Can you take an indecisive stance?
The big casting director meeting is tonight. It’s a bicoastal CD meeting with the Teamsters to determine whether we will conduct a pilot season work stoppage in order to gain recognition by the AMPTP. Our formal request to be recognized as a work organization was rejected last month and therefore CDs have no health and pension benefits, despite the fact that all other crafts, unions, and guilds in the entertainment industry DO have these things. We have no standardized rate of pay, no contract dispute backing, and the Teamsters have agreed to strike with casting directors, should that be the decision that is made at tonight’s meeting.
I attended a unionization meeting a year ago and voiced my concerns about the plan as it then existed (only CDs of feature films with a budget over $1M would qualify–that leaves me out, thus far in my career; no commercial, voiceover, industrial, or music video CDs were included in the plan–meaning those types of CDs could come in and work our film and TV casting gigs if we were to strike, etc.). I told them then that I would not back a plan that didn’t have representation for ALL casting directors, since creating a union that only covered a fraction of the CDs is like going in knowing that (for example) an actors’ union would be FAR more powerful if it were a combination of ALL performers, yet choosing to split the types of people covered and hoping they’ll still all stand together. I just couldn’t understand how anyone on the steering committee could expect commercial CDs to stand with film and TV CDs in a work stoppage when the goal was to get a union of CDs recognized… but that same union wouldn’t recognize or cover commercial CDs! Silly!
I attended that meeting a year ago and voiced my concerns and explained what would need to happen before I could feel that I would support THIS casting union plan (just like with SAG and AFTRA mergers… some plans are better than others, and you can’t simply support a single goal of a larger plan that doesn’t quite cut it on every level). I suggested that the CSA work to create a standardized contract that would be agreed upon by producers (similar to what the legit stage CDs in NY had done, last year) and, once they had bargaining success with producers here in LA, consider using that newfound producer-level support to fortify the request to become recognized as a union.
Anyway, I haven’t decided whether I’m going tonight or not. I’d like to think it would be an informative, educational, well-organized presentation of facts and options. Based on what I’ve experienced before, though, it’s more likely to be a rally with lots of fear-based conjecture and empassioned demands for health care and retirement funds. I’m passionate about that stuff too, but I run my own business and have made inroads to getting coverage the same way any small business owner does.
I spoke with a fellow “new” casting director at a showcase last week, and as she expressed: “I’m concerned that a strike will simply cause producers to say, ‘Okay. Back to the studio system! We don’t need casting directors!'” She’s certainly right that that could happen again. Casting directors serve the purpose of middleman in the industry. Without casting directors, casting can still take place.
And it saddens me to not be hugely pro-union about this, right now. My grandfather was a huge player in the very beginnings of the AFL-CIO and United Steel Workers. He is in history books as a part of the Ducktown 8 and I feel a great sense of duty to the union life.
But as casting directors are FORMING a union, we simply MUST look at the mistakes others have made in forming their unions and PREVENT OUR UNION from repeating those mistakes. The fact that I, as a CD of low-budget indie SAG films (the largest budget I’ve cast thus far was $750,000), am considered unworthy of protection under this proposal… yet I’m asked to NOT work with the directors and producers who’ve come to me for their low budget projects for two years… well… it’s a little bit of a slap in the face.
*shrug*
It’s an emotional issue for a lot of people. I’m still totally on the fence and have no idea what I’m going to do tonight (re: attending the meeting) or what I’ll be doing when the order to stop work in casting comes down (I’m almost certain that will be the outcome of tonight’s rally). Thing is, I’m in “book mode” right now anyway and have said NO to casting jobs since finishing casting the feature film I just handed off to production last week. So, in a way the timing supports my indecisive stance.
If there is such a thing. 😉