The Hollywood Reporter: In a series of tweets on Thursday, the union representing these workers — The Motion Picture Editors Guild (IATSE Local 700) — described bargaining sessions that haven’t come close to addressing the concerns of the group, a set of 12-20 crew members who primarily work on the show’s pretaped sketches.
6 comments:
It’s always discouraging to hear these stories from some of the biggest entertainment brands and companies when they can’t meet baseline respect and policies for their workers. I’ve never liked SNL for their skits or their shady company history, but this only furthers my dislike for the franchise and just because something has been going on forever doesn’t mean it needs to be on air forever. I found it interesting in the article that workers threaten strike, especially for companies like SNL that can gain traction on the internet to pressure the companies into making policy changes and acknowledging workers’ rights and needs as their employees. I don’t know why a company would treat their workers badly, especially workers like the postproduction people who might begin to get sloppy or care less about doing their job to their best ability.
This is unfortunate to read about, of course we know these things go on and that they continue to occur even when working for “bigger names” such as SNL. Yet it is still a bit surprising to hear about this occurring at such a popular entity. I do wonder if this will get a bit more attention as SNL is a household name, and is rather popular all over the country. As April 1st is rapidly approaching, I’m curious to see how this plays out, I will be following this story for sure. While I obviously might not understand the inner financial workings of a company like this, I do know that the individuals working for SNL deserve a fair wage with benefits – the bar is quite literally on the floor yet companies cannot even deliver this, and it IS sad. These strike negotiations should not even have to occur in the first place…
This was not something I was aware of, I have always been a fan of SNL and have joked with some of my peers that I may join there team someday but the more I find out about there company the less and less I see my self trying for that. Since being at CMU and since I have been apart of the ARAEP class I have been able to develop what is important for me when it comes to the types of companies I want to work for. This now includes a truly diverse team especial hire up on the board, I also hope that where ever I work I will receive the kindness and appreciation that I deserve. I am glad they are unionized and I hope the show takes action to make sure they receive fair treatment that they deserve and if the show doesn't I hope it seriously affects them to a point of forced change.
I kind of hate SNL. I feel like on top of the fairly substantial list of problems it has going on behind the scenes (such as not treating its postproduction workers fairly), it’s not even funny anymore, so it has like nothing to redeem itself. But it’s pretty scary when you learn that such a big production like SNL, which is, of course, run by NBC, is mistreating its workers. You would think that given their size they can afford to give their crew a little respect and a little healthcare, at least. And it’s crazy when you look at the bigger picture and see that things like this are happening all the time, way too frequently than they should. I hope that these crew members are able to get what they want without going on strike, but if they aren’t able to, they shouldn’t hesitate at all. Given that they work on such a popular TV show, their strike certainly wouldn’t go unnoticed.
SNL is a fascinating entity. The scope of work they do within a week - often grinding for many weeks in a row - is daunting. When you see what’s happening with this strike, it actually isn’t shocking, especially in this modern era where SNL uses a very solid amount of sophisticated effects and editing techniques in their Digital Shorts. This work is not trivial nor expedient, and I imagine the post-production team is frequently sleepless a couple of nights a week. It would seem preposterous to not compensate for this work, and impossible to not be fed up with said lack of compensation. I think the way SNL is created, the hope would be to sweep this issue under the rug, since such a large portion is live sketches. On another note, I like SNL. A good analogy I heard at one point was that they’re like a football team; you always want them to succeed, even when they suck or have down years. I feel that way.
I guess I'm surprised that this has become an issue for SNL, but I need to stop being surprised when it's a matter of worker rights, given that it seems everywhere has extreme worker rights issues in this industry. SNL is so popular it's hard to believe that they don't have access to the resources to fix this problem. However, I'm afraid that they are under the "we can just hire new people who wouldn't fight us to do this job" mindset. I want to believe every workplace wants to be good to its employees. I like that the workers recognized in this article that this show knows how to move fast, and they expect it of them on the contract and negotiation side as well. This was a good way to recognize the amount and style of work these workers do in a subtle way, which really clued me into a different way of thinking about this company in particular.
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