A prominent example is child labor laws. Before these were passed, the market would bear endangerment and injuries to children because something was better than nothing to families that had very little, and it was rationally in each family’s best interest to take the risk in exchange for some small amount of money. If they had all collaborated in an organized strike, they could have demanded better conditions, but in practice that wasn’t going to happen for people that were already extremely constrained on money and time (and all it takes is a minority of defectors to prevent this from working). It creates a feedback cycle of compounding inequality, and the only way to break it is via regulation.
So once you allow unpaid work in exchange for "exposure", that becomes the new normal, and no individual photographer can alter the system while still acting in their own best financial interest.
Prices reward people who do work that there is an unmet demand for in society. If society already has an oversaturation of professional photographers (so much so that clients feel they do not have to compete at all), the low price of $0 for professional photography work will hopefully encourage some of these glut of professional photographers (and others looking to enter the field) to pursue another profession where they can add more value.
If Netflix's contractor here has set the price too low, well then no one will apply, and they will have to set the price higher.
The problem then is the same as snake oil; the demand exists only because the consumers lack information. And then keeping in mind that market principles only produce efficient economies when information is available and known.
If you put all that together you get a perfect storm of terribly misaligned incentives and vulnerability that make child labor a very different case than what we're discussing here. It's entirely possible or even likely for a rational service provider to throw in a freebie in exchange for intangibles like publicity. It happens all the time in the adult world. So I don't think child labor is a fair thing to compare this situation to.
As a (former) working musician, I saw almost the exact opposite problem. The only people who would get jobs were the rich white kids who were doing it as a hobby so didn't need to live off the wages they were being paid.
This is where mentorship and apprenticeship comes in. Assistants and such can get on-the-job training while still being paid for their time and effort.
No one's gonna hire someone who's never picked up a camera before just because they don't want to pay them. No matter what, an artisan needs a portfolio, which means time given up for free anyways.
No one considers what a fair wage is. Theyre gonna pay the least amount they can get away with is. I mean, if you genuinely don't have any money in your budget for a photographer, it might be better to just not hiring a photographer. Even if they are trying to just build out their portfolio, they're doing a service for you.
Requiring wages to be set for the few who get the position will not solve the underlying inequity or the problem of people being too poor to afford allocating their time for unpaid job training. You're foreclosing the opportunity even, for people to make that choice to offer their labor in exchange for what they could gain from it.
We have minimum wage laws because we as a society have decided that some wages are too low to be just. "It's a volunteer position" exploits a loophole in that.
There are plenty of things like this in labor law, like mandatory breaks of a certain length after working for a certain amount of time. We recognize that the employer usually has much more negotiating power in the relationship with the employee, and try to equalize things a bit.
> You are not going to escape the fundamental fact that there are people who are out there wanting to work, but who cannot command the pay rate dictated.
Pay is only dictated by what people want or can command when demand for a certain kind of worker is higher than the supply. In this case, there appears to be more supply than demand, so the pay is determined by the perceived value the employer gets from the work. Given that this production presumably couldn't happen at all unless they filled these positions, the value of this work is greater than zero. So they should be paid for the work. The only reason they are offering zero pay is because there are people desperate for work, who will buy the (nearly-always false) representation that they'll get enough "exposure" or "experience" for it to be worthwhile.
IMO these sorts of predatory practices should be illegal, but it's really hard to do that without also making legitimate volunteer opportunities illegal as well.
If safety and breaks are mandated, and someone is still willing to work for less, you're stopping them from bargaining to have a job for less pay, do you acknowledge that?
If "predatory" is agreeing to what someone wants to offer to take a job, why don't you tell the worker not to offer/participate?
Your stopping the "predatory" behavior has done nothing to alleviate the person's financial situation that causes them to consider agreeing to it.
In industries where jobs require experience, and that experience can only be obtained through unpaid internships, the end result is that people who can't afford to work for free for several months are prevented from entering that industry entirely.
If I sum up the position, it sounds to me like "I don't want to see people working for $0, or only the rich to have the opportunity to work for $0, so I will require the job to pay $15/hr". Well, you didn't solve the problem that people are willing to work for $0 with that solution.
