Posts by giovanni tiso
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Russell Brown,
If you’re implying that it says Bryson was a general precedent, or that his was a typical contract, it actually says the opposite of that:
I'm not sure what you even mean by that. The employment court dismissed the industry's concerns that if Bryson's case was found to have merit, it would have had dire consequences for the industry, in that his circumstances were different from those of other workers who are indeed rightly treated as contractors. This doesn't mean that the Bryson case was irrelevant - it was so relevant in fact that they changed the law around it. Now nobody in the film industry (and not just the actors) can claim that they ought to qualify as employees even if they satisfy the tests for the status of employee stated in the Employment Relations Act. That's a victory for the guy who fought Bryson in court - can we agree on that?
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And who the fuck has said otherwise?
I don't know, yet apparently my suggesting it constitutes an offence. But mostly I'm fed up with your constant arguing even when you have nothing substantive to contribute, just veiled insults. It's a shtick that got old about 4000 comments ago.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
No dear, I think patronising people (like our host) who is perfectly happy as a contractor is a dick move. YMMV.
So saying that maybe not everyone is happy to be a contractor amounts to patronising our host? Jesus. That outdoes even you.
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Hope you brought plenty of kerosene and a box of matches to set that straw man going.
I like how we're talking about Peter Jackson scheming and lying to get a law changed that saw him lose a court case, and bringing up that very court case is an irrelevant strawman.
As far as I can tell (not being an employment law nerd), that case came out of a contact that was - to put it mildly - a dog's dinner and pretty much all the informed commentary I've seen has been reluctant to spin out a general precedent from a highly specific set of circumstances
I don't know where you have found this informed commentary, but it squares with exactly none of what I've read. To pick more or less at random, here's a blog post from the Cullen employment Law firm which says just the opposite of what you just said. Perhaps by "bad contract" you mean a contract that didn't successfully indemnify the employers against its employees, but the author of the post makes the point that "the wording in the contract is not determinative. Rather, the real nature of the relationship is what is important."
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Actually, I'm a self-employed contractor who is happy to be; nonetheless I'm glad that in the industry in which I work there isn't a presumption that work ought to be casualised, and people - myself included - are able to test the law in the way that Bryson did, if they feel that the designation of contractor is being abused by their clients/employers.
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Yes, that evil mr Bryson, who reckoned he should be entitled to the rights of an employee seeing that he was treated like one. How very dare he? Plus, what's wrong with the man? Can't he be like "most workers"?
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Russell Brown,
The large majority of film workers don't want to be employees and rather like claiming a third of the mortgage against their tax. As I said above, this gives them the ultimate excuse when IRD questions their tax status.
Every time these fabulous tax advantages are bandied about they become inflated a little bit more. Who is it who declares A THIRD OF THEIR HOUSE as a home office, really? Aren't we just talking about somebody who's lucky not to have been audited yet?
Also, you don't claim a third of your mortgage. You can claim a third of your interest. And you can elect to depreciate the home office portion, but then you have to give the money back when you sell the house or cease to be self-employed.
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Kind of a meet point, since the don't work order was rescinded by then, wouldn't you say?
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Russell Brown,
But mostly, if Warners cared nothing about a global "don't work" order (which would be odd) and only wanted to be sure of avoiding another Bryson, why not simply ask for that?
Because anybody who looked at the Bryson case would be inclined to side with the worker, perhaps?
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Hard News: A few (more) words on The Hobbit, in reply to Russell Brown,
I agree, it is a different flavour of lie, a hapless one, even, but the union was not a blameless victim in this, as people are now trying to say.
The most frustrating aspect of this whole thing for me was reading the union's own press releases in a sequence and finding that they contradicted each other - I'd have thought that the job of misrepresenting your views was best left to your opponent. But then it also struck me as a conspiracy of incompetence more than anything else. Don't think we can blame the employers' side of that in this circumstance. The govt's role in this ought to be looked into as well. A Labour MP on Facebook was just asking the question - didn't Brownlee call Kelly a liar when she said what we now know to be true? If that is indeed the case (I don't recall the incident nor can find a reference for it) it would be good to be able to date it in relation to the email he received from Sir Lie-a-lot.