Unions and New Media

Comments 18 January 2009

Earlier today I was reading a letter from an IASTSE union crew member sent around to his fellow union members. You may not have heard of the IASTSE (The official Web Site of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Moving Picture Technicians, Artists and Allied Crafts of the United States, Its Territories and Canada) but the members of this union often will work very closely with SAG (Screen Actors Guild) members. The letter was in regards to a contract that is on the table to add a “New Media clause” to the union contract.

“If ratified by our members, the ridiculous “New Media” clauses will guarantee that the vast majority of New Media productions will be made non-union for decades, if not forever. What little New Media production our members do under this contract will not be paying fair residuals into our Health and Pension Plans, if they pay any residuals at all (most will not). And on top of that, our members will have to negotiate their own rates, conditions, crew size, job responsibilities, etc., ON THEIR OWN, on a PRODUCTION BY PRODUCTION BASIS, since the proposal does not contain any of that.
If our members must negotiate their own employment contracts in New Media, and the majority of the members have little chance of ever getting health coverage, just why is it we need a union, anyway? For the magazine subscription?
And forget the new “organizing” plans – what have we got to offer the crews on New Media (most of whom will already have IATSE cards in their pockets) to help us organize? No wage scales, no working conditions, and virtually no chance at health coverage? Good luck with that.

….

Let’s send the negotiators back to DO THEIR JOBS, and bring us a contract that protects our members and their families, and that guarantees that New Media productions will be made by our members under a fair contract with fair residuals.”

Now to fully understand how I feel about unions you would need to know more about me than most people do. My father is a SAG member, and has been my entire life. When I first started doing internet video he immediately wanted me to join the union. At the time that made absolutely no sense, especially since I was just doing a video blog. But as time went on and I started producing more internet content he really wanted me to take a look at SAG union contracts to make sure I was getting paid fairly. I still had never taken a look at anything that SAG had to say about New Media, because I was sure that it didn’t apply to me.

However, after reading that letter today it really got me thinking about unions in traditional media, and how it will all shift over when the lines become more and more blurred. So I went digging through the SAG website to see what they had to say about New Media. I have to say that I was surprised by what I found.

“Screen Actors Guild has been busy both getting out the word on its contracts for New Media and collecting information from producers and others working in the space. Here are a few of the events SAG has attended over the past year.”

This all really got me thinking about productions that I am currently involved in. Currently I am a creator/producer/talent for my own podcast that is in production with a new online television company. This company certainly falls into the category of a start-up, and I never really thought to bring up SAG or the IASTSE in any of my conversations with the founders there, and I still am not convinced that I should have.

If these contracts were to become standard across all podcasts, and web video projects; would we all really benefit from it? Or would it just squash so many bright hopeful start-ups right out of the gate just with rules, contracts and pay scales.

I admit that I have zero experience with unions, and I would really like to start a discussion here about what this all means for our industry.

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Bill Cammack

Sure, Jorge. I was really speaking to the point of why there's no set minimum rate for New Media work as there is in Corporate, Broadcast & Film work.

If you do a film, you get your money back when people see it in the theater or buy it on dvd or whatever. If you do a televison show, the production company gets its money back from the studio/station, who gets their money back from the advertisers who run commercials on their shows, or from individuals who pay a subscription fee to receive their channel. If you do corporate work, it's a known & BUDGETED EXPENSE to advertise a product or service, or it might be created for internal communication purposes.

In New Media, there's no revenue stream. You can't recuperate monies paid at professional rates via revenue-sharing. You can't even sell 100% of your clicks, because you can't prove your demographics.

Because of this, the "video budget" is part of the advertising or "get us attention" budget, and most companies go for the lower cost (thus, higher return) options of text blogging. The other option is to pay people who don't know what they're doing low sums of money to put on inferior video productions, because their only real purpose is to gain attention for the product or service. It's not supposed to be an actually GOOD video.

I only brought up unions because it was the question in Sarah's post. The point is that New Media people are all scrambling for money... ESPECIALLY now that the economy's all jacked up. Budgets are diminishing instead of increasing. Until there's some kind of DEMONSTRABLE reason why people should use video instead of text or audio to gain attention for their businesses, anybody requesting professional wages can go kick rocks, because "the bottom line" just won't support that kind of budget.

Jorge

Or New Media can create a new bunch of actors, editors and writers....Universities are already educating them and talent is developing and of course their wages and careers can grow with the New Media Production companies.

But still the idea of unions will stop some good developments like it does in MSM and in any other industries. Unions help workers but most time limit business ...

Bill Cammack

I wrote about this back in September '08, in "Why Professionals Avoid Web Video".

Basically, there aren't going to be any unions in online video anytime soon, because there aren't any budgets for REAL video production. The only hope unions have is that more and more MSM studios are going to begin to do work in the space, which will mean that people that are ALREADY getting paid union wages will now be working on New Media projects.

Since Time=Money, those people aren't going to be willing to work for less than they were already getting just because it's a New Media project. From that base of people, unions might be able to organize and get something going.

As far as bootstrappers and startups, you can forget it. Having regulated minumum rates for video work wouldn't "crush" any startups at all. They would merely remove the creation of video from their budgets and plans. SEEYA! :D

The bottom line is communication. If video is too expensive to do, companies will do audio. If audio's too expensive, they'll text blog. It's all about eyeballs and ROI. The ROI in MSM comes from the advertisers. That revenue stream hasn't materialized "yet" in the online video space.

This is why most internet shows are done by people who are LEARNING to edit and people who are LEARNING to be on-air talent and people who are LEARNING to write scripts. Quality can be sacrificed to get cheaper work and easier-to-justify returns.

The flip side of this is that right now, everybody and ANYBODY can "get on the mic". Once they figure out how to get the shooters and editors and actors properly paid, the REAL shooters, editors and actors are going to flood the space, since the work will suddenely be viable and as lucrative as working on corporate or broadcast projects.

Jorge

While Unions seek to solve the problems workers have. The problems workers have, mainly financial problems are not solved by paying them more money, as Unions fight for, so i guess Unions are not bad, but have an incomplete way of looking for things.

I suggest you better check out how to secure cash flows from your own sources while you have the contract and protect your own intellectual property as many shows do. They are associated with a company but they keep the rights and royalties for themselves.

Also many startups get extra costs from unions and are faced with increased costs that finally lead them to die. So i think that workers should receive their payments and should check contracts using law advisors from unions, but to fully charge stuff on to companies and specially start ups is what makes them come down.

As for workers more money will not solve the problem, the idea is for them to make a steady cashflow without doing much effort ... i.e save money buy a cheap house (easy to find) and rent it for some cash that will come with out requiring of your time.

I know my answer is mostly financial, but finally it's all part of the economy and we move on money right?