Models Demand Union (2007) : Model Alliance formed (2012)

[ptowngal]

I think it's a worthy cause, although the concept sounds ridiculous in comparison to the other unions around. I'm sorry, it just sounds funny. A model union?

 

[*Happiness*]

I think it's a good idea.
Just imagine what would be going on if the writer's didn't have a union to stand up for them and their fairness.
Being a member of a union within the entertainment industry, I think they are vital and very important.

 

[notmanons]

I think it's a worthy cause, although the concept sounds ridiculous in comparison to the other unions around. I'm sorry, it just sounds funny. A model union?

That's what I thought too.

 

[ptowngal]

well at least my favorite guys are being taken care of. They're underpaid in comparison!

 

[Meg]

I don't think it's funny in concept, it would just be incredibly difficult to execute in my opinion. Imagine being Ukranian, part of an American union (not yet branched out internationally), working for a company owned and based in Italy, shooting an ad campaign in the Bahama's.....

 

[ptowngal]

oh no i didn't mean the concept is funny, it just sounds funny. I mean, before I knew a thing about the industry, I just assumed that models had salaries on the same scale as movie stars. I never would have guessed that really the only jobs that pay are ad campaigns and catalogue work. I never would have thought the model life was half as stressful as it is.

But I do have to say that this union will be fodder for the uninformed public's jokes and rants. The propaganda we see every day surrounding the model life isn't one you'd associate w/ needing a union. At first glance, even I couldn't help but laugh at the idea.

 

[KhaoticKharma]

Allow me to clarify on my earlier thoughts-

Modeling, acting, directing and writing are all fields where only the strong survive; not only must you have unbelievable talent (plenty of people have that), but you have to have a tougher than tough skin. None of these fields are for the faint of heart or those who take rejection easily, and the job can be difficult at times; but if they didn't want to deal with difficult, they shouldn't have entered the biz.

With the writers yeah, they are getting screwed. But in the end, it really does come down to the mighty dollar; none of these people will starve if they don't get internet profits, and I don't believe for one moment that, ten years from now, TV will be obsolete.

And with the models- lets take a girl like Vlada. She obviously fills the natural physical requirments for modelings without much, if any, effort. She isn't that famous, so she isn't followed around by the paparazzi. She's young, many people find her beautiful, and she gets free clothes thrown at her; all of this for a girls who used to live in a developing nation. From time to time she may have to deal with bitchy agents and pervy old men. Is her job really that hard?

 

[ptowngal]

Here's an article from the Telegraph.

Models seek to join actors' union Equity


Last Updated: 2:38am GMT 12/12/2007




Models have demanded union membership in what officials believe could be a world first.
The models, including some household names who do not want to be named, have joined actors' union Equity, which is opening its doors to the catwalk stars.
A group first approached the union earlier this year and in a meeting last week revealed horrifying stories about their working conditions.
One told how she suffered an extreme allergic reaction when her body was painted with car paint for a photo-shoot, while a male model said his scalp started to bleed after too much peroxide was put on his hair.
Models complained that frequently, while working long hours, they were given no food despite the industry coming under pressure for encouraging stick-thin body shapes.
Martin Brown, spokesman for Equity, said: "We have never opened our books to models before and as far as we know, there is no other union that recruits models in any part of the world. But we realised that they had no voice."
He said: "We were approached earlier this year by a group of models who said they needed a union.
"They complained that they had no-one to represent them and that if something went wrong and they went to their agencies they were warned not to complain because they would not work again.
"We had our first meeting with our new members last week. They told us they frequently didn't know how much they were being paid to do a job and that often they were given no food despite working long hours with no breaks.
"Given that eating disorders is one of the key issues, that is pretty appalling."
He said: "The fact that models have approached Equity is a wake-up call for the industry. We are determined to give them a voice to improve their working conditions."
The models approached the union before the British Fashion Council acknowledged concerns over thinness on the catwalk by announcing an independent inquiry into the issue.
The controversy about "size-zero" models erupted last summer when Uruguayan model Luisel Ramos, 22, died of heart failure after not eating for several days in an attempt to stay thin.
Another model, Ana Carolina Reston, a Brazilian who suffered from anorexia nervosa, died last year.
One of the inquiry's recommendations, made after the models had approached Equity, included setting up an independent trade union.
The British Fashion Council as been warned that London Fashion Week could lose almost £4.3 million in funding from London Mayor Ken Livingstone unless it brings in the recommendations.

