Doesn't the definition of background actor preclude being in SAG though? I thought extras had to be in three or four productions in a year before they got their SAG cards.
I often see anti-union sentiment in tech circles which is hilarious considering how companies like Apple and Microsoft have already tried to fuck us with non-competes.
But you know 100x hyper-libertarian-48lawsofpower-dude can definitely negotiate better than a dirty liberal... Union!
(I swear, I've had that exact conversation here, with nearly that same tone. And of course, verbal contortions that they are somehow better individuals with 'special skills'. They're just more meat for the grinder.)
Until union tries to force people to become members or force companies to only hire members, it's a completely valid libertarian concept. It’s essentially a cartel of employees. The only people who should have something against it are those who think that monopolies should be broken down.
The NLRB forces unions to also negotiate for non-union members.
When the NLRB no longer requires negotiating for free-loaders, sure. But if I'm part of a union, you damn straight if you're getting the benefits and getting negotiation, I want you to pay your share.
I would have to dig for the exact USC codes that construct the below paragraph taken from said website. I don't have that on hand.
"Your union has the duty to represent all employees - whether members of the union or not-fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination. This duty applies to virtually every action that a union may take in dealing with an employer as your representative, including collective bargaining, handling grievances, and operating exclusive hiring halls. For example, a union which represents you cannot refuse to process a grievance because you have criticized union officials or because you are not a member of the union. But the duty does not ordinarily apply to rights a worker can enforce independently - such as filing a workers' compensation claim - or to internal union affairs - such as the union's right to discipline members for violating its own rules."
Surely that's all employees in the bargaining unit, not literally all employees. Executives are employees too after all.
Though certainly non-members should not be forced into bargaining units and in turn, unions for those bargaining units should not have to represent them. It would allow a lot more micro-unions, but eh.
Nope. A union in place is legally required to bargain for all employees, and not just under the union. The NLRB makes a distinction and disqualifies management for unions.
Are you're saying that the unions representing the 8,000 or so Starbucks workers are required to bargain for the 200,000 other Starbucks employees, including for employees part of other unions?
That doesn't seem right. It was my understanding that everything was based on "bargaining units" which can be organized by similar workers, like job function or location-based and if you're in the bargaining unit, you're represented by the union regardless of whether you're a member or not, but if you're outside any unionized bargaining unit, then the union has no bearing on your contract.
> Are you're saying that the unions representing the 8,000 or so Starbucks workers are required to bargain for the 200,000 other Starbucks employees, including for employees part of other unions?
That's exactly what I'm saying. That's the way the NLRB charters unions.
Now, in reality, companies will give more concessions to the non-union employees and withhold higher pay and other demands to the union for "negotiations. Naturally, this is a anti-union stance to show that if you play nicely and not unionize, the company will give you free concessions. Naturally, they wouldn't do that if no union was in play.
I would 100% agree with that. Unions should never have to represent non-union employees during negotiations and bargaining. But the NLRB writes that every charter. Its law.
What if there is a union where I work, but I have chosen not to be a member. If I have a grievance, does the union have to represent me?
Yes. Legally, the union has the same obligation to represent you fairly as it does to represent union members. You can ask the union to file a grievance if you are fired or disciplined, even if you are not a member.
Judging by aggressiveness of your comment, it seems that you think that I have something against it. You may have thought so because I used the term "cartel", which has a negative connotation, so I don't blame you for getting angry.
However, I'm not against it, ambivalent about it. What's more important to me is hypocricy of people who oppose the thing in one context and then support it in another, whereas it's exactly the same thing.
Why am I ambivalent about it? Well, it's a screenwriter who earn $120k and barely survive in LA against midwestern school teacher who earns $50k and whose pension fund invested in another fund who invested in a Disney. I don't think either side is morally superior to another.
strikes are to bargain collectively. The individual formula will only work for some employees and gradually erode as more are sucked into the void.
The choice in this case eventually becomes one between paying or not paying at all which is a completely hilarious deal. You won't have to do any work tho, you will be working elsewhere
But enough other actors will and it will be much cheaper to use their replica than hiring real actors so even those who didn't sell their data are going to see their income heavily reduced thanks to this antics.
No actors will be able to do this unless SAG-AFTRA negotiates it. SAG-AFTRA does not just represent household names, it's all actors, 160,000 people whether you're the star of feature films or the guy with one line in one episode of a streaming series nobody knows about. This is the point of a union and collective bargaining. Actors aren't able to work outside the bounds of the agreements even if they were willing to.
do they even need actors for this? they need personalities. they scan the personality of thousands of people, and let AI do the acting.
the skill of an actor is that they can act out different personalities as needed for the film, but if they create a database of whatever personalities you can think of, you only need to find a person to have that personality scan them and add to the database.
so anyone can do this job for a day. acting skills are no longer needed, much less acting experience.
that means anyone needing a bit of money will be game to be exploited like this. basically we can expect that anything but major roles will be replaced if this is allowed to go through.
the actors guild will have to negotiate to somehow disallow or limit the use of AI generated characters. however if you want to create scenes with thousands of people (like the battle scenes in lord of the rings or the hobbit, which were embellished with the help of AI) disallowing AI characters would be too limiting
One of the most fundamental elements of a movie or show is that characters will be thrown into conflict that will challenge them and will come out on the other side (or not) changed in one way or another. That's at the macro level -- at the micro level, you may need to portray a wide range of emotion in a single scene. Nobody is just "one personality" throughout a show. Or a scene.
If they can successfully map a thousand different emotions to the same A.I. model believably, then okay, but we are some distance from that yet, and it will be fought heavily when we get there, because a couple hundred thousand people aren't going to roll over and accept that their jobs don't exist anymore
i certainly hope so. but we are not talking about lead actors here but extras. those are already being generated in scenes where hundreds or thousands of them are needed because such scenes would otherwise not even be possible. what scanning personalities will do is give movie makers a wider variety of extras to choose from without the extra cost. that's what they want and what the actors guild needs to fight.
i am not talking about speaking roles. we don't quite have the technology for those yet, but we are not that far either. we already have animated and computer generated 3d models of people that are getting more realistic by the day. just look at the final fantasy movies. they are still human controlled of course, but there are no more full actors. and the same is happening with voice actors too.
i fear this is where the industry is heading, and it's going to be hard to stop them.
