13 ms·
For another perspective on high-skill labor organization, also based in California, for an industry that dominates the industry of its biggest city and is also
by thebradbain 4y ago
For another perspective on high-skill labor organization, also based in California, for an industry that dominates the industry of its biggest city and is also one of our nation’s most lucrative industries, let’s look to Hollywood.
The Hollywood guilds should be held up as a model for high skilled labor. It’s also something tech and (and especially the gaming industry) can learn from.
The WGA, for example, allows the lowest-rung writers of tv shows to make $70-80k/year as a minimum floor for 6-8 months of work, twice that if it’s the full year, and guarantees you healthcare for when you’re unemployed between shows/gigs. That helps push up the wage ladder for everyone else, too— many established, but not famous, writers on regular shows that have decent size followings but are not phenomenons are able to earn $400/500k year base salaries this way, and provide a ladder to a really fortunate life for them and their families. And it likely comes as no surprise that very successful workers (celebrities, but also writers and directors that you may not have even heard of) can easily make 10-100x that— it clearly hasn’t affected the top of the ladder’s pay. It’s not unheard of for 20 year olds to make millions right out of college on their first movie, either— https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2022/01/28/apple-tv-plus-dances-the-cha-cha-real-smooth-buys-sundance-hit-for-15-million/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/dbloom/2022/01/28/apple-tv-plus...
There’s many different guilds, from writing, to acting, to production, to lighting, to animation/vfx, to crew, to assistants, but they all more or less provide a baseline coverage to their members. IATSE, which is the guild that represents assistants and crew, went on strike last year and secured a minimum $25/hr wage and mandatory breaks last year.
The guilds explicitly foster creativity, because it allows even entry-level members to jump from company to company and project to project without worrying about day-to-day logistics.
Imagine the boon to taking risks on smaller companies and projects if software engineers could easily transfer from large companies to smaller projects and teams they were interested in, without worrying about who was processing payroll or transferring retirement benefits or healthcare?
- danuker 4y agoI wonder how the WGA will change its tune when language models will write episodes of indistinguishable quality from human writers.
- luckydata 4y agowow it took only one comment to make the article right, and it's not only the elite, it's even the "little people" doing a lot of the hating.
- bt4u 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- danuker 4y agoTaking feedback is a sign of maturity and adaptability. Genuinely, what will happen with writers when scripts will be a dime a dozen, because people are going to use these new technologies? Thinking about these scenarios is the POINT of a union, making sure writers stay relevant for the long-term future. Failing to address them makes for a lot of broken dreams and missed opportunities.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> what will happen with writers when scripts will be a dime a dozen Being nowhere close to this, it’s difficult to say. Maybe the creative field gets reduced to the guy who can put the right prompt into a script, voice-acting and moving-image combined model?
- thebradbain 4y agoScripts are already a dime a dozen! The stereotype you see in tv shows of unemployed writers writing screenplays in coffee shops is because writers of those tv shows are making fun of themselves. An experienced writer could (and does) make an entire first draft of a script for a tv show in less than a day. Before your first job out of college you likely have 10+ scripts for movies or shows written for a portfolio. 99% of scripts written already will never see the light of day— and that includes the ones that get bought! Hollywood does have genuine shortcomings, but I can guarantee you one is not the lack of scripts, nor even the lack of good scripts.
- MrMetlHed 4y agoRelated: https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing-in-hollywood.html https://www.vulture.com/2023/01/inside-the-vfx-union-brewing... One of the largest groups of non-union employees making movies are the VFX artists. Odd coincidence that they're paid much less and have worse working conditions.
- forrestthewoods 4y agoThe problem with this theory is that the gaming industry has to work with the Voice Actors Guild and they are a huge pain in the ass. The hourly rate is fine. The min/max hours is fine. The union exclusivity clause is bullshit. They won’t even allow you to use your own company’s employees to record temporary VO. It’s all or nothing. Expo hall unions are even worse. I have to wait 30 minutes and pay someone $50 so they can plug my surge protector into a floor outlet? Thanks but no thanks. Working in games I have had to work with different unions on several occasions. Each experience is absolutely dreadful. I’ll pass. Edit: downvote my opinion if you think it’s bad. that’s cool. Doesn’t change that every experience I have ever had working with unions was absolutely awful.
