The Hobbit in hot water with the unions...

[Craig Parkes]

This dispute, from an interested but outside party in New Zealand, this particular episode just smacks of outside interference at the worst possible time.

The reality is that New Zealand labour laws would have to change for Actors Equity to get what they want, because they simply do not represent a large enough pool of talent in New Zealand (and are also not a legal 'union' under our laws).

That doesn't make their desire to see pay parity any less relevant, or their desire to talk to the production in order to secure assurances of an equitable deal for their members more relevant - but the way MEAA has presented this to other unions to create a boycott without actually presenting the issue with New Zealand labour laws AND doing it at such a late stage in preceedings isn't collective bargaining, it's political grandstanding and throwing a spanner in the works of an already troubled production.

It's very hard to see how this can have a positive outcome for Actors Equity or New Zealand based productions at this point - and it feels like both sides are tracking towards mutually assured destruction...

Except of course, that the Hobbit can be shot almost anywhere, whereas those actors aren't going to find another production of that size cropping up elsewhere in New Zealand.

And the larger US actors unions have nothing to lose and most things from this production not being shot in New Zealand - so I can't really see how their 'support' of New Zealand actors (through an Australian body, who has no legal standing in New Zealand at all) is solidarity, feels more likely that ultimately it's self serving.

 

[Brad Webb]

#1) I seriously doubt anyone makes $75 an hour to simply "turn a wrench." That is 100% BS political rhetoric. Workers making that kind of money on assembly lines are using extremely dangerous equipment that can easily maim or kill you in an instant.

#2) If there is a job paying $75 to turn a wrench - what idiot agreed to pay that much, and how do I get that job.

 

[Samual Murman]

This is SO not the place to be having this discussion. Making me miss all those heartfelt RED vs. 5d conversations.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Let me see, before I joined the union, I averaged making $20,000 a year shooting on average three features a year. After I joined the union, after 23 non-union features, within two years, I averaged $60,000 shooting two features a year. Which sounds more like a yearly income for a middle class worker in America??? Not to mention that now I have healthcare and a pension plan as a union worker compared to my freelance days. A basic middle class income, healthcare, and some money for retirement, just to do highly skilled labor -- yeah, that sounds like Socialism to me!

Most projects pay near guild minimum on wages and the cost of below-the-line union labor is not the reason movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. This is a nonsensical complaint about unions and this mistaken notion that a union film shoot is made up of a bunch of slackers pulling down thousands of dollars a day to sit around and do nothing. My crews work very hard for their salaries, which barely keep them in the middle class in the U.S. so it's complete BULLSHIT to imply that U.S. film workers are overpaid and lazy and should be working more for less and be happy about it. Either you believe that this is skilled labor and should afford someone a middle class lifestyle if they work regularly, or you don't.

 

[Brad Webb]

Also, $60,000 in LA is barely middle class. Hell making $100,000 a year is barely middle class in LA.

 

[Evin Grant]

I have no problem with the idea of organized labour, especially the collective bargaining and benefits aspects (I am a 600 member BTW) but what really bothers me is the bureaucracy and politics of which this episode in NZ is a prime example. I have no doubt's that if a Kiwi union were possible or legal that PJ and the studios would hire them and negotiate a contract. However from the information I've been able to glean NZ law characterizes actors as independent contractors and forbids them from unionizing, or something to that effect. For whatever reason the Australian actors guild has decided to haul the Hobbit's head up on pike instead of attempting to handle this through the NZ government. They see some political gain here and it will be at the expense of the native Kiwi talent and moviegoers.

 

[Samual Murman]

Ask Dave Mullen anything... but, sir, don't mess with his union.

Thank you, Dave.

 

[Matt W.]

Let me see, before I joined the union, I averaged making $20,000 a year shooting on average three features a year. After I joined the union, after 23 non-union features, within two years, I averaged $60,000 shooting two features a year. Which sounds more like a yearly income for a middle class worker in America??? Not to mention that now I have healthcare and a pension plan as a union worker compared to my freelance days. A basic middle class income, healthcare, and some money for retirement, just to do highly skilled labor -- yeah, that sounds like Socialism to me!

