I’m really happy to see VFX production workers unionizing at the studios they work for. This is, for the layfolk, a different labor sector from the VFX post workers.
I think the problem is endemic in the VFX post business model because post houses are project based contracts with separate companies.
By using the bid system and avoiding giving VFX post workers stable long term in house employment the studios have made it perennially impossible to organize and unionize this sector of the industry’s workforce.
But we’re already seeing the lengths the administrative tier will go to in order to avoid acceptable compensation with reasonable terms so the battle rages on.
How do we get the business model to change? Because we need to target that bid system and create long term stable employment at the houses. As long as we’re gig workers we are at an irreconcilable disadvantage.
If the answers were simple we’d already have them. Union with portable benefits is potentially workable but it will only be effective if the lowest common denominator of the bid system gets a total refurb instead of a cosmetic facelift.
The VFX sector was created by artists. We are notoriously not MBA’s. We care about craft and sacrifice labor hours to keep the standard of our product high. But that created a situation that stretches cost-effective to downright exploitation.
Contract labor may be the standard but without collectively changing the bid system the roots remain rotten.
If the post houses raise the bids to include industry-wide union standards and line item the contracts to reign in studios egregiously frivolously and exponentially multiplying the number of shots with total redos we could begin to achieve a respectable and thriving business model.
But it has to have teeth and everyone has to stand in solidarity. Change the buyers market into a sellers market and stop letting the studios control the terms to the disadvantage of the houses.
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