think to myself: "Until they're not." Slavery used to be a constitutionally-protected right for slave owners. Women didn't have the right to vote. Booze was legal to drink, then it wasn't, then it was again. It's always useful to remember that most everything is arbitrary and everything is temporary. It not only helps keep you sane, but it motivates you to push for making things a bit more bearable in the here and now.

Because nothing is forever. So why not work to make the next thirty-six months an improvement over the last thirty-xis months?