wow. I would be so stoked to be making $2100 a week. Whats the yearly on that? What kind of hours? 40 or 50 a week? I am cast driver and work 90 hours a week and make about $1200 to $1600. Wish I was a writer
To make the issue clearer (and I'm not trying to knock you or anything) -- if they fired you and hired somebody else to do the same work for the same hours for $300 dollars a week, you'd feel mighty unhappy -- especially if they said you could have your old job back -- at the same rate.
But why? Maybe the guy who's earning the 300 thinks it's a reasonable deal. Why wouldn't you?
Because your work has value and there should be some direct relationship between the value of your work and what you are paid for your work.
Large employers, either working individually or collectively as unofficial trusts, are able to devalue the legitimate worth of labor by monopolizing the available supply of work. If you want to be a cast driver (for instance) or an animation writer, or a screenwriter, there are only so many places you can go to get that work. If all of the employers collectively agree to underpay you, or to deny you certain benefits, as an individual selling your services, you have no choice but to accept that devaluation of your work -- because where ever you go to sell it, you will find that same under-valuing being used.
The antidote to that industry wide de-valuation -- is organized labor. Just as large industries are able to control, and thus deny to workers the supply of jobs, organized labor can do the same thing - control the availability of skilled labor to industry.
So just as industry can say to the work force -- you want a job, you have to take what we give on our terms, Organized Labor is in the position to counter that by saying -- you want a work force, you have to come to us, and give us decent wages and decent benefits, or else you don't get people to work in your factories, or drive your cars, or write your scripts.
That is why unions who have a collusive relationship with management, as certain unions are rumored to have, is so destructive of the basic relationship between unions and management.
The reason that we have the wages that we do is because of organized labor -- that I have a pension, that I have a health plan, that we have residuals and royalties and minimum payments on our work -- and that there is some reasonable value paid to the writers and directors of a show, who may make thousands, while the studio owners may, quite literally, make hundreds of *millions* off that very same show -- is because of the efforts of my union -- not because management is "fair."
If management had it's way, they'd never have paid us a dime in pension or health benefits (as they don't in animation or reality TV). Never given us a penny in royalties or residuals (as they don't in animation or reality).
That is, with the exception of those shows, like The Simpsons, that are covered by the WGA.
NMS
