I worked in visual effects for quite some time and there was no union for us so all the creative use of my brain benefitted the "owners" rather than myself. All the guilds do better for themselves than visual effects people. My X still works as a visual effects producer/supervisor and there is no union for him yet he contributes enormously to the outcome of a film. He recently worked with Ridley Scott on his remake of Blade Runner, for instance, and the new version looks simply fabulous due to the kind of skills my X husband has. Now he will not benefit from that other than what he was paid to fix the movie.
Later I learned that the visual effects supervisors did have a union decades ago. They were a part of the Directors Guild. But one year the producers negotiated the visual effects people OUT of the Directors Guild. This is the inherent flaw of subdivision of creative effort into all these categories where some win and others lose. It becomes a matter of power, not talent or contribution.
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Workers in the entertainment industry, from janitors to artistic material creators, should all be in the same Industrial Union. Then, they'd have the power necessary (through solidarity) to achieve contracts which included all in sharing the wealth which comes about when all these workers co:operate within the industry to create the billions which are eventually made from the sale of the social product of their labour.
IMO, workers need to understand that classwide unionism where "an injury to one is an injury to all" is the solution to the question of power in the class struggle.
Mike B)
"Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe Hill http://iamawobbly.multiply.com/
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