GETTING ORGANIZED
Guild Goes with Inside Man for New York Organizer
by Tris Carpenter
 Tris Carpenter |
This issue, I’d like to introduce you to Marc Laub, our new Organizer who will be working out of our East Coast office in New York. He is a long-time Editors Guild member and a former member of our Board of Directors. He is also very familiar with union post-production work in New York City.
In a couple of ways, hiring Laub is a departure from the Guild’s recent practice, but also a return of sorts. In the past decade, we have hired organizers from outside the motion picture business and brought them up to speed by teaching them the ins and outs of post-production. But technology has changed dramatically––and with it the jobs that all of you do. Thus, the focus of our organizing resources has changed. It has become clear that a Guild organizer needs to be comfortable talking about the new workflows with people who might be interested in bringing their shop to the negotiating table.
 Marc Laub. Photo by John Clifford |
As such, the Board of Directors has decided to take a page from the old script, as it were, and hire someone from the membership and teach him how to organize. This was how things were done in the years prior to the mid-1990s, and it represents a return to our roots as a union. We hope that Laub’s new role in the Guild will bring a renewed vitality to our organizing efforts on the East Coast.
One of the reasons behind hiring Laub was his understanding of a critical component of all of our recent campaigns— that our members are the very best spokespeople we have to bring the Guild’s message to those who are not members yet. No one can tell an editor the advantages of being a Guild member like another editor. Further, no one can help craft solutions to problems editors face on the job like other editors. Therefore, Laub’s interest in organizing and assistance in those efforts make him the perfect candidate for taking this position in a new direction.
Now that he is on staff, we need our members to assist him. I urge anyone in New York who is working a non-union job, doing digital intermediate (DI) or attending a mix in a facility that is not union, to please get in touch with our new organizer and ask what you can do to help us organize these places. And if we are working on a campaign and ask for your assistance in canvassing people at that non-union facility or show, or inquire if you have specific knowledge about a shop or people we don’t know, I hope you will be generous and share your expertise and opinion. We simply cannot do this without you.
Of course, our next campaigns may not be in New York or Los Angeles. As the tax incentive fever has spread from state legislature to state legislature, I have been receiving calls about post-production shops in Connecticut, New Mexico, North Carolina and beyond. All of that information is appreciated, and if and when significant post-production starts taking place in those areas that have passed such incentives, we will duly investigate any and all organizing opportunities. But please keep that kind of information coming, because while some of those states will probably not become serious players in the motion picture business, others just might—and I’d rather track it as it is growing than try to catch up with it later.
Finally, at press time, the first of the several anticipated decisions from the National Labor Relations Board cases was released involving supervisors and their ability to be organized. The preliminary reports indicate that the decision is not very favorable to Labor (it was not expected to be). By next issue, there should be a couple of other major decisions regarding organizing and I will hopefully have a full analysis for my next column.
Until then, thanks for all your support and please keep letting us know about non-union shops and shows.
Tris Carpenter is the National Organizer for the Editors Guild.
Tris Carpenter is the Guild's National Organizer.