- Cupertino95014 4y agoMy narrator, Maxwell Glick, just informed me that there is no such thing as "the Voice Actors Guild." It's all part of SAG.
- thebradbain 4y agoOh I agree— certain things with Hollywood Guilds are exclusive for the point of being exclusive. Tech doesn’t need to, nor should it, strive to copy Hollywood exactly. We’re a completely different industry, after all
- mrzimmerman 4y agoExclusivity is a two sided coin. Speaking as someone who dealt with the Teamsters Union at a few expos myself, it can be very annoying to not be able to carry your own boxes, or plug in a new power strip. Honestly, it’s maddening. The flip side (for me, personally) is that I believe that the conference hall would charge me the same fee with the same restrictions, pocketing a large majority of it. It’s no different than going to a stadium and spending $60 on two beers and a hotdog while the person behind the counter makes a fraction of the sale but cleans the space, warms and hauls the food, handles the sale, and puts it together and gives it to me. So again, there is pain with the teamsters in a convention space (specifically in this context), I fully agree. But if I’m going to have to pay too much for a service I’d rather it went to working class families with stable jobs in the area I’m visiting and doing business in.
- dlkf 4y agoWGA west has about 10k members, whole US has about 15k. (This is from Google, please correct me if I got the wrong number.) By contrast, there are over a million people building software. Will this model scale up two orders of magnitude?
- thebradbain 4y agoWGA is just one of many unions, but you’re right— getting into the “best” guilds is itself a process; but ostensibly, it’s to ensure that the guild keeps its prestige as a genuine body of talent. It’s a balancing act for sure, and I don’t know if tech wants to emulate everything exactly with the Hollywood guild system, but it’s worth taking inspiration from.
- dlkf 4y agoWould you trust unions over markets to determine which programmers are skilled? How would they determine that?
- anon7725 4y agoTraditional guilds fostered apprenticeship, mentorship and relationships between practitioners that transcend firms/projects. Given that “the market” seems to have settled on LC as the only measure of skill I don’t think it’s far fetched to imagine that a guild system could be better.
- dlkf 4y ago> Given that “the market” seems to have settled on LC as the only measure of skill That’s not true and I suspect you know it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- thfuran 4y ago
- freitzkriesler2 4y agoThose guilds are incredibly hard to break into. They're also why Georgia has been able to mop up all of the non union work. For better or for worse, they do their job but out of state scabs are a huge problem keeping industry work in LA.
- thebradbain 4y agoOh I agree! I think the guilds are great to its membership in general, but breaking in is itself a battle. Tech doesn’t need to copy Hollywood exactly (nor should it), but there’s a lot that can be learned from it.
- Aunche 4y agoUnions aren't a hack that let you subvert supply and demand. The "bad" parts of unions are what give it power. Without excluding an out-group, you're left with a useless bureaucracy. For Hollywood, I think this is a necessary "evil" because the market rate for creative jobs is likely close to working making $0 for 80 hour work weeks. However, this isn't the same for tech.
- thebradbain 4y agoWell, an important distinction in Hollywood versus my understanding of most other unions is that being a part of a guild does not guarantee you a job (though it is a prerequisite for many of them): You still need to be hired by a production, who chooses to work with you and sets your rate. The guild just provides a guarantee of pay floor, hours, conditions, healthcare, etc across and transcending individual companies. So the guilds could theoretically let in as many people as they wanted without diluting supply and demand, because membership does not mean actively working. The Guild system is unique because its as much as a credentialing system as a union, which is why I think it works.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 4y ago
- bdcravens 4y agoVery little of Hollywood's work can be done remotely. Even the parts that can are essentially protected by that network that can't, they are so intertwined. Also Hollywood has a substantial moat that prevents an indie studio in Tulsa from having access to the same distribution network, etc. Not suggesting that "big tech" doesn't have advantages, but overall, there's an entire world of software development outside of those companies where developers can contract, compete from other countries, and companies are free to hire all sorts of contract labor free of control. You don't even need a college education to do most of the work in our industry.
- thebradbain 4y ago> You don’t even need a college edification to do most of the work in our industry You don’t in entertainment either, I can assure you that unless you’re working at an agency or a studio salaryman, no one will ask. But those are more corporate than creative jobs, anyways. And at least from person experience, a lot of Hollywood TV writers rooms are still remote or hybrid (they found it works better!)
