Unions

I have no experience with unions (hence my shock at SAG's 800 page contract (I still say that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard)) so I'm rather amazed at what I'm hearing from people.  From what I can gather, if your shoot is budgeted at $100k or less, you'll probably be okay going with non-union crews.  If it's over $1M, and you try to go non-union, you'll get union guys pressuring you in shockingly movie-style, mob-like ways to get you to turn your production into a union production.  If you're not prepared for this, you'll have to shut down your production because you won't be able to afford the last minute switch.  If your production is somewhere between $100k and $1M, it depends on where you are as to whether you might get Bruno coming onto your set to strong-arm you into going union.  It's hard to get real info on this stuff because people are not too keen on publicly saying bad things about unions.  The word-of-mouth information I'm hearing, though, is disturbing.  Things like Robert Rodriguez had his set burned down twice when he tried to shoot with non-union crews for "From Dusk Till Dawn".  Things like they will show up to the parking lot and sign your non-union crew into their union and once they sign 51%, you are now a union production.  Your choices are then to 1) sign their contract, 2) fire all the union guys and start over (usually impossible) or 3) shut down your production.  I'm hearing things like the following:

"It is also amazing at how closely some of these techniques and others perpetrated by unions resemble those most
often used by organized crime."

"The biggest brooha I ever experienced involved 4 Tony Soprano wannabes from the New York Local 600 office who swept in on a feature being financed by the director's father's retirement account, but because a really big A-list director was on the callsheet as an exec. producer, the IA was convinced we had big Hollywood money behind us, when we clearly did not. Our director had once interned for the bigshot and he lent his name to the project to open doors for casting and vendors, but that was it. Well, these clowns bullied the production into signing a contract they couldn't afford and the show shut down a week and a half later, unable to make payroll."

"I have seen the leadership of some of the LA locals do things on sets that I have been working on that were not only illegal but also really slimy. I have nothing but great things to say about union crews and talent but the leadership that is often elected in many union organizations are definitely bottom feeders as far as I have experienced. I can recall one production I was on that was shut down by the union, they threatened, then pulled out all of their crew. The next day, our production made the front page of their website with the headline and quote saying how the production company I was working for had fired all of the crew, which was a blatant lie. The union was the one that pulled three weeks of solid work at better than union rates from their people, not the production company I was with. The loss of that day and the next, until we could relocate to an out of town location cost the company around $150,000.00."

"...what the unions are doing (particularly 600 and on occasion the Teamsters) is that they're waiting until a commercial, and in a few cases, a feature get started before causing any problems...They call a commercial company and ask if the company wants to go union.  If the answer is no, they wait until the first day of the show and go to the set halfway through the morning and pull their guys.  Then they present a contract to the company.  It must be signed on the spot or the show is over."

What are we, in Russia?  If you're dealing with mobsters, at least in Russia things are cheap...

Susan Ee
http://feraldream.com