Trotter on The Hobbit
Chris Trotter writes:
How did a tiny union’s attempt to improve the lot of its members end up convulsing the entire nation?
Oh that is easy. The second they called for, and got, a global boycott of The Hobbit.
The left time after time after time ignore this rather salient point. They talk just about wanting to negotiate.
A global boycott of a film is the nuclear bomb of industrial negotiations. If you use it, then it causes massive damage.
What NZ Actors’ Equity tried to do here would scarcely have rated a mention in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland or Australia. Actors, film technicians, specialists of every kind in those countries negotiate with the big film studios all the time.
Again, Chris entirely misses the point. Negotiations are common – global boycotts are rare. And even worse, the global boycott was instituted based on a demand that was illegal for the producers to agree to.
Only recently, Irish film- makers successfully concluded an industry-wide collective agreement. Ireland, you’ll recall, was identified by Sir Peter Jackson’s people as one of the places to which location shooting for The Hobbit might be shifted.
Huh?
Why would you shift location filming to a country that already has an industry- wide collective agreement because workers in your own country were attempting to negotiate something very similar for themselves?
It doesn’t make sense.
It does make sense. Chris needs to talk to people in the industry – as I have.
Warners and he like are fairly relaxed about whether a country’s film industry is unionised or non-unionised. Under both these scenarios, they can calculate the cost of doing business.
What they don’t want to be anywhere near, is a country which is non unionised, and a union is trying to unionise the entire acting industry (despite miniscule membership), and wants to use your film as the vehicle for doing so.
This is not rocket science.
Unless the entire controversy has been manufactured; unless all that we have witnessed since September 28, when Sir Peter Jackson launched a very public broadside against the actors’ union, is a cleverly spun fiction. A tale replete with noble hero (Sir Peter) and evil villains (the unions) designed to exculpate its authors from any and all blame for taking The Hobbit offshore.
Chris ignores the obvious answer, which I supplied, and which he could get by talking to any producer. Instead he turns to conspiracy theories.
Also happy will be that permanent combination of anti-union interests. Thanks to The Hobbit controversy, the CTU’s “Fairness at Work” campaign lies dead in the water.
Not thanks to The Hobbit. Thanks to Helen Kelly who disastrously changed the focus from Simon Whipp to the CTU. Bad enough she became the de facto spokesperson for the union, but she then personally insulted Peter Jackson.
I especially enjoyed the irony of Sir Richard Taylor’s Weta Workshops-organised “Save The Hobbit” rallies on – of all days – Labour Day.
The irony was wonderful but again Chris is wrong. They were not organised by Weta Workshop. They were organised by an Auckland actor – D Mark Harrison, on his own initiative.