- bdcravens 4y ago> a lot of Hollywood TV writers rooms are still remote or hybrid Yes, I was addressing that in the "Even the parts that can are essentially protected by that network that can't, they are so intertwined." part of my comment.
- ketzo 4y agoSupporting your point further, one of the reasons Georgia gets so much film/TV work is because they are unfriendly to unions, so labor costs are much lower.
- mrzimmerman 4y agoIf the studio has a contract with one of the guilds in Hollywood, the labor is still covered regardless of geographic location. Georgia has a LOT of tax breaks for film production costs which is what makes it attractive for studios.
- zozbot234 4y ago> ..allows the lowest-rung writers of tv shows to make $70-80k/year as a minimum floor for 6-8 months of work, twice that if it’s the full year, and guarantees you healthcare for when you’re unemployed between shows/gigs. ... There's a word for that, it's called privilege. Unionization is a lose-lose solution. You should also realize that whenever highly skilled workers are the critical bottleneck in a profitable industry they'll rack up high compensation as a matter of course, even in the most highly competitive, merit-based environment. That's why archaic and even medieval institutions such as guilds only make things worse by hobbling the industry.
- civilized 4y agoHow can you say that the union is privileged and in the next sentence say it's lose-lose? Privilege means the union won something.
- thebradbain 4y ago…do you know how much Hollywood is worth? Not just financially but socially, historically, and politically on the global stage? And has been for almost a century? I could not think of any industry less “hobbled” than Hollywood. They have a sign worshipping itself sprawling across some of the most expensive hillside real estate in the country. Regardless, as another commentator pointed out— VFX artists are the largest group of non-union workers in Hollywood. They’re also the most overworked and lowest paid— I’m talking about near minimum wage working on a movie with as a high a budget as Marvel. Oftentimes entry-level assistants to assistants to cameramen make more than them. Know your worth, and charge for it.
- zozbot234 4y ago> …do you know how much Hollywood is worth? Not just financially but socially, historically, and politically on the global stage? AIUI if you run the numbers, the content industry is worth a lot and Hollywood is a big chunk of that, but the tech sector still wins handily. VFX is a highly visible industry, that people want to be in even with the cost of low pay or bad work conditions. It's quite comparable to videogame development, which is one of the worst sectors to be in "tech".
- Manuel_D 4y agoThese are guilds in a very traditional, medieval, sense: they have very exclusive membership, and drive up the cost of labor by deliberately causing shortages. This is great for the people lucky enough to be members. But it sucks both for the consumers that pay inflated prices, and for the workers who don't have the connections to get into the guild.
- zozbot234 4y agoSee also: the U.S. healthcare industry.
- mrzimmerman 4y agoExcept fields requiring expert knowledge (and in this case can cause injury or death) it’s very good that there are licensing and regulatory bodies that prevent any old person or group from wandering in and participating. No one dies if a script isn’t very good.
- steveBK123 4y agoYou do NOT want to point at entertainment industry as some sort of better meritocracy model. The ratio of nepotism hires and who-you-knowism in that industry is insane. There's a reason you have multi-generation families all "in the business". Met plenty of people in NYC in the industry, and they are either nepotism hires or surrounded by them.
- sp332 4y agoI'm skeptical this could be worse than the tech industry.
- mrzimmerman 4y agoGuilds and unions aren’t in place to prevent nepotism, which is difficult to prevent and happens in all industries. Really, that’s just a network effect, albeit a bad one. Labor organizations exist to turn disparate sources of a supply (labor) into a more monolithic source that can control some or all of the access to that supply, driving up the price, which is good the members. They may have controls in place to try to prevent nepotism or other bad hiring practices, but at the end of the day that can be a difficult problem to detect and prevent.
- thebradbain 4y agoThat doesn’t have really anything to do with the guilds, though— in fact, it would likely be worse because then those high up in a production could just elevate and pay who they choose (it’s not their money, after all). The guilds do still have objective criteria to get in, and pay scales so that regardless of if you’re a director’s child or not, you’re getting the same pay as everyone else with your title. Yes, nepotism in Hollywood is a well-known issue, but it’s also an issue in pretty much every industry that’s been around for multiple generations. I imagine we will see the same thing happen in tech— just as it has in healthcare, politics, sports, law, finance, and all manner of highly desirable skilled professions