Re: Understanding Unions

"David McCall" <david.mccall@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:gtFLf.5
$UN1.0@trndny08:


"Richard Crowley" <rcrowley@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:11vu3famd46lof8@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
How is it that unions secure these contracts, anyway?

Perhaps NOT something you want to discuss in writing
in an archived newsgroup.

To some extent it may tie in with insurance. It may be a bit of
an issue to have "just anybody" flying trusses over the heads
of the audience and then hanging heavy stuff from it. The union
sends over people that have been approved (by the union)
to work doing this kind of work. They send enough guys that
at least one of them can figure out what needs to be done
to insure everybody's safety. At least that is the theory.

I'm not casting dispersions on your crew. The fact that you
know and trust them is good enough for me, but I don't sell
insurance.

There is one little detail that the unions overlook. That is
that
people have budgets. If your client wants to budget a certain
amount for labor, and you come back to tell him that you need
3 times as much, what is he to do. There is no point in doing
the job to loose money, so the job goes away and everybody
looses money, except the insurance company. They get their
bill paid until the venue is declared too unprofitable and the
building gets imploded. See what you've done now :-)


It's one thing if the client hasn't budgeted enough manpower to
accomplish the task. It's another if they have, but the manpower
resource isn't the union.

I remember my producer booked an act into a union house because
our hall was booked with an extension of our own production. The
act was a stand up comic: he stepped through the rag into a
single followspot. IATSE told us we needed a crew of 8 to run
the show.
So you have a spot op
You have sound man.
YOu have a guy on the curtain.

And 5 guys to play poker on our dime.


--
}:-) Christopher Jahn
{:-( http://home.comcast.net/~xjahn/Main.html

Real punk rockers don't smile.
.