Most projects pay near guild minimum on wages and the cost of below-the-line union labor is not the reason movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. This is a nonsensical complaint about unions and this mistaken notion that a union film shoot is made up of a bunch of slackers pulling down thousands of dollars a day to sit around and do nothing. My crews work very hard for their salaries, which barely keep them in the middle class in the U.S. so it's complete BULLSHIT to imply that U.S. film workers are overpaid and lazy and should be working more for less and be happy about it. Either you believe that this is skilled labor and should afford someone a middle class lifestyle if they work regularly, or you don't.

Bravo on voicing an unpopular opinion, one I (mostly) share, as I hope to work my way up to cinematographer (either as you did or by starting as a union grip).

Fwiw (nothing), I get about $1000-$1,500 per feature including pre-production, color grading, and uninsured light rental. So yes I would jump at any opportunity to increase that.

I still cringe at any and all news surrounding this movie, though. It's lawsuit after lawsuit. No one's going to look good coming out of this.

 

[Tom Lowe]

David, it sounds to me like your career went through a natural progression. When you're young you build yourself up. As your reputation and talent grow, so do your paychecks.

My friend Vincent Laforet will probably make half a million dollars this year shooting commercial stuff, mainly on DSLRs. Vince had never even picked up a motion camera before 2008. So why is Vince making half a million bucks? He's not in any unions, he's just talented and in demand. Supply and demand. It always comes down to that.

To me, you either believe in free market economics or you don't. People are free to organize in unions, but to me, unions are basically acting suicidal right now. You can see that they are about to cost NZ the HOBBIT films. Here in the US, our entire manufacturing sector has been WIPED OUT by high labor costs.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Also, $60,000 in LA is barely middle class. Hell making $100,000 a year is barely middle class in LA.

That's the crux of the matter -- I work on union films, I can tell you that the key grips, gaffers, sound mixers, and whatnot that I regularly work with in Los Angeles - I'm talking about veteran department heads in their late 40's, early 50's - are not driving expensive cars and living in big houses, they are struggling to maintain a modest middle class lifestyle. I don't see people making excessive amounts of money for very little work, I see most union people working very hard for a decent salary. It's very misleading to characterize the average union worker as some unskilled laborer who is getting $75/hr. Heck, the basic IA union rate for a camera operator is less than that, I think it's $54/hr, and for a 1st AC, it's around $40/hr according to the rate card, and you're talking about a crew member who could easily screw-up an expensive shoot day if they did something wrong.

If you believe in a free market, then you also have to believe in the right of workers to organize themselves into groups for collective bargaining of wages as a counterforce to the power of large corporations or powerful interests determining wages. It's only natural in human affairs for people to align themselves with other people under a common goal.

How many workers in the U.S. are unionized these days? Under 20%? It's silly to say that this small group is the reason for job loss in the U.S. Even if there were NO unionized workers in the U.S. there would still be some incentive for companies to look overseas for people able to work for even lower wages.

 

[D Fuller]

No, but it might be a reasonable idea to pay manual laborers 30 bucks an hour rather than 75 bucks an hour to turn a wrench, otherwise they will all soon be making 0 bucks an hour. That's just the reality of the situation.

Tom, it might be reasonable, but it is naive as hell to believe that a management interested solely in "shareholder returns" would pay 30 bucks an hour for even skilled labor when it can be had for 3 bucks an hour in China or the Caribbean, or wherever. Maine is full of empty mills and shoe shops where people making much less than that were put out of work by companies moving operations off shore. These companies weren't struggling, they were profitable companies that had been in communities for decades, but (usually when acquired by some larger company) believed they could make more by moving to cheaper labor. They weren't having union problems, and they weren't paying people too much. They were just plain greedy.

Unions are an easy scapegoat, but unions are a response to bad management. All you have to do is to look at Ford and GM to see that the unions are not the root of the problem in American auto manufacturing. Bad management is. Ford and GM both deal with the UAW, but Ford needed no bailout, was profitable the year after the crash, and is making better cars than any American company has made in a long time. They deal with the same markets and the same union, Ford just has better management than GM.

