Open Letter to I.A.T.S.E.

Since Mr Loeb announced your "Drive" to the Visual Effects Society, Variety, and the world last November the workers of the VFX industry were excited at the possibility of finally gaining their seat at the big round table of the film world. The web lit up with voices of praise, concern, and hope, when in the past there was a lot of empty dark space concerning our futures. Next we looked towards the shiny charisma of your leaders and the premier of the fruits of all your eighteen months of groundwork.  We knew you were not the only solution, but a we hoped your were a great turn on the race to the bottom ......and then ….nothing happened.

We did see you take on the role of socialites basking in the glow of committees and board meetings and prancing around the topics at hand. We watched you take Jimmy out of moth balls and then tie his hands disallowing him or IASTE reps any interviews or Internet coverage...or even a web site. You did allow him to bake cookies and take them to the park and hand out some tired repetitive speeches, techniques that may have worked in the 40's,  but carry no relevance today.

We watched the Montreal Fx community crumble into more missed and bounced paychecks while their movies went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars with no government attention and the meek voice of IATSE saying..." but no one is calling us"  What happened to leadership?  What happened to hard working union reps?  Were we supposed to spontaneously combust into union members at the mention of IATSE and the word "drive"?

We watched Pixar and ILM get called on the carpet by the feds for having a secret agreement to illegally cap the wages of the artists. We hear the same has been going on in Montreal, and now Toronto.

We increasingly became migratory workers and watched benefits shrink to zero, as more and more jobs left for even cheaper labor in a disguised effort to scatter us away from the unionized talent.

I've received emails from your reps when their gags where removed long enough, to remind me that I don't understand how this is done, how IATSE has to be very careful about how it approaches this drive.  Then jack squat happens, zippo, nada,  and we are losing time and ground. Attendance has dropped off to almost zero at the back room and park meetings in Vancouver and Los Angeles.  No one is even writing about the attendance anymore as it's become so pathetic. The vfx community is laughing at you and your "efforts" but I see something potentially more sinister.

I'm calling you onto that big round table right now and accusing you of working for the studios, even if by accident, crushing what little chance and what little spirit is left to finally unionize what's becoming the most important part of the studio's bottom line, the visual fx artists and their stunning digital imagery.  I'm also calling on your other members from their ranks to question your motivation and why their brothers are being left in the dust.  I'm giving you one more chance to make good on this, or like any company that has worthless employees, fire your asses. If this is the way your going to represent us then please step aside and let the void be filled by true leaders.

Dave Rand

Permanent link: http://www.daverand.com/open-letter-to-iatse/