 

[seanutbutter]

This has the potential to do good. Perhaps it could stop younger models from working too hard for their age, or prevent certain models from being paid unfairly. Then again, unions can cause problems in different areas. It just depends. I think I'll be following this story, it seems very intriguing.

 

[smartarse]

kinda hard to pay union fees PLUS agency fees if the model hasn't gotten a steady work. You think you're already in debt being a model wait until you're in a union. Actors get steadier jobs and a little more pay than models and i'm not referring to the Gemma's, Daria's, Erin's ... besides, most of the models who have a steady gigs are foreigners. How will a Union work with that?

 

[smartarse]

... also if Unions will be passed you'll definitely see more Celebrities replacing real models not that they haven't already. But you'll also get actors replacing models too.

i dont' think it's feasible.

 

[misssakura]

KK, you say that none of these people will starve if they don't get more profits, but some of them earn no income at all for months and months except for residuals.

 

[smartarse]

and most models even the famous ones gets paid by clothes, accessories majority of the time, you really think Unions would want that as their fees? C'mon, modeling is not the type of job with longevity , you all know that.

 

[KhaoticKharma]

KK, you say that none of these people will starve if they don't get more profits, but some of them earn no income at all for months and months except for residuals.

I found this on another website, and it pretty much sums up how I feel as well...

I look at the writers strike the same way I looked at the hockey strike and the baseball strike. The people on the front page of this whole thing are making good money. None of them are starving this week. But the people who do the menial tasks that ALLOW them to live comfortably are being left in the dust. Back with the sports strikes it was the vendors, ticket takers, etc. Now it's the grips, electricians, etc.

Good for the writers trying to get money they probably deserve. shame on people ... for forgetting it's not just writers and actors

 

[Meg]

^
I agree completely.

 

[Zen]

The thought is interesting. I will have to follow up on this time to time.

 

[misssakura]

I don't know where you got the idea that all writers are well paid but it's not true at all. Firstly there are some very well paid writers yes, but they do not represent the majority. Secondly you can't compare a contract job to a full time job. There are some full time writers but again, they aren't the majority.

http://unitedhollywood.blogspot.com/ This blog is probably the best one that I read, but there are also other informative sites.

If you want to argue about the other full time workers on shows, grips, boom mic operators, cameramen etc, that's up to their union to argue for fair wages. But it's not fair to the members of the WGA to be bullied into never striking because the studios are firing full time employees. If you argue that it's not fair on full time staff for the writers to demand a fair share, then the studios get away with taking an unfair cut of the profits, which is equally disturbing (to me anyway).

Just ask yourself, why aren't the studios offering a fair deal? The answer is that they're making a LOT of money off new media and don't want to share it with anybody.

 

[fashionkitten7]

I haven't read the whole thread, but as to what the title suggests, I think it's perfectly understandable now, when models are so much under pressure (referring to the size and weight thing) and fear being taken off jobs, ecpecially as far as the runway jobs during the major fashion weeks are concerned. In fact, I would be highly surprised if nobody came up with such idea sooner or later.

 

[Fontenrose]

Another great column from [email protected] (type Modelslips in the search box at Jezebel). She's amazing. She even mentioned TFS in one column (not altogether positively, but point taken, we're obsessive).

Dear Models of the World: Are We All Too Busy Starving Ourselves to Form a Union Already?Modeling. I'll be honest: I didn't really give much of a **** about the plight of its willowy practitioners before I met Tatiana. Now, Tatiana's going to be okay: she's doing this to travel and learn and meet the sort of people you wouldn't meet performing the other types of slave labor to which educated young twentysomethings generally subject themselves, but the rest of them remind me of all those once-promising high school basketball players languishing in foreign club teams and living paycheck to paycheck in