I'm not saying unions can't be unreasonable, obstructionist, and a pain in the ass. They often are. And I don't know anything about labor relations on The Hobbit. But from what I've seen in my time on this planet, more problems with American industry are rooted in bad management than in unions.

 

[Matt W.]

To me, you either believe in free market economics or you don't. People are free to organize in unions, but to me, unions are basically acting suicidal right now. You can see that they are about to cost NZ the HOBBIT films. Here in the US, our entire manufacturing sector has been WIPED OUT by high labor costs.

There's a lot of truth to this, but do you fault the union workers who demanded high wages, or the business owners who chose to outsource their work? The blame lies in both camps.

The free market is a great ideal but when relationships with unions dissolve and the gap between wealthy and poor increases to the extremes it has in recent years--something is wrong, no matter whose hands you place the blame in. We're getting into politics here, but when a living wage isn't sustainable for businesses that's a problem for both businesses and laborers and for the local economy in general.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

My friend Vincent Laforet will probably make half a million dollars this year shooting commercial stuff, mainly on DSLRs. Vince had never even picked up a motion camera before 2008. So why is Vince making half a million bucks? He's not in any unions, he's just talented and in demand. Supply and demand. It always comes down to that.

To me, you either believe in free market economics or you don't. People are free to organize in unions, but to me, unions are basically acting suicidal right now. You can see that they are about to cost NZ the HOBBIT films. Here in the US, our entire manufacturing sector has been WIPED OUT by high labor costs.

Nonsense. Of course the superstars don't need negotiations but superstars are 1 in 100,000. You can't build an industry on superstars. Similarly SAG probably doesn't do much for Julia Roberts.

In the real world most people, even talented hard working folk, can't make demands or negotiate. They will be pitted against each other in a free market to all of their detriments while the execs make hundreds of thousands of dollars on the hard work and creativity of the talent.

As to the "high labor costs" wiping out US industry. You said it yourself: you can find labor in China that'll work for $0.50 a day. If that's the competition then how is a US employee supposed to compete? They can't! No amount of de-organizing is going to allow a US employee compete on cost with someone who charges less than the change I could find in my couch.

Look at the VFX industry to see what happens when the labor doesn't organize. It isn't a pretty picture. Many VFX studios are even openly hoping that their employees unionize so that they can demand more on their behalf. When you're looking at a week without food and someone offers *something*, even at a loss... a small loss is better than a big loss and people take it. It's easy to take the high road, but most people won't take the high road and they'll simply undercut to put food on the table. That's the nature of things. You'll stab your neighbor in the back when you're hungry. Pretty soon everybody is working for peanuts.

How many times have huge budget films made astronomical amounts of money (largely thanks to the VFX) in the box office only to see half of the VFX companies who worked on them go bankrupt? That's what happens when you can't organize. You undercut so that you can at least slow the inevitable but that undercutting brings everybody else down with you.

 

[Tom Lowe]

David, how do you know those unions guys would not be paid the same amount if the union did not exist? Or possibly even more? Hell, there would be a lot more work available if all these big films were not fleeing overseas, that's for sure. More jobs means higher demand for skilled camera crew. Higher demand with the same supply means higher pay. I don't know for sure if pay would go up or down, but have you considered that these talented guys might not have to rely on the unions in order to make a decent wage?

Why can't the free market decide what their labor is worth? Seems to me that there are plenty of sectors of the labor market -- computer programmers for example -- who are not unionized at all, but who pull down very, very nice salaries. Why are computer programmers able to make very nice salaries with no union, but yet you seem to think that camera crew could not make it on their own without the unions?

 

[Tom Lowe]

As to the "high labor costs" wiping out US industry. You said it yourself: you can find labor in China that'll work for $0.50 a day. If that's the competition then how is a US employee supposed to compete? They can't! No amount of de-organizing is going to allow a US employee compete on cost with someone who charges less than the change I could find in my couch.

