Did you know? Amazon does film production – and it treats those workers like dirt, too* Amazon, the target of multiple lawsuits alleging labor law violations and the subject of criticism over cutthroat work culture, appears to be pilot testing its tough-love approach to worker management in its burgeoning media production business. Marvelous Solano-Rodriguez – who may or may not live up to his name – on Thursday …
John Rogers put it best:
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Amazon: you like your job, right? You're having fun?
PPA: yeah....?
Amazon: you don't expect me to pay you for having fun, do you?!
Alternative
Amazon: you like your job, right? You're having fun?
PPA: yeah... but no, not really.
Amazon: Sod off, you ungrateful sob! You're fired!
Ain't that the truth, David Prowse who acted one of the most iconic film characters in history, Darth Vader, once said this:
“I get these occasional letters from Lucasfilm saying that we regret to inform you that as Return of the Jedi has never gone into profit, we’ve got nothing to send you. Now here we’re talking about one of the biggest releases of all time,” said Prowse. “I don’t want to look like I’m bitching about it,” he said, “but on the other hand, if there’s a pot of gold somewhere that I ought to be having a share of, I would like to see it.”
AFAIK, Every Harry Potter film made a stonking great loss. This is like every movie yet the Studios are still in business. In any other line of work they would be out of business years ago.
But Hollywood works on a totally different set of accounting rules than any other business
Google for "hollywood accounting rules"
This one is very enlightening
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-hollywood-accounting-can-make-a-450-million-movie-unprofitable/245134/
Hollywood makes ponzi schemes look positively generous.
The Hollywoord accounting rules are set up by the governments who ought to be collecting tax so that those jobs won't drift off to other places.
As a taxpayer in New Zealand I had to cough up my share of $50 million to keep the awful Lord of the Rings movies here.
The workers on those movies also lobbied hard on behalf of their owners to be allowed to give up the right to take industrial action.
(David Prowse)
Eldest went with some mates on a youth club trip to the Comicon in Cardiff yesterday. Prowse was there, along with a few other minor-ish celebrities. Prowse was acting so grumpy that eldest decided to avoid that queue for signatures and head for the bloke next door whose name I've forgotten, but who (among other things) played the small red spiky alien/cyborg (spoliers!) in the Doctor Who Christmas special Voyage of the Damned (Titanic). Apparently, he was absolutely charming and chatty.
If Prowse really is being shafted by Lucasfilm (or presumably Disney now) then I can understand his grump.
M.
In the last 10 years, half of the places I've worked have tried to short my pay. This has become the norm in American business.
And it works because most people are too poor to fight it and the government agencies who are supposed to protect you are underfunded and understaffed and most claims go done the memory hole.
Ha. Many many years ago, I would work numerous days in a row (fast forward: company has been giving zero pay raises for so many years that getting anyone to show up on weekend now to meet a deadline just doesn't happen. Beanies saving money and all that, but I digress).
When I attempted to out the electronic time card, the software would not let me fill in the number of days worked. Finally complained about it after being pressured to fill in the time card, and they said: state law says you can't work that many days in a row, therefore the software won't let you enter that many in a row. My response: I can't sign the time card without all those days, because you say the electronic time card is a 'legal document' and since I can't fill the time card in with the number of days I actually worked, I can't sign the time card. No response to that, they don't require salaried people to fill out time cards anymore because it only causes problems... like the problems Amazon has. If they had no records, it would be 'he said she said' and only the lawyers would get any money!
Oh the Union workers are better? Don't think so. I worked at a union shop (Raytheon) where the union "workers" actually had couches next to the timeclocks... and would sit by them for 10 to 15 minutes or even longer before they punched out.... ridiculous
Union "workers" sitting by the punch clock waiting to punch out are the fault of or by the direction of the management. Anyone pointing to such practices as the fault of the workers is politically motivated, or very ignorant of how Union workplaces are designed to operate.
IME Union workers are by far the easiest to control. They are bound by a contract that the Union team or Union management has agreed to and does not want violated. A Union that willfully violates a contract can be de-certificated meaning the workers would have to organise all over again.
Should a supervisor see a Union worker in an area their job does not require them to be in. or engaged in an unauthorized activity that worker can be verbally warned (with a written letter recording the warning) clearly stating the violation. Should that offense occur again it can be followed up by a written warning and discipline. (sample letters should be one file to help new supervisors use correct wording)
Each contract is a little different but the discipline process is clear and will progress all the way to termination without recourse unless the worker changes their behaviour. In which case they can pause the process for a set time (usually a year) before it resets, ready to be used again with maximum discipline at each step.
Management always has the right and responsibility to manage. That they choose not to is not the fault of the workers.
Something feels off here.
You might name yourself "Marvelous" if you are a professional magician.
Otherwise, I think I'm safe in assuming a tendency toward self-aggrandizing hyperbole. That doesn't mean such a person is not ALSO being screwed by a large organization. But my first impulse is to look for independent verification of anything he says.
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