Coverage of last night's VES Awards: "We thought that only our grandfathers needed unions"

[villager]

<snip>

But what does that integration mean for the people who build those sets? Or render them? The most interesting conversation BTL had about Gravity, and the state of visual effects as an industry, came not during the awards, but at the bar of the Beverly Hilton, waiting for the ballroom doors to open.

We wound up sitting next to a renderer for a premier digital effects house. He was happy to be working primarily on commercials, however, instead of features, since work on motion pictures was too unpredictable, too unsteady. He was lamenting that he and his cohorts, who rushed into the biz around the turn of century, all thought that having a unique skill set, and being in a seemingly rarefied industry, would keep their work steady, and their wages high.

But now most of the middle tier work in films – outside of the tentpoles – can be handled with plug-n’-play software, by workers in low-wage economies. “We thought,” said renderer opined, ”that only our grandfathers needed unions. We never realized we did.”

Were they too late? Or is that organizing yet to come?

<snip>

http://www.btlnews.com/awards/gravity-wins-big-at-the-12th-annual-ves-awards/

[bvar22]

1. Unfortunately, the battles to win these rights for the Working Class,

...will have to be fought all over again again.
These rights that took decades to earn
have been thrown away in a 30 year bi-partisan scam of NeoLiberalism if favor of Free Trade, Invisible Hands, Freedom (for the Corporate Owners), and getting those regulations of the backs of the Job Creators.

The History of the Labor Movement has been edited out of our text books,
and forgotten or ignored by the Leadership of the Democratic Party.

I am deeply embarrassed by the country we are handing to our children.

[villager]

2. They will be. The battles are going to be quite... interesting, in the next go-round

...given the higher stakes and the diminishing resources...