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INTEREST: Madhouse Production Assistant Says He Worked 393 Hours in One Month


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gamegodtre



Joined: 18 May 2012
Posts: 98
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:47 pm Reply with quote
ScruffyKiwi wrote:
Alcest wrote:
Blanchimont wrote:
That comes down around 12,5 hours a day, assuming no rest days. A good example why unions are still needed, I hope he's able to claim that overtime pay...

Wonder what anime the production was working with?

Yeah, no. Unions are an unnecessary evil.


OMG ... do you know what a union actually is? A union is a group of employees who agree to form a collective to allow them to have greater strength in bargaining against an employer to even out power imbalances. That is it. Nothing else. How exactly is that evil?????

Of course when you get a group of people together sometimes they can be not-so-nice-people, just like some employers can. That is just people being not-so-nice-people, nothing more.


My union maxs a day at 12 hours and i work 6 days 12 each day for 3 months of the year this guy had ruffly 60 hours more then me and if he counted lunch time into that, we almost even if he did, unions are not good for limiting hours. They are good for unjust firing, health benefits, monetary issues, etc.
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HamsterExAstris



Joined: 22 Apr 2019
Posts: 12
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 7:49 pm Reply with quote
ScruffyKiwi wrote:
Alcest wrote:
Yeah, no. Unions are an unnecessary evil.


OMG ... do you know what a union actually is? A union is a group of employees who agree to form a collective to allow them to have greater strength in bargaining against an employer to even out power imbalances. That is it. Nothing else. How exactly is that evil?????

The fact that you're not allowed to opt out. If it were just the employees who wanted to collectively bargain, that's fine - but it's an all-or-nothing proposition.

(I have other grievances with how the union I was a member of operated, but those aren't inherent to unions... just incredibly common.)
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ScruffyKiwi



Joined: 25 Oct 2010
Posts: 672
Location: New Zealand
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 9:50 pm Reply with quote
HamsterExAstris wrote:
ScruffyKiwi wrote:
Alcest wrote:
Yeah, no. Unions are an unnecessary evil.


OMG ... do you know what a union actually is? A union is a group of employees who agree to form a collective to allow them to have greater strength in bargaining against an employer to even out power imbalances. That is it. Nothing else. How exactly is that evil?????

The fact that you're not allowed to opt out. If it were just the employees who wanted to collectively bargain, that's fine - but it's an all-or-nothing proposition.

(I have other grievances with how the union I was a member of operated, but those aren't inherent to unions... just incredibly common.)


The "not allowed to opt out" clearly depends on how the collective is organised and the employment law in your region. Both of those are nothing to do with the idea of a union. In New Zealand for example unions are not allowed to prevent you leaving. Your pay will remain the same as non unionized employees default to the collective agreement unless you want to go and negotiate a contract of your own which you are entitled to do.

Again, all a union consists of is a collective of employees. How that collective behaves is up to it. And of course if you don't like how the union is run you're welcome to make your own!
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Hiroki not Takuya



Joined: 17 Apr 2012
Posts: 2501
PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2019 11:43 pm Reply with quote
^Before you berate people on the subject of Unions, I suggest you do some homework. Look up AFL/CIO and Teamsters which were once the largest unions in the US. I grew up in Detroit in the '60's where everyone's fathers were in one of those I mention. The definition for those is organized crime. You want to be a truck driver? You must join the Teamsters, you must pay ever increasing dues (in the '60's they were about 10% of your wages).

The union rarely did anything for the workers except extort pay raises from the companies. If you didn't want to pay or join the union or were caught saying anything negative about the union, first offense was tires flattened, second offense was threats against family members, further escalation included beatings and murder. If the union said "strike" you could not work or get paid until the union said "strike over". To go into work against orders regularly resulted in the aforementioned beatings or "disappearance".