Gavin, you have to understand that the world is "evening out." In the future, there will not be such huge, huge discrepancies between what people make in Europe and the US, vs what is made in India and China, for example. It will all eventually even out. Right now, pay is skyrocketing in China. You might think 100 bucks a month is terrible for a Chinese worker, but it sure as hell beats scraping to get three bowls of rice a day from land that barely produce food!

Eventually, Chinese paychecks will keep increasing and increasing, while those in the US and Europe will have to come down a bit. The goal is to keep the tide rising around the world, so that in the end, we all enjoy a good standard of living. This will take some adjustment here in the US and will probably mean we will have to work a little harder and save our money better, but this is extremely good news for nearly two billion in China and India, believe me!!

 

[Matt W.]

David, how do you know those unions guys would not be paid the same amount if the union did not exist? Or possibly even more? Hell, there would be a lot more work available if all these big films were not fleeing overseas, that's for sure. More jobs means higher demand for skilled camera crew. Higher demand with the same supply means higher pay. I don't know for sure if pay would go up or down, but have you considered that these talented guys might not have to rely on the unions in order to make a decent wage?

Why can't the free market decide what their labor is worth? Seems to me that there are plenty of sectors of the labor market -- computer programmers for example -- who are not unionized at all, but who pull down very, very nice salaries. Why are computer programmers able to make very nice salaries with no union, but yet you seem to think that camera crew could not make it on their own without the unions?

Read the history of the film industry before unions. It wasn't pleasant.

Also, work in programming is increasingly being outsourced and the fact that the software industry is hugely more profitable than the film industry allows for corporations to pay higher salaries without worrying so much about the bottom line. There are virtually no craft-based fields of work where salaries are increasing.

In a conflict between a corporate entity and a single worker, the corporation will win because it's larger and the individual laborer is replaceable. That's why unions need to exist, to represent the needs of the workers. If unions and corporations can't get along, it's a problem with the market.

The free market isn't working very well in America right now. The gap between the wealthy and poor is increasing, unions are dissolving, labor is increasingly being outsourced, etc.

And selfishly, I'd like to think I'm entitled to a living wage if I work for it.

 

[M Most]

To me, you either believe in free market economics or you don't. People are free to organize in unions, but to me, unions are basically acting suicidal right now. You can see that they are about to cost NZ the HOBBIT films. Here in the US, our entire manufacturing sector has been WIPED OUT by high labor costs.

You call it high labor costs and seem to want to attribute it somehow to labor unions. I would call it a desire by Americans to attain and maintain a fairly reasonable standard of living in the wealthiest country on the planet. Let me ask you a question. Would YOU be willing to work for $75 a month? How low are you willing to go to accommodate the global economy you expect everyone else to understand, accept, and cowtow to? If you really want to point to the root cause of labor costs in the US, you might want to start by looking at the lack of any kind of national health care as one root cause. Or perhaps you believe that studios, producers, and production companies would be happy to give their employees things like health insurance and a living wage out of the goodness of their hearts without the existence of the DGA, SAG, WGA, and IA. If that is the case, you clearly live in a different world than the one I live in.

 

[Matt W.]

This will take some adjustment here in the US and will probably mean we will have to work a little harder and save our money better, but this is extremely good news for nearly two billion in China and India, believe me!!

This simply isn't true. Be it via slavery, imperialism, or cheap outsourced labor, the history of the free market tends toward exploitation. If China or India become the economic powerhouses some predict (and sweatshop workers successfully unionize), cheap labor will eventually be outsourced to Africa.

Look locally: the gap between the wealthiest 1% and the poorest 10% has never been larger in America. How is this indicative of a global trend toward more equal pay?

 

[Tom Lowe]

In a conflict between a corporate entity and a single worker, the corporation will win because it's larger and the individual laborer is replaceable. That's why unions need to exist, to represent the needs of the workers.

Matt, was the UAW representing the needs of auto workers when they drove GM and Chrysler over a cliff and killed tens of thousands of jobs?

The free market isn't working very well in America right now.

That's because we don't have a free market in the US. We haven't for over half a century.

Anyway, this discussion is too political. I'll bow out now. atriot:

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

By the way didn't your friend Vincent Laforet get a foot hold in the industry and recognition (aka a Pulitzer prize) while a union worker?