Posts by Peter Cox
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The MEAA’s strategy was pretty much exactly what Jackson is saying as far as I can tell also. It’s not technically ‘illegal’ to try to try to get a collective agreement on behalf of employees, but it is for independent contractors. As far as anyone can tell from the public documents, the MEAA claimed to the rest of the international unions that it was black and white legal to collectively bargain on behalf of NZ actors (when signing the ratification of the MEAAs no work order). This is either a gross oversimplification or an outright obfuscation of the reality, as, in reality, pretty much all NZ actors are classed as independent contractors (although, this is a grey area, as NZ labour law is somewhat vague and as to what technically constitutes an employee vs independent contractor). The strategy was not technically illegal, but it seems pretty darn dodgy to me, particularly as NZ actors never really got a say in any of this before it happened. AE leadership seemed uncertain about what was going on in most of their public statements, and much of their membership are still unclear about exactly what happened: ‘all we ever asked for was a meeting’. To some extent I suspect the MEAA’s attitude was ‘the ends justify the means’, which has been, unfortunately, the strategy of rather too many people in this thing, but such is the reality of these kind of actions I guess.
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Also, during the interview – while the boycott was on – Walsh and Boyens said that the lifting of the boycott may not be enough to save the production, that the damage was already done and that NZ will have to show that there will be a stable environment for the production.
Yes, that is exactly the point.
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Why can't we have sensible people arguing from the left in the media? That really, in a nutshell is my feeling about the whole thing: it's f****ng annoying to agree with something in principle and then have the people who are supposed to be advancing the cause screw it up so royally. And then, apparently, not even learn anything from it.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Which makes one wonder why the CTU (of whom AENZ/MEAA is an affiliate) didn’t consider that a priority for action during nine years of a union-friendly government?
I'm sure they did.
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In short: this did start with the boycott. And the situation was subsequently exploited by the producers.
I’m not sure why this is even news to anyone.
But anyway, a couple of points: why are we assuming that PJ isn’t simply manipulating Brownlee a little? Let’s say – for the sake of argument that -in early october- the boycott was going to send the production overseas (at least as far as PJ knew anyway). But then because the boycott was in the process of being rescinded, Brownlee would have the argument: ‘so you don’t need tax breaks’, so Peter Jackson was saying: no, this particular boycott ending makes no difference, what we need is long term stability of our vague and somewhat counter-intuitive labour laws, and a realistic assessment of our financial viability in bringing productions over.
However, it was never a particularly great argument that just because certain unions hadn’t officially posted their rescindment officially, the boycott wasn’t over. Technically it was true, but still… it wasn’t a particularly convincing argument.
Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m discussing this again.
Anyway, glad Helen Kelly managed to get the point in at the end of the interview that the only way we’ll get a stable workplace is allowing the film industry to engage in legally binding collective bargaining agreements, instead of the vague ‘we promise to be good’ system we have at the moment.
The law change doesn't really fix anything.
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*sigh*
People had been telling me that was their position, but I figured that couldn't be exactly right... but there it is on the website...
Do you know if there was ever any discussion of employee vs independent contractor status?
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Re: Irish Central. It's the old emphatic headline, less emphatic story trick.
Sure, but the thing that got me wondering was why they pulled the whole story 2 days later?
And yeah, that whole particular article is excellent.
@Simon. First time I've seen that video. So in a nutshell: they didn't want to renegotiate the pink book because it wasn't legally binding. :/ So they went to arrange legally biding contracts with individual producers, exactly like they did with the Hobbit? That kinda seems to be the gist of it.
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One strange thing that happened was an article on a news website I linked to way back on Oct8 on 'irish central' which had the headline
"Peter Jackson's the Hobbit will Film in Ireland"
I went back to look at it again, about 2 days later, and it had been taken down off the site. Never a report mentioning the same thing since. Odd.
The only remnant I can find is here:
http://www.irishcentral.com/mailings/3269527.html
"Peter Jackson’s ‘The Hobbit’ will film in Ireland
Thursday, October 7, 2010, 5:21 AM
The big budget production of the JRR Tolkien classic, The Hobitt could move filming to Ireland because of an ongoing dispute. The Irish Film Board (IFB) have confirmed they have been in contact with producers of the troubled production about potentially moving filming to Ireland.Click for Full Story (link missing) "
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Which thread is this?
That's how it started with poor Jonathan...
...alas, never to be seen again.
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Although now I read it again this bit:
as I understand it, as a way of requesting that producers actually talk to NZAE.
Still isn't really true at all.