It was a scorching hot day; the kind of humid, stinking miasma that I’ve always hated.
It was Friday, July 10, 1987. I’d been out of work for four months.
And by “out of work”, I mean “working, here and there. My fixed bills – rent, phone, car insurance, groceries – came to right around $300 a month. I’d usually tack on $50 or so more in job-hunting expenses, most of it in long-distance phone calls and postage for sending out audition tapes to radio stations. I’d worked through the list of every talk station in the country in markets larger than about 100,000 people, called almost all of them, and by this point sent out probably 100 audition tapes.
I supported myself – in no “style” whatsoever – by writing free-lance articles for various Saint Paul neighborhood newspapers which, while they didn’t have the stature of the Pioneer Press or the Strib, had a couple of crucial benefits:
- They paid as well as or better for freelance piece work than the daillies or either of the marquee weeklies, the City Pages and the Twin Cities Reader
- They were non-union. I remember my first and last meeting with an editor at the Pioneer Press; “This is very good stuff. But the Guild would put my n*ts in a vise if I bought non-union work”.
And along the way, I pitched myself to the various “talent agents” around the cities, looking for voiceover work. As the saying went, I’m not a model, but I played one on the radio.
Today, I got a call. A woman at an agency in Golden Valley had an odd need.
“I see on your resume you do Commonwealth accent work. Can you do Canadian?”
Now, growing up in North Dakota you heard the odd Canadian voice. Indeed, I’d grown up around a lot of ’em – since we didn’t get Public Radio in Jamestown until I was into college, my mom kept the family radio pretty much welded to CBW in Winnipeg, the region’s CBC affiliate, and a station that sounded, then as now, like NPR with funny vowels.
For a split second I thought – “In the whole Twin Cities voiceover market, you can’t find an actual Canadian?”
But I silenced that thought. “Sure”, I said, switching slyly into my most exaggerated Mountie brogue, “I’ll see aboot fitting the job into my shshedule”.
“OK, we need you at the studio now. Now now now”.
So I raced out to the jeep, drove across town to a studio in Edina, and spent the next four hours doing an industrial training video for a Canadian branch of a Minnesota company. The four hours’ work, at the non-union $75 an hour scale, paid just about a month’s worth of bills, even after my agent took her 10%.
I think I might have worn a red flannel lumberjack shirt to get into character, but I can’t confirm that.
Mitch Berg=Freeloader
Lets union members fight to increase wages then undercuts them by working non-union and complaining that their jobs are not outsourced too him. How much per hour would you have been paid if there were no powerful union for voice over professionals?
Rick,
Do you have the faintest idea what you’re talking about? Because I’m finding I have to filter for that.
Quick, oh glavnii giroii sotzyalistichiska rabotnayu – what union does handle (some) work in that area?
Do you know the parts of the VO/commercial production areas that union (if any) covers, nationally as well as the Twin Cities?
Do you know what the real-life consequences of joining that union (again, if any) are?
Get back to me with those answers, and then we can talk specifics.
I understand that it is RickDFL’s blind belief that “Union=Good”, but that has certainly not been my union experience. *shrug*
Troy,
Unlike most DFLers, I have been a union member, and it was a perfectly fine thing – although some of the stories of the union’s cartoony clenched-teethiness were hilarious.
But what I really want to know is, does Rick have the faintest idea how grossly inappropriate his Joe Union Lunchpail Blue Collar Hero schtick on this subject?
I’m guessing “huh?”
Let’s break it out: 75 = 67.50 to Mitch, 7.50 to his agent.
Union version: 75 = 57.50 to Mitch, 7.50 to his agent, 3 to legit Union admin costs, 2 to pay for travel to Orlando of Union officers to attend “conference”, 5 to DFL party.
The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists represents voice over professionals. Here is an general overview of their work in the voice over area:
http://www.aftra.org/voiceover/index.html
From there site: “With AFTRA, voiceover performers across the country have a stronger voice to win better rates and fees, benefits, and working conditions for work in commercials, narration, animation, promo announcements, audio books, videogames, basic cable programming, and other areas.”
Like all union members, AFTRA professionals have a contract that secures their pay and benefits. For a sample of current pay scales check here:
http://www.aftra.org/contract/nonbroadcast.htm
It looks like AFTRA has a special role in making sure artists get proper residual payments from companies. Did you ever get a residual check?
If you didn’t maybe you should contact the Twin Cities AFTRA office, they are just down the street from you.
2610 University Avenue West
Suite 350
St. Paul, MN 55114
They may direct you all the way across the river to Minneapolis to contact any of the four AFTRA affiliated talent agencies in the Twin Cities market. You can pick any of the four because all do Industrial, Non-Broadcast, and Voiceover work.
Chuck:
Of course, Mitch does better for himself working non-union, that is why they call it freeloading. But without a strong union to drive up pay scales, Mitch does not get $67.50, maybe he gets $50 or less.
That is why the entertainment and recording industries are two of the most heavily unionized (and most successful) industries in America.
Very good. You got about 1/4 of the question right. Actors Equity also handles a lot of voiceover talent.
Now, for the important half of my question.
Unfortunately, back when I WAS in radio full-time, joining AFTRA was a long, expensive walk off a short dock. There was (and remains) precisely ONE union station in the Twin Cities, WCCO. This was true in pretty much every significant radio market except New York and Chicago (and is even more true today).