To be fair, my wife was not in the Federal Worker's Union but they helped her tremendously to battle a very poor work situation. So unions in the US are quite a mixed bag and most I hear of do effectively nothing but demand dues payment. And yes, employees of companies when (sometimes forcibly) "unionized" can't "opt-out" and must pay the dues. Union "bosses" are not employees of whatever company at all, they are hired and paid exclusively from the members dues payments and the union is organized as a completely separate entity from the workers. You mention the "idea of unions" but in the US there is quite a different reality involved which is why there has been a growing anti-union movement since the '80s.
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teferi



Joined: 16 May 2006
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 12:52 am Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
^Before you berate people on the subject of Unions, I suggest you do some homework. Look up AFL/CIO and Teamsters which were once the largest unions in the US. I grew up in Detroit in the '60's where everyone's fathers were in one of those I mention. The definition for those is organized crime. You want to be a truck driver? You must join the Teamsters, you must pay ever increasing dues (in the '60's they were about 10% of your wages).

The union rarely did anything for the workers except extort pay raises from the companies. If you didn't want to pay or join the union or were caught saying anything negative about the union, first offense was tires flattened, second offense was threats against family members, further escalation included beatings and murder. If the union said "strike" you could not work or get paid until the union said "strike over". To go into work against orders regularly resulted in the aforementioned beatings or "disappearance".

To be fair, my wife was not in the Federal Worker's Union but they helped her tremendously to battle a very poor work situation. So unions in the US are quite a mixed bag and most I hear of do effectively nothing but demand dues payment. And yes, employees of companies when (sometimes forcibly) "unionized" can't "opt-out" and must pay the dues. Union "bosses" are not employees of whatever company at all, they are hired and paid exclusively from the members dues payments and the union is organized as a completely separate entity from the workers. You mention the "idea of unions" but in the US there is quite a different reality involved which is why there has been a growing anti-union movement since the '80s.


The thing is most of that is ancient history. Anti union sentiment is mostly driven by fearmongering and ignorance nowadays. Right wing propaganda machines push for so called right to work laws that are more about union busting than protecting workers' rights. All we've really regressed to is allowing companies to dictate compensation and benefits so they can screw people harder than unions ever did. It's gotten to the point where it's mostly just propaganda succeeding in red states that doesn't benefit workers at all.

Of all industries animators in Japan really could benefit from being unionized. Many of their workers are performing highly skilled jobs that are paid less than minimum wage. It really couldn't get any worse than it is now.

Quote:
The union rarely did anything for the workers except extort pay raises from the companies.


You say this like forcing your employer to give you raises is a bad thing. If an employer can't afford to give their employees raises then they don't deserve to stay in business.
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kakoishii



Joined: 16 Jul 2008
Posts: 741
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 10:17 am Reply with quote
Hiroki not Takuya wrote:
^Before you berate people on the subject of Unions, I suggest you do some homework. Look up AFL/CIO and Teamsters which were once the largest unions in the US. I grew up in Detroit in the '60's where everyone's fathers were in one of those I mention. The definition for those is organized crime. You want to be a truck driver? You must join the Teamsters, you must pay ever increasing dues (in the '60's they were about 10% of your wages).

The union rarely did anything for the workers except extort pay raises from the companies. If you didn't want to pay or join the union or were caught saying anything negative about the union, first offense was tires flattened, second offense was threats against family members, further escalation included beatings and murder. If the union said "strike" you could not work or get paid until the union said "strike over". To go into work against orders regularly resulted in the aforementioned beatings or "disappearance".

To be fair, my wife was not in the Federal Worker's Union but they helped her tremendously to battle a very poor work situation. So unions in the US are quite a mixed bag and most I hear of do effectively nothing but demand dues payment. And yes, employees of companies when (sometimes forcibly) "unionized" can't "opt-out" and must pay the dues. Union "bosses" are not employees of whatever company at all, they are hired and paid exclusively from the members dues payments and the union is organized as a completely separate entity from the workers. You mention the "idea of unions" but in the US there is quite a different reality involved which is why there has been a growing anti-union movement since the '80s.


It's typically not a good place to start your argument by using the worst example of something as the reason why that thing shouldn't exist. You can literally do that with anything and it would still make a bad argument every single time. It's this type of fear mongering that has resulted in a US economy where people are underemployed, making far less than their worth, and having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet or go into debt to earn a degree that allows them to earn more only to spend most of their salaries paying off their insurmountable debt.

