A few details on union news, lost in the mass of otherwise worrying news. The drop in unrevised wages while inflation soars is no less crucial.
STRIKE / WAGE INCREASE
Mandatory annual negotiations between employee unions and employers’ associations regarding wage increases for audiovisual production were held at the end of last year. No reasonable agreement could be reached, with employers blocking their proposal at 1% for temporary workers and 2% for permanent workers. Inflation from February 2021 to February 2022 was 3.6%, according to INSEE. This inflationary trend is likely to worsen; therefore, a 1% increase is unsustainable.
After consulting with the inter-association, the inter-union agreed to propose to everyone, from March 9 to 16, a consultation with the aim of voting on strike (…).
The dates for this strike will then be proposed by the inter-union, which will file a legal notice to this effect. It is scheduled to last 48 hours, but the inter-union may eventually propose extending it. You will be consulted in this case, of course. (…) “
With this text, the UNDIA association has been proposing for several days a vote on the advisability of going on strike, a voting proposal first addressed by the grouping of several unions in our professions to all professional associations in the sector.
As a reminder, UNDIA (National Union for the Defense of Intermittent Audiovisual Workers) is an association made up of technicians working primarily for streaming television, whose activity has grown significantly in the defense of its members’ social rights. UNDIA has decided to respond to this request from the unions by proposing a vote to its members on the advisability of striking. Its members are voting electronically on the subject right now (from March 12 to 15 inclusive).
Since the Union did not organize such a vote, this article is intended to convey information to its members. However, it seems necessary to clarify it with a personal opinion, taking into account the seriousness of the strike in our profession as camera operators.
First of all: what is the problem?
We may not all be aware of a certain equation, an example of which is:
– Weekly salary (39 hours) of an audiovisual operator assistant in 2004: €1,096. And in 2021: €1,175. So an increase of 7.2% over the period.
– Monthly rent for the same assistant in 2004: €1,077. And in 2021: €1,233. So an increase of 14.4% over the period – which does not take into account inflation for the coming year, which, according to the current and terrible economic conditions, is heading towards 5%.
When technicians’ and performers’ unions demanded an 11% increase in the agreed salaries, the producers’ unions responded: 1%. Not a kopeck more.
It should be noted that this lack of salary revaluation is compounded by the drastic reduction in unemployment insurance benefits (indeed, if the struggles mainly led by performing artists and technicians have succeeded in not increasing the 507 hours/year limit to still benefit from unemployment insurance for a year, this has been achieved at the cost of a considerable increase in the number of “waiting days”, i.e. days not compensated over a year of entitlement, and the inclusion of a monthly “ceiling” which often has the effect of reducing our monthly rights to… nothing at all).
Faced with the refusal of producers’ unions, who refuse to hear about wage increases, the idea of a strike is becoming more prevalent. However, it is a heavy weapon, and one that is difficult to handle.
Indeed, having to block a shoot is a source of anger that each of us prefers to avoid. Shooting ourselves in the foot when we have the chance to work on a great project? Not easy. It’s always dangerous to fall out with an employer who provides us with a living all or part of the year, whether that employer is a producer, or, more indirectly, a director. The pay tug-of-war can also wreak havoc on friendships. Questioning the value of these friendships doesn’t change the matter: a painful matter, a dangerous matter! We all remain, by essence, unstable, precarious, dependent workers.
We all have to resort to the same means of friendship or pressure towards our subordinates or potential employees (electricians, machinists, assistants, etc.) to make them accept certain salary conditions… in exchange for promises of other shoots. It is the normal, healthy, prudent, cautious thought of the “next shot”: of what we are ready to sacrifice for the next shoot.
The effects of our essential precariousness are no less implacable for those of us who negotiate our contracts as entrepreneurs. Those of us, even closer to production, will find it very difficult to engage in a strike.
Still, this caution may come at the cost of basic solidarity. At the cost of taking into account the difficulties that accumulate in our daily lives, our “real lives,” outside of filming. How many broken couples, separated families, homes that are too cramped? As for work, the work we all love, for which we have sometimes chosen to sacrifice any notion of job security, and many other things besides, well, this work, we are gradually carrying it out like any other job. And we remain alone with our avoidances and the shame of not having taken the risk of confronting the adversary. Accept. Grit our teeth. The important thing: continue.
The adversary? If there is a class for which the “class struggle” is a reality lived and assumed on a daily basis, a class that has completely assimilated the teachings of Marxist analysis bringing face to face those who produce and those who own the means of production, the workers on the one hand and the entrepreneurs on the other, it is of course the class of entrepreneurs. This cannot be true for all entrepreneurs, of course. But in the case at hand, it is their representatives, their unions, who oppose any significant revaluation of wages. For the record, while only 5 to 10% of intermittent technicians are unionized, producers are all, absolutely all, affiliated with one or other of their unions.
No date has yet been set for this possible strike. And if the temporary workers’ unions have so far been reluctant to use this type of action, and have decided to consult our associations beforehand, it is to involve them in the process, and also because they fear above all that this strike will not be followed by those most affected – including us. In the event of a strike that is not followed, that only results in a handful of filming stops, and even then, for only a few hours, without causing much damage to the budget of any production, it would be the end of any possibility of salary increases for years to come. The producers will then have demonstrated that they are strong – and that we are weak. Weak. Whatever good reasons we find to look our colleagues in the face, not to mention ourselves.
The strike: it connects the group (group of directors of photography, group of film crew, group of artistic collaborators) with the responsibility of each individual. Going alone is suicidal. But how can you not go alone if no one follows you? And how can you know if others follow you, when you yourself don’t go?
Olivier Bertrand, Hervé Lodé, Julien Pamart for the inter-association group of UCO
