here is an example of why a list that is accessed by artist and employers only would be beneficial to all parties involved.
Company in my town , public google maps reviews… (there are more saying the same thing) artist are not happy and have no place to vent (union?!)
Obviously not a lawyer, but doesn’t section 230 also cover this hence why facebook cant be fined or sued over what is considered free speech? Well this could all change since the Supreme court is about to hear a case on 230 so things are about to get pretty interesting if that gets overruled.
There is (or at one time was, but I assume it’s still there) a Facebook group for NY Freelancers that was specifically for alerting one another to bad actors. Since I went staff a few years back I dropped out of the group. Perhaps someone wants to start something there for all Freelancers.
I don’t blame Randy for not wanting to do that on this forum. Even if we are legally in the clear, the legal hassles and other complications are not worth it. We don’t have Zuckerberg’s billions backing up our crack legal team.
Way back in the 80’s/90’s, there was an organization called the “Hollywood post alliance”. Representatives of (almost) all of the post houses in town would meet monthly, at “the smokehouse” for lunch.
One by one, each member would ask those present about their new clients, to see if anyone had experience with them. Or, if someone had a particularly bad experience that they wanted to let the community know about.
However, it was “just the facts”: do they pay on time or not, were they written off as bad debt, or perhaps sent to collections. No opinions.
However, this was in a day when any new client had to fill out a credit application to even start a session, or pay COD.
Every month BECTU, the film/tv union in the UK, publishes a list of companies it recommends people to research before engaging/working for.
It’s all a little limp, which has been my experience with the union since forever. However, it will get better if more get involved. In 20 years at the mill, I struggled to find anyone who’d even heard of the union. Shows how unfashionable unions had become.
What might be interesting in the short term @randy is the phrasing at the top of the column. If we felt brave enough to list vendors then this anodyne phrasing might be useful to utilise. However, I appreciate, it could feel like a risk.
How about we also have a list of freelancers that are shit too?
I’m scared my name would be at the top covered in S_Glints
All press is good press, amirite?
A freelancer should never take a job he’s not suited for.
But with that in mind, this is not an absolute measure. A freelancer may have been shit on one job for various reasons, doesn’t mean they cannot be great under different circumstances. You don’t want to be the judge of that.
So you have to be very careful about the language you use. Failure to pay is a lot more black and white than judging someone’s results. Now if a freelancer just fails to show up, that’s a different story.
And politicians shouldn’t lie.
Always 2 sides to every story… sorry, you can’t just say give a freelancer an out like you have, and blindly blame a company.
While we have never been in a compromising position with any freelancer, I know other studio owners who have hired freelancers and been unable to use ANY of their work.
Of course. Anytime you work with someone new, you have to do your homework and make sure this is working for both sides. And there should be a contract that deals with non-performance, etc.
My only point is, that it’s a slippery slope to just name names publicly without all the additional context so that others can make a judgement. In the age of search engines, just having a name popup where people don’t bother to look into the details can have negative effects on someone’s livelihood. We just have to be thoughtful here. You may see the nuances, doesn’t mean everyone else running a Google search will.
For me it all comes back to checking references if you need to. Ask someone if they worked with that freelancer or that company. If you can’t find anyone, have the person/company in question provide you with them. People do that when hiring employees as standard procedure. And a forum like this can facilitate the process without washing all the dirty laundry in the open.
You’ve just made my point.
The main way a freelancer can fuck over a company is to deliver a pile of unusable work. How long does it take to suss out a useless freelancer? a day or two?
Conversely, if a company doesn’t pay after the work is done, or tells you months later they’re only paying half, that’s a shit ton more money and unless the freelancer walks off the job on a hunch (risking blacklisting) they have no way to control the situation. They do the work and then don’t get paid.
It’s apples and oranges.
Also, companies already build lists of people they’ll never call again.
