>"Editors must demonstrate 175 days of non-union work experience within the last three years, prior to the date of application." and
">Colorists must demonstrate 100 days of non-union work experience within the last two years, prior to the date of application."[1]
Each of those is less than 3 months a year. I have many friends in that Union as well as SAG that have other pursuits but always make sure to do the minimum number of hours in order to maintain Union status in order to maintain the benefits. The only guarantee you have is that a union candidate has more hours that a non-union candidate working on union movie productions.
>"... as an employee I know a movie using non union labor is not going to run as smoothly."
Do you have any evidence that movie production in countries without unions runs less smoothly? For instance New Zealand’s uniquely non-unionized film industry has produced many blockbusters - the "Lord of the Rings Trilogy" and "The Hobbit Trilogy" being good examples. Is there any evidence that actual "boots on the ground" movie production ran any less smoothly? Would the latter trilogy have even been attempted had the former trilogy been so problematic as a result of it being non-union labor?
Because everyone prefers union workers, it creates a situation where the non-union worker has to get noticed somehow (nepotism or exceptional work) to convince someone to take a risk and hire them to earn enough work to gain union membership.
To users who are following along who aren't familiar, this is not how all unions works. Presumably the commenter is talking about "trade unions" which is one of many types of unions.
Everyone? What union are you talking about?
There's way more union members than there is work. So if the pay's the same for union or non-union (not much either way), why wouldn't you go with union labor?
When hiring union members, there's more paperwork to fill out and regulations that the production will have. For example, union members must be paid within a certain timeframe or else there will be late fees the production will need to pay. This is not the case with non-union members. Generally, it is a lot easier and less expensive to hire non-union workers if you can get away with it.
The downside of unions is that they’re functionally a protection racket.
Getting into the union isn’t easy because union members don’t want to dilute their clout.
Being outside of the union makes it harder to get good work because the union will literally invest effort in shaming companies that hire you.
It’s fun to imagine the benefits of being inside a union, but we need to remember that creating the union will make life worse for those outside of it (young people, workers new to the industry).
I'm not sure all teachers like the fact that seniority is king, and I'm also not sure that it is in fact a Net Benefit to teachers as a whole.
This doesn't make unions not worth pursuing; it just means that we should be appropriately skeptical and not make blanket statements about how they surely operate.
Unions don't require unanimity.
> not make blanket statements
Do I really need to add modifiers to everything I say to indicate that I'm not speaking in absolutes?
Fair and I do try not to do this wantonly. Here I feel that your gp argument breaks down in the absence of such an absolute. If indeed, we cannot prima facie trust that unions work in their members ( and their students') best interest; why shouldn't we use the troubles of unionized education ( or unionized policing...) as a caution against a possible bad outcome?
Perhaps I misunderstood; and this has just been another internet argument for the wind .
When unions function as an exclusionary fraternity, they are actually pretty horrible. A good indicator of a well-functioning union is: the union doesn’t have negative effects on people who don’t join, and they are free to do their jobs side by side with union members and nobody cares, nobody judges anyone for their personal choice, no one discriminates on pay or opportunities.