Letting people offer what they want, on both sides, (I believe) is the freest way to have people decide and achieve what they want, as long as basic protections for safety, hours, conditions are met.
Internships & apprenticeships serve the same educational function of universities, except you don't have to pay money to get that experience.
In order to be consistent, either we force universities to pay its students, or at the very least encourage companies to start charging interns for the privilege of an internship. Neither option is reasonable.
Why not? Free tuition + living stipend seems like a perfectly reasonable way to achieve a productive, well-educated workforce to me.
That's already kind of what's happening. Pay is absolute dogshit for journalists, many low level entertainment industry gigs, so it's overwhelmingly staffed by trust fund kids who have their parents subsidize the lifestyle.
Now if you want to discuss the preposterousness of the lower end of some government pay scales - game on!
Just curious - have you ever earned money directly for yourself or have you only ever gotten a paycheck from a company or other person?
Isn't that kind of the point? Making these positions unpaid/underpaid is an artificial filter removing otherwise great candidates who can't afford to take it on.
Mostly paycheck. I occasionally do freelance work and innovation prizes.
On the contrary - I want everyone to know that they’re looking for a photographer to do this for free.
I’m 100% behind a free market; part of a free market is that your business practices can and will impact your reputation.
I doubt you've thought through fully what implications your "fair" produce. I would rather people determine that for themselves.
If you're going to hire a wedding photographer, all things being equal, if one says they did the photos for a show that you are familiar with, or appeared in magazines you're familiar with - that is worth a great deal in marketing value.
A smart photographer can build enough authority after doing this whereas they will never have to market themselves afterwards.
Not really.
No one knows wedding photographers by name. The absolutely most famous wedding photographer in the world is .... who?
If you’ve gotten a customer far enough in your funnel that you’re able to boast about the Netflix show, the bulk of the marketing is done already. That might seal the deal sure, but regardless they’re gonna want to see examples of your work.
Finally, wedding photographers aren’t vanity purchases in the sense that there’s no designer label to show off. All there is are photographs. And if the photographs are great, no one cares who took them.
A appearance on show might make you competitive against someone at similar price when doing head-to-head comparison, but someone who is cheaper cause not offering free opportunities might beat you. I really doubt there is very great up-side.
This is the line every questionable business uses when trying to get freelancers to work for free. It's well-known and despised.
Edit: For a little perspective. Whatever job you do, please come to me and do it for free, I'll post a good review for you online.
As others have said, your argument is popular with business owners trying to avoid paying money to workers, but in reality it largely just excludes anyone who is not from a privileged background.
As long as safety + working conditions are not cruel and unusual, and someone is willing to work for $0, why are you trying to stop (or hide) that fact?
Someone willing to work for less (or for free) is offering a bargain to incentivize giving him/her the business or the benefit of experience instead of more $. You restricting them from doing that doesn't magically solve their problem of not having a job, you realize?
We have tons of people who are locked out of well paying jobs because they can't get on the job experience or even get in the door at the wages being required (and experience demanded by those wages). Young people, people with less education. Minorities. Did you know that? It actually causes some people's heads to explode, that the good intentions of a policy actually might hurt the people it's designed (in a very coarse way) to benefit.
This is the classic conundrum of the minimum wage. You may not realize it but you are implicitly choosing some people to benefit over others.
It's great for people who can get the job. It does nothing for those who cannot get employed, who for many industries are more numerous. It's in fact a very discriminatory regulation in outcome (although of course not in intent -- no one intends that obviously!). But intentions, as they say, are heavily overrated. Look to outcomes.
Maybe the person doing unpaid work is someone who has been overlooked by "the establishment" and is trying to break into the industry. Maybe it's a 2nd job to support the family and doesn't have to be a full wage earning job. You want to foreclose people from those possibilities and say that only full professional (say, union members) should be able to get that job?
You are not going to escape the fundamental fact that there are people who are out there wanting to work, but who cannot command the pay rate dictated. And that we have an excess of labor in many pockets in this country (really, we do!). You just hide the problem by saying that it's unjust to pay so low a wage and not allow people to do it. The people and their lives are not going away just because you mandate not to see them.