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Why don't people in public accounting have unions?
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Creatives should form their own union. Discuss.
Teachers’ unions are the enemy of the people
Why isn’t there a public accounting union(s)?
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Unions make it difficult for businesses to do well. Unionizing would also mean our salaries would be MUCH lower. It’s a trade off. You’d get job security but lower compensation. The work would suffer because being under a union contract would mean you aren’t incentivized to do better. This works well for manufacturing jobs where it’s easier to measure output.
While it’s seems like comparing actors and producers to advertising peeps makes sense, it doesn’t. Those jobs are mostly done on a project basis, and aren’t for full time employees. The full timers are rich and aren’t who the unions are for. The rest... they need unionizing for health care and wage purposes. This thread is mostly focused on finding a way to limit the overtime that most agencies subject us to. That’s a matter of increasing industry regulation, not unionizing. Not sure at what point I started sounding like an anti-labor conservative here (I’m quite the opposite). Unions are crucial in the right industries. But to pretend like advertising fits in the same category and isn’t (comparatively speaking) well-compensated, white collar work... is ludicrous.
Writers in Hollywood don’t seem to be showing signs of stifled creativity. Same goes (went) for journalists in the guild
Regardless, I don’t think being unionized has degraded writing quality. Instead, it’s enabled talented people to stay in the business
I have always wondered how new biz pitches would be handled in a world with creative unions. I assume some kind of overtime pay/compensation would be up there in priorities, so that could really change how they’re handled (with late-night grinds and all that)
I've debated how it could look with a guild structure, where teams or formations of colleagues might be able to pitch independently and win business to bring back to the agency to make creative. You could make money for pitching—some combo of your agency's investment into winning the pitch, the guild's promotion of its workers, and the client's investment into a quality RFP (not unlike how you pay to list your open gigs on LinkedIn). We blow a vast amount of time and resources on pitches that should be spent on our existing clients. A more flexible and open pitching process would save us from that, and more than likely, produce much better work.
There have been a lot of media outlets pushing forward with unionization recently (Fast Company, The Onion, Vox, Buzzfeed, Refinery29), so hopefully the tides are shifting...
Vox and the Onion both do pretty well if we are being honest. They pretty consistently churn out mostly quality content which make them solid networks for advertisers like us. The others you mentioned don't do as well, and I'd argue that has a lot to do with the quality of their content and, ultimately, the quality of the mission and management of those companies. Which, of course, is why their employees, who have a vested interest in the success of those companies, want to have a formal seat at the bargaining table for decisions that will ultimately effect them.
This is a good article that can give you an idea about how stronger regulations, not unions, is what our industry needs: https://dev.to/kuhnertdm/why-just-unionize-doesnt-work-5hm0
As someone said in the Twitter comments on this article: "I like regulation but it doesn't grow on trees. If game devs aren't able to unionize to further their cause how will they lobby against giants like EA, Rockstar, etc."
You can talk about exactly this, right here. https://joinfishbowl.com/bowl_63oldc
Clients are actively avoiding hiring SAG-signatory agencies in favor of non-sig agencies to save $. Could you imagine if some but not all agencies unionized? Union shops would end up like King’s Landing. 🔥🐉
That's why we all should. The IWW model!