As someone previously mentioned, these animators receive depressing low paychecks for the amount of work they do, and this is skilled labor which makes it even more appalling. Due to the type of society Japan is, I don't see how a union could do anything but be a helping hand to these people who are so in fear of being never being promoted or fired just for deigning to want a more reasonable work-life balance. I'm certain these people don't have personal lives outside of their office and that in itself is so sad and so unhealthy.
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jdnation



Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 1994
PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 11:49 am Reply with quote
The union-issue can have its benefits and can lead to drawbacks. Unions can be great, or they can be disastrous. It's not an either-or thing. There are, even today, examples of unions utterly failing the people they represent and in fact being nothing more that ideologically driven rackets intended to enrich the union leaders at the cost of the employees, leading to poor bargaining that only leads to the overall ruin of the company, or being nothing more than a vote canvassing campaign and if you don't tow the ideological line imposed on you, or vote for the wrong party, or disagree with the union demands presumably being made on your behalf, then there is hell to pay.

On the flip-side, there are times where, a union, particularly at the beginning where there isn't one, can be beneficial. But in the long-term can become detrimental as the union usually exists to justify its existence long after the fact.

Perhaps the best alternative is that more foreign investors enter the market, and local talent form their own studios based on better working conditions in the West, and cater to the global market. This might help lead to talent drain from other studios, certainly from new younger applicants, though in Japan, people tend to be loyal to a company. But this would not necessarily apply to contractors and guns for hire who would obviously work for the better wages.

This may be difficult as the older established studios are obviously trying to make things as cheaply as possible to get the contracts, but if younger or even foreign talent only applies to places with good hours and pay, the inevitably the product will show for itself. But taking that step is still a risk in itself...

I wonder if it's possible that given that there is an increase in anime being made, and demand is also going up as growth indicates, and even places like Netflix are investing more in this, that it might be possible for streaming/media companies worldwide to set up satellite studios they own in Japan, or locally with programs to bring in bilingual Japanese and Asian talent to work abroad, though they could also cater to local talent too.

I'm not at all in the tank for globalism, but I think this is not so much an issue when it comes to making entertainment products.
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partially



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 702
Location: Oz
PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 4:19 pm Reply with quote
Alcest wrote:
Yeah, no. Unions are an unnecessary evil.


This is the type of belief that always cracks me up. Laughing

There are far FAR more "evil" businesses than there are "evil" unions. And yet somehow unions cop a lot more **** than businesses.

Good unions do a shit load of work in making everyone's employment better. And most of the time what they do is either ignored or not known. I keep track of what unions do for my sector of employment, and it quite simply is amazing what they achieve. Alternatively, I keep track of some unions that are a complete waste of space, so much like businesses really.

I suggest you actually research what benefits a union in your sector does provide. Because I have known too many people who are like you. They say unions are useless and evil, and then when something happens that a union can actually help with, it isn't used, even when the person is a union member. This is especially common in enforced unionization.

(It is especially important to know what your union does if membership is a requirement of employment. Usually, there is a good [as in to do with safety or liability issues a business doesn't want to cover itself] reason for the requirement, it is important to know what this is. Apart from, **** unions they suck, they are stealing all my money.)

For instance, in my case, one of the benefits provided to me is that if I am a part of a workplace incident that requires legal representation, representation is completely covered by the union. (Which happens not irregularly in my sector, unfortunately.) This is not an uncommon service of a union. And yet I have known of those that haven't used this service before it was too late because they didn't know the union actually covered legal costs and representation.
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noblesse oblige



Joined: 22 Dec 2012
Posts: 277
Location: Florida
PostPosted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 10:55 am Reply with quote
I would donate to the creation of an anime production union. These talented artisans desperately need collective bargaining power to curb the unhealthy production schedules and poor payscale. This would force an industry-wide shift toward longer production times where the health of the employees can be maintained. I hope it becomes a big story here if such an intitiative forms.
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Todd_Harry08



Joined: 24 Sep 2019
Posts: 169
PostPosted: Tue Sep 24, 2019 3:33 pm Reply with quote
Kaiser_senpai wrote:
Blanchimont wrote:
That comes down around 12,5 hours a day, assuming no rest days. A good example why unions are still needed, I hope he's able to claim that overtime pay...

Wonder what anime the production was working with?


If I remember correctly, it is Diamond No Ace Act 2 (the one that started this season)


i think it's Afterlost another anime was aired along with Diamond No Ace II since the production of it ended before it's airing and the animators might were overworked on that project to finish it on the given time
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