Monday, November 14, 2011

The Uncomped

To add to Friday's thread:

I was saying that overtime without overtime payments has been going on a long time. But I've seen artists combat it in the following ways ...

1) I've seen departments at different studios work collectively to make sure a) Everybody took breaks at a set time; b) Everybody left at the prescribed quitting hour; c) Nobody worked over without authorization.

2) The Animation Guild has gone into studios and grieved for unpaid work. This involved the business representative getting confirmation that employees were working after hours without payment. (Sometimes this happens, sometimes not.)

3) The business rep has held meetings with departments and taken issues they have to producers of the show. Adjustments in scheduling were made.

Some General Operations

* The more unemployment there is, the more abuses creep into the studio environment. The less unemployment there is, the fewer abuses occur. (Call this "The magic of the market.")

* When employees act collectively they tend to have more leverage. (I'm not referring to "union action" here. I'm referring to groups of employees behaving like unionists and pushing back together -- most times without the union involved.)

So what else can be done?

Change your department's culture. Don't let peers work extra hours gratis.

Report unpaid overtime to the business agent. He'll take action in a variety of ways, after first strategizing with the reporting artist.

Come to the next General Membership Meeting on Tuesday, November 29th. At 1105 N. Hollywood Way. We'll be expounding on this subject.

2 comments:

pissed off satan! said...

The bosses and those requesting the o.t. should be there too! It just pisses me off to see those parkin spots empty when you're coming in on a saturday!! How silly are WE to let them do this to us?!?

Anonymous said...

The answer the the question above my is...very.

Thank you Steve posting about this again. I know for a fact I'll be at the meeting.

But we also have to discuss some reason whey we are working overtime. Like how we are doing other peoples jobs now, like timing our own sequences. Which may be part of the problem. We need to talk about this and what we can do.

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