Worse, AFTRA work rules generally were poison for the early stages of ones’ career in a non-union radio market. If you join AFTRA as an engineer, you could not talk on a microphone. If you joined as talent, you could not TOUCH a tape deck or a control board. Unfortunately, in radio your versatilty and breadth of experience was usually the difference between working and not working. Since the union was utterly worthless in helping people find jobs (since it was only a rump presence outside the top three markets), working AFTRA was a dumb move.
For voice-over work? Being AFTRA was great if you had already “made it” in the business – if you were one of the couple of dozen people who had established themselves in the market. AFTRA was, and remains, worthless to people who are trying to get their start. Which was true of their broadcast and industrial sides, as well.
In asking the question “what can the union do for me?” as, at the time, a young person starting in the business, the only answer as re AFTRA was “take my money and not do a damn thing”.
Consider your next answer – which will fall back upon union talking points without the faintest understanding of or sympathy for the market, the situation or the time involved – to be scoffed at in advance.
I should add – many of the VO artists I knew who were the most successful in the business locally and regionally eschewed AFTRA; not only was it (as noted) worthless for entry-level VO talent, it really didn’t do a lot for established people who didn’t have a stake in working in NYC, Chicago or Hollywood.
“what can the union do for me?”
One of the reasons you were paid $75 an hour was the work AFTRA and other unions were doing to raise pay scales in the voice over industry. You were a freeloader or in more classical economic terms a free rider. You received a benefit (higher wages) without paying the cost (union dues). Of course, it is a good deal for you as long as the union stays around and you can count on other people support it.
I predicted union dogma, and I got it!
Do you know what percentage of voiceover work in the Twin Cities is union, compared to non-union?
Your scenario presumes labor as an interchangeable commodity; that “union” talent and jobs are in direct competition with “non-union” ones. That’s really not the case.
Since there really IS no competition between AFTRA/AEQ and non-union work, it’s considerably more likely that union wages and VO jobs exist only in specialized, “premium” environments, and that the non-union VO market would be pretty much the same without any AFTRA presence around.
Since you know nothing about the facts on the ground on this issue, let’s move on, Rick. Tell us – why is AFTRA so utterly impotent at affecting wages and work conditions throughout the radio, television and talent industries?
Rick, I somewhat agree with you. I may have used the example of my parents before. As public school teachers they were paid pretty good in their later years of teaching (not so much when I was a little ‘un). In fact, in the case of my Dad, he was forced to retire because they were making too much (pension was funded, salary came from operating budget).
But as a pro-life, pro-business, pro-Christian Republican, I found so much of what the teachers unions do offensive. If I was in that profession, is the higher pay and benefits worth being forced to join a political party?
On the other end, I think it’s a mistake that so many Republicans are or come across as hostile to much of public education.
People just out of college with a degree in engineering make 50 – 60 k/year. They have no union.
A person who depends on Mitch to publish his or her political views without compensating him has no right to call Mitch a freeloader.
Terry,
Rick thinks everybody that doesn’t pay confiscatory tax rates or exorbitant union dues is a freeloader.
Yeah, RickDFL seems to be from the “people with no money are the real producers of society’s wealth” school of economics.
I’m guessing that if it were booked through an agent in Golden Valley, it was for Jan Hilton at NUTS.
Even at 1987 figures, you got screwed at $75.00 an hour. If it was Jan that booked you, she was notorious for undercutting other agencies in the cities.
And, if if I recall, Jan actually took closer to 20%. She would tell the talent that, for example, “the job pays $75.00 and I take 10% so you get $67.50.” Then she would tell the talent, “the charge is $75.00 and I charge 10% so your bill is $82.50.”
Roger Klemmer used to do the same thing.
Depending on the usage of course, a comparable union job in 1987 could have paid $150.00 for the first hour and $225.00 for each additional hour. If it were broadcast, it would have been run for the initial 13 week cycle and if it were picked up you would have gotten residual pay for doing nothing more. If it gets used in other markets? Ca-ching. Something that non-union can’t deliver.
If you’re good enough, the union seeks you out. And for the record, if you’re doing V/O for television, you are a member of SAG.
Mitch:
Of course union density has a huge impact on any particular union’s ability to raise wages. If you concede my point that you benefited, to some degree, from union pay scales in the recording/entertainment industry, I will defer to your information on the particulars of voiceover work in the mid 80s.
Why was AFTRA unable to do more to raise standards in the Twin Cities? That is a larger discussion for another day, but lets look at one example. The Federal government banned secondary strikes. If the UAW ad been able to strike GM to get GM to pull ads from a non-union TV or radio station, my guess is every station would be union. But our big government loving Republican friends put a stop to that.
Doug,
Wow. Bingo on the agency trivia! And yep, Jan was a huckster. And I was a very naive 24 year old, at least about THAT part of the business.
Yep, I’d have given my eyeteeth to have gotten union VO work. Someone tell Rick – I have nothing against unions whatsoever. I’m merely as against union/government collusion as I am against business/government collusion.
Rick,
Some unions are good, and some are out of control. The UAW is a shining example of the latter, especially with GM.
By the way, just in case you think I’m against unions as a concept, I’m in the process of joining SMW #10.