Marvel Visual Effects Workers Vote to Unionize
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[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi...
I won’t be surprised to see VFX, in IATSE in the near future but then it will be the 3D Artists who are being shafted. So much filmmaking requires unreal engine work these days and those guys are being shit on in the industry at the moment.
What do you mean by this?
I'm assuming you're implying that film, game, and other creative studios all collapse at some point for one reason or another?
I don't think that's the case. Walt Disney Animation Studios has been around since 1923. Lots of studios endure for a long time.
if you look closely, those usually on-set people, medics, drivers, catering services - those who have unions. VFX companies in most of the cases have a dozen of entries out of hundreds who actually worked on the title, or just a single line company mention. I could understand this practice in cellulose era, but saving a few megabytes at the cost of disrespect to your workers is simply despicable.
I think the issue with credits is nothing to do with the storage, it's to do with the impact of the run time of the film.
Even Oppenheimer had over hundred artists and it’s famous for not having any VFX. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/christopher-nol...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37041394
and a bit a couple of weeks ago
Avenger Endgame (2019) credits 2,203 names in Visual Effects. Death on the Nile (2022), credits 832. CODA (2021), credits 14 people.
Wow, it was unanimous :o
I wonder how many people voted, or had the opportunity to vote.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act?wprov...
Strikes and unionization are ways that individuals can become in parity with the owner class. Each side has something the other needs.
In politics, understandably, everyone believes that their actions are right. Those beliefs inevitably lead to warfare. That's why I don't believe in politics.
I stick to philosophy now, knowing that the quiet contemplation of the world, without taking sides, will yield some lasting benefits, without reckless wars destroying the insights about ourselves that we have already collected and named 'progress'.
Who succeeded in doing that? There is Confucius, and Norman Borlaugh, and many others ...
But if local involvement has taught me anything, people always have their own incentives, and it's really impossible to be anodyne it unless you're just letting them run over you.
Not taking sides is a political action in itself. Not wanting to be involved doesn't mean you aren't involved.
How I wish this was true
(this is not a comment on Unions, just on abuse of power in general)
> Throughout the Second World War, the National War Labor Board gave trade unions the responsibility for maintaining labor discipline in exchange for closed membership. This led to acquiescence on the part of labor leaders to businesses and various wildcat strikes on the part of the workers.
The same isn't true for folks who work directly for Marvel on an ongoing basis.
These temporary movie companies employ writers, actors, directors, electricians etc that belong to unions.
This is why the writers and directors in Hollywood are able to unionize as an industry rather than per-company. (See, in contrast, the recent Starbucks unionizations; each individual location votes and creates their own union with a dozen or so members.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
> Sectoral bargaining was promoted by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, but struck down and replaced by enterprise bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Today industries like screenwriting, hotels, and railroads still see sectoral bargaining predominate.
Again, in a special way that is not common in the US, because of the transient nature of movie productions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
Actors and crew have things like the SAG that negotiate with the movie industry as a whole, because it's functionally impossible for them to unionize otherwise. If you're a unionized Starbucks worker, they don't negotiate with the coffee industry, they negotiate with management at your one particular Starbucks store, because that store is an ongoing permanent concern.
VFX artists employed by a permanently-existing organization like Marvel don't need this exception. (Ones employed by a transient production company for a single film would.)
There have been union vfx and animation studios in the past. The industry is broken up into many companies, which is why people talk about unionizing as a whole.
What is the actual point you are trying to make here?
Yet all the FAANGs and other startups are still headquartered in the US.
300+ million people don’t just vanish because CEOs move their companies. The leverage they have is politically manipulated fiat money traditions.
The leverage the public has is experience doing all the work. Ignore the mathematical minority when they cry about gen pop and keep doing the work.
Corporates real role in civic life is distract people from marching on their state capital. They’ll play it because there is no moat against tens of millions with lots of guns.
The USA and Detroit had unions and the industry and city became gutted. Tariff and import laws to stay afloat only go so far. There will be times industry will be gutted because there’s something better.
Hollywood seems poised to lose itself - whether AI, moral grandstanding, or strange rules with skin color quotas. The writers strike is going poorly, the general American populace has no sympathy for them, and the big money maker of super hero movies is losing steam.
71% of Americans support unions, the highest level of support in history. Support among under 30s is ~88%.
https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-a... ("Poll: Majority of Americans Support Unions and Support Strikes")
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/20... ("Most Americans support strikes by Hollywood writers and actors")
Union support is substantially higher among younger cohorts, and ~2 million of the 55+ cohort ages out annually, so support should skew upwards over time. Progress in this regard is a function of time.
If this logic held, we in democratic countries would only have left-wing governments. Actually, people like unions less as they age for various reasons.
That does not necessarily follow. You can’t assume the younger cohort won’t change their opinion over time.
Which just brings it to where it was in 2021, which is the highest it's been since 1965?
> Its higher than a long term average of 62% and lower than all time high of 75% following WW2 when unions were in their heyday.
Is "following WW2" January of 1957 where it was 75% or August of 1957 where it was 65%. I'm thinking there's some margin of error in those 50s numbers.
This narrative might be false, see the interview here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mzz3VI32KBA
The bits about Detroit and Hollywood are easily explained by generational churn of less media savvy, science minded people. Next generations are far more in tune with how the sausage is made; it’s people making biased political decisions. They know there is no divine mandate to preserve old norms.
The minutiae of history is hardly relevant as we have a completely different understanding of what’s possible due to technological advances. Trying to compare agrarian/early industrial culture and modern culture in the early years of tissue and limb regeneration therapy is false equivalence.
All human institutions that have survived are like a Ship of Theseus; everything has been replaced a few times. We just chant a few old sales pitches.
The median salary for a remote Software Engineer from Nigeria is $57k.
Unions are not going to change the math on whether we outsource to other countries.
I don't think an extra 20k a person changes the math.
And honestly I doubt the median number would shift too much. Most unions focus on the low end of the pay scale for the majority of their changes.
People have been saying this for decades now, meanwhile the number of well paid software jobs has grown tremendously the entire time. What do you think has changed that will reverse this trend in the next few years?
This has nothing to do with software engineers and even less to do with "AI engineers".
I feel like I’m pretty neutral on unions. Not inherently bad, sometimes vital, but they can be a parasite on companies while being a double edged sword for labor. For example, I think legacy auto and its workers are in a tough spot with thin margins and offshoring. There is basically a shrinking pool of American workers needs being met at the expense of everyone else.
Game dev is also an interesting case because the problem comes from workers who are so desperate to be in the industry despite better options. They can already have better pay and work conditions. Just not from the companies they want it from.
Employees motivated to do the job they want to do is a problem, not the employers taking advantage of that passion?
I’m neutral on unions too.
Labor unions for laborers make sense. The single industrial plant that employs every dad in our town shouldn’t have that much power over our lives.
Unions for laptop jockeys who can work in any city in the country or even other countries? If you don’t like your conditions go get different conditions elsewhere.