Fundamentally this is all just about allocating power and money.

Because money follows power. Initially, the person organizing the work and taking responsibility for the results has the power to hire or fire. If they're successful, power and money escalate rapidly into their hands. That leads to the temptation to abuse their power. When the abuse gets out of hand, their workers collectively band together to fight the abuses. Good for them. Then as power and money shifts to the union - SOME of the same temptation for abuse of power that infected the owners/producers then can attach to union management. When that happens, they also need to be called to account.

It's unproductive and venal and simply wrong for the producer not to compensate workers fairly and treat them with respect and insure their safety. Period.

It's also unproductive and venal and simply wrong for the union to restrain common sense ("You can't move that box two feet, dammit, you're not the designated union box mover and yes, we'll wait 30 minutes for that member to get back from break before the damn box gets moved!) just because they've negotiated the power to do so.

Both sides have legitimate arguments. But this is a big money business and money and power walk hand in hand and both sides will ALWAYS struggle over the money and the power.

Such is life.

Excellent points Bill. The world would be very different if people simply did the things they knew to be right.

Having worked in broadcasting for seven years, my experience is that's there no industry that needs unions more than the entertainment biz, and I'm not a pro-union guy. As this thread has described quite eloquently, there are a ton of people who want something for nothing and, at the extreme many will simply just rip others off.

This will continue to happen as long as the pool of people wanting careers in the biz stays large and the parties with the power continue to behave badly. Sadly, it's the nature of the beast and I wouldn't expect anything to change in my lifetime.

I have to disagree - as long as movie making is an artistic endeavor there will be more underfunded, than well-funded projects. And those underfunded projects will always be looking for people to work for free. Theatre has been like that for centuries.

Having worked in LA in the entertainment industry for a lot of years, I rarely see the real hucksters thrive. Most non-paying jobs don't get filled. Those producers don't thrive as someone described above. The prevalence of the ads proves the lack of funding for most projects - not the success of getting people to work for free. Right now, on CL, you see ad after ad for an executive producer, a financing producer - none of those people are finding funding. The fact of the matter is that you have to be offering something of value to get people to work unpaid. Most of those gigs simply don't offer anything to make it worthwhile.

The other side of the equation
 

This is from the other side of the equation.

I've been working on a movie-of-folly, one that I started when I didn't know anything about how tough it is to do a movie, a project I started mostly as a stop-gap to my own sanity.

If I'm honest with myself, it's got a 50/50 shot of ever seeing a rough cut. I just have too much on my plate with the day job, paying freelance jobs, and Improv promotion.

Of course, I'm a stubborn bastard...

Everyone who has worked with me on this movie has gotten paid. This is despite the fact that it's being done totally out-of-pocket. No grants, no funding, no angel investors. I work my day job - that's my source of funding.

It hasn't been much, but I've been able to look people in the eye and tell them straight up: "Look, I'm an amateur. This is not the next Steven Spielberg you're talking to, it's the current Don Quixote. The experience may not, in the long run, be worth crap, the movie may not work out, and I don't feel comfortable with 'spec' work. If the movie sells, you'll get a piece, but if it doesn't, you don't walk away empty handed. I may not be a professional, but by god, I try to do my best to act like one."

Ok, several mods have had to waste their time removing politically oriented posts. This ain't the place. Closing the thread at least temporarily while we decide whether to take more time to clean it up or just put the whole thread in the electronic File 13.