Reply To: Image Comics Forms a Union – Your Thoughts and Reactions?

[philipspace]

Well, creators are freelancers, and freelancers can’t actually unionize (only form a guild, which is a new thing I have learned), so no threat there.

The main benefit of a union to the employee is that it requires the employer to meet certain criteria to terminate your employment. Let’s face it, job security is the most important feature to people who have to work to pay their bills, which is most people. The union forms an agreement with the employer that acts as a contract. Because they are negotiating as a group, the employer doesn’t have the power to just replace or fire a “problem” employee, so it provides the workforce a measure of protection while allowing them to simultaneously address workplace problems. So regular assessments of working conditions, performance reviews, and career mobility/retention/seniority recognition become beneficial because it builds overall morale while improving working conditions as well as improving the business itself.

In the case of Image, it basically means that the production staff can put a halt to publications if they feel that a given problem is not being adequately addressed. If needs aren’t being met, the books don’t go out, period. As everyone involved in the CBS 8-page challenges should be aware, the behind-the-scenes staff are absolutely integral to producing a finished product to put in front of an audience. Since the Image staff is stipulating the need for annual workplace assessment to meet hiring needs and just as importantly, compensation, this is putting management in the position of addressing issues that heretofore they had the power to ignore. Which is not to suggest that they hadn’t been addressing workplace issues to the best of their abilities, who am I to judge? I would say that the choice to unionize suggests that the workforce at Image had been unsatisfied with these efforts, however.

[philipspace]

Well, creators are freelancers, and freelancers can’t actually unionize (only form a guild, which is a new thing I have learned), so no threat there.

The main benefit of a union to the employee is that it requires the employer to meet certain criteria to terminate your employment. Let’s face it, job security is the most important feature to people who have to work to pay their bills, which is most people. The union forms an agreement with the employer that acts as a contract. Because they are negotiating as a group, the employer doesn’t have the power to just replace or fire a “problem” employee, so it provides the workforce a measure of protection while allowing them to simultaneously address workplace problems. So regular assessments of working conditions, performance reviews, and career mobility/retention/seniority recognition become beneficial because it builds overall morale while improving working conditions as well as improving the business itself.

In the case of Image, it basically means that the production staff can put a halt to publications if they feel that a given problem is not being adequately addressed. If needs aren’t being met, the books don’t go out, period. As everyone involved in the CBS 8-page challenges should be aware, the behind-the-scenes staff are absolutely integral to producing a finished product to put in front of an audience. Since the Image staff is stipulating the need for annual workplace assessment to meet hiring needs and just as importantly, compensation, this is putting management in the position of addressing issues that heretofore they had the power to ignore. Which is not to suggest that they hadn’t been addressing workplace issues to the best of their abilities, who am I to judge? I would say that the choice to unionize suggests that the workforce at Image had been unsatisfied with these efforts, however.