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I don’t think the production guild system works in tech. In Hollywood, guilds and unions are necessary and work, in part because most people in the guild are in
by filmgirlcw 4y ago
I don’t think the production guild system works in tech. In Hollywood, guilds and unions are necessary and work, in part because most people in the guild are independent contractors. Each production is its own thing. And that assignment could last a day, a few weeks, a few months, or years (depending on your contract/position), but it’s not an ongoing concern.
Whereas in tech, that isn’t the case for the majority of the employees at large companies. Yes, you have consultants and contractors, hit the vast majority of people at Google or Microsoft or Facebook are full-time employees, not hired on a project by project basis.
And that changes both the incentive structure and the organizing power. There are other unions that could be better parallels to trying to organize tech — but I don’t think the Hollywood guild system is the one to try to copy. You’d need to have specific unions covering each company (even if many companies were still affiliated with the same umbrella union) and carve outs and contracts for each company or even subgroup of workers inside a company. You couldn’t just do a blanket SAG-AFTRA style guild for everyone at every company when most of the employees are not on contract but full-time. It just wouldn’t work.