FXDAG applauds this move and hopes that other studios which employ freelancers follow suit.

We recently heard that MBO, a predatory Employer of Record, is pulling out of payroll administration for FX and Animation related business. I’ll post more as I confirm the story and find out more information.

Other EOR stories on FXDAG include:

EOR Studios List

Fired from MBO – A True Story with a Happy Ending

Artists fights back against MBO and Yurkor Employers of Record

Organize Employers of Record?

Have you seen the Open Letter to James Cameron? Did you listen to the VFX Town Hall? Are you just concerned about the state of the industry and wondering what can be done? Want a union? Hate the idea? Make yourself heard!

While it’s great that the conversation has started, it’s up to the artists to continue it and give the issue a face, and the solution its momentum. There’s a  talk and live chat about it on Talkshoe. There’s a free live chatroom, your words will be seen and heard. Let’s start figuring this out.

For a two-year-old discussion along these lines with Ryan and Teague on the subject of getting into the industry, general questions answered and do’s-and-don’ts discussed, enjoy this.

Michael “Dorkman” Scott (@DorkmanScott) is a filmmaker and freelance visual effects artist in Los Angeles.

Ryan Wieber (@RyanWieber) is a senior VFX compositor in his sixth year at Stargate Studios, where he has worked on hundreds of shots spanning dozens of episodic television shows… including, perhaps most notably, as a lead artist on NBC’s “Heroes”. He is a two-time Emmy winner for Visual Effects, with a third nomination.

Teague Chrystie (@TeagueChrystie)is a visual effects generalist and career freelancer, who’s compositing, motion graphics and 3D work has appeared in dozens of television shows, music videos, commercials and feature films. Acting as moderator on the panel, he’ll conduct the conversation in the room and relay questions from the chat room to the panel.

http://downinfront.net/vfx/

There have been several recent articles written about this Freelancers Dilemma and you can read them at The Animatinon World Network and Motiongrapher web sites.

This practice seems to have started on the East coast but is spreading West to the dread of California based freelance visual effects artists. These “Employers of Record” companies charge the freelancer a percentage of their paycheck in order to deal with the paperwork, effectively offloading the typical payroll and accounting costs that a production company would absorb onto the backs of the freelancer without offering any of the benefits such as sick days, vacation, health insurance, retirement plans or legal counsel. Some production companies will not hire an artist unless they agree to sign up and pay specific “Employer of Record” services. At the end of the day, the freelancer is classified as an employee of the EOR service company.

This unfortunate situation resulted from a recent crack down on the convenient but illegal practice of classifying employees as freelancers.  There’s a good article on that posted in the New York Times, linked here, about this practice in general use. The extensive fines for studios engaged in the practice of misclassifying workers created a perfect storm for companies like MBO and Yurcor to step in and make a buck while sheltering the studios from scrutiny, oversight and the responsibility of providing usual and customary services, such as payroll and benefits, to their freelancers, er,  employees.

Under normal circumstances, freelance workers and independent consultants would be prohibited from forming a labor union since a union functions to collectively bargain for a group of employees and and an independent contractor by definition is neither a group nor an employee however once a freelancer signs on with an “Employer of Record” they are, in fact, employees… not of the production company but of the Employer of Record. This puts the EOR in the position of being the employer of a large number of visual effects artists who may now be eligible to form or join an organized labor union.

One New York-based VFX worker and former union member has suggested that perhaps The Animation Guild or The Editors Guild could look into this practice and at least think about the possibility of promoting the idea of  organizing the labor of this marginalized group of visual effects workers who now may be eligible to organize. What are the Employers of Record at this point if not very large shops?

Could the thousands of visual effects artists who are forced to sign up with EOR’s print out and pass around Union Authorization Cards? Would this perhaps force the EOR’s to sign union contracts at which point the studios that hire workers through the EOR’s will be required to pay fair rates and not abuse their formerly freelance workers through unreasonable hours or conditions?

Would it be possible to organize the EOR companies like MBO and Yurkor so that workers bouncing from company to company would have the portable benefits a labor union could provide?

I don’t profess to know the full scale of the issue or the legal realities of the situation so I invite the readers of this blog to hash this idea out in the comments section. I look forward to hearing from you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/business/18workers.html