Creative Workers of the World

The Financial Times' John Gapper, one of my favorite columnists and bloggers, zeros in on the struggles and opportunities being created by the evolution of the creative economy:

The best-rewarded workers in recent years have not been those with a union on their side but those who can bargain for themselves, or employ an agent or lawyer to do it. The chief executive, the sports star, the actor or actress – anyone who comes under the mantle of “talent” – stands a much greater chance of being well-paid than a union member.

How, then, to account for the sudden upsurge in labour militancy in the unlikely quarter of the television and film industries? For the past six weeks, 12,000 film and television screenwriters in the Writers Guild of America have been on strike to get, among other things, a bigger share of online revenues. In the past couple of weeks, another dispute has erupted in the television industry. Hundreds of young people employed on long-term freelance contracts by MTV Networks in New York – so-called permalancers – protested after Viacom, MTV’s parent company, changed their contracts to reduce their entitlement to health and pension benefits.

Strange as it sounds, I think these disputes hold lessons for workers in many industries, not just for New York’s “creative class” of media professionals. But they must do more than hark back to the glory days of 20th century unionism.

Collective bargaining has a role in this world – to set standard contract terms or percentages for royalties and residuals – but individual negotiation is where the big money lies. Many technicians and writers are freelancers because it suits them: they get greater freedom to work across the industry and earn more. Where collectivism could bring unadulterated rewards is outside the workplace – by providing health and pension benefits that freelance workers do not get.

Gapper is onto something here.  The struggles that will define the creative age are just emerging.  Right now we have a system rigged to benefit superstars and winners.  In terms of historical analogies, the current creative class movement bears some resemblance to the early organizing struggles of old American Federation of Labor? But, later we say the rise of mass production unionism with the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations? Is a similar divide emerging between creative and service workers?  What institutional solutions are needed to include and reward more and more of the growing ranks of creative workers - and what about the broader issue of the service class? What would a new movement and structure for building a workable creative economy look like?

Comments

[Michael Wells]

Gapper is right on on some points, but here are a couple of specifics.

As an adjunct teaching one class at the local University, it wouldn't be worth my time to negotiate with them, nor theirs to negotiate with me. This isn't my primary job nor income, but I do benefit from the union fighting for higher wages and some benefits.

In my major work, grantwriting consulting, I pay for my own health and retirement. The US may move towards civilized status on health insurance in the next decade but by then I'll be one of the privleged classes getting socialized medicine -- i.e. Medicare. The thing that's been hardest as an independent contractor has been disability insurance coverage. Being self employed I don't have workman's comp if I'm injured, and Social Security disability is hard to get as well as being a pittance. It's very difficult to buy disability insurance as an individual. I have a mediocre plan through an association I belong to and my wife has a crummy plan she gets on her own.

There would need to be a restructuring to deal with this and I don't know if unions have a role, but it's one of many items where the old industrial economy "employer pays" model doesn't work in the new economy.

[Michael R. Bernstein]

Tne system is also currently rigged in favor of those (primarily coroporations) sitting on large portfolios of patents and copyrights, the raw materials of future creative innovation, invention, and authorship.

The dot-bomb crash aborted some of the fledgling experiments in programming co-ops, but the Free Software (ie. Open Source) movement survived in spite of this because the freedom of various bodies of code was not directly tied to the success of particular organizations. Now we're seeing new organizations arise around pooled copyrights and patents that make them available to all fellow travelers as a safe harbor and leverage against the proprietary hoarders of intellectual capital (I am deliberately using slightly inflammatory language here, but only to point out the 'collective bargaining' equivalence).

The Creative Commons is likewise building legal infrastructure for permitting lower-friction collaboration and innovation in traditional copyrighted forms such as literature and art (however innovative their format may be), and I assume that Wikipedia is only the first of many similar non-proprietary copyright pools that will result from this.

As for healthcare benefits, some bottom up efforts like the Freelancers' Union are attempting to fill this gap, and I suspect that regardless of the success or failure of national efforts at reform, we will see much more innovation on behalf of some states trying to promote regional competitiveness.

[Michael R. Bernstein]

Gah. Sorry about the typos (the most egregious one being the use of 'ie' for 'aka').

[Michael R. Bernstein]

BTW, I think I once saw a study that concluded that industries dominated by 'superstar' compensation were ultimately less profitable because the additional revenue from successful products (once you discounted for additional volatility) was all being siphoned off to the 'stars' (overcompensating for the disproportional risks at the low end).

Given that, it is somewhat surprising that studios haven't embraced raising the minimum compensation in order to ultimately fatten their long-term bottom line. It is clear that due to the blockbuster mentality, the studios are not being motivated by *profits*, but by short term grasping after revenues, which will ultimately get them replaced by new organizations that are both more equitable and more profitable.

[Frank]

The historical comparison between the rise of different forms of unionism and the current creative class situation is interesting. I think you're dead on about the creative class being more like the AFL and the service class being more like the CIO, and that will differentiation will probably only get stronger over time.

One thing that comes to mind though, especially with the AFL comparison, is that the AFL was famous for being very protectionist--it wasn't easy to get into the craft unions, and the union was very active in fighting competition. This protectionism seems to be contrary to one of the central tenets of the creative class--openness.

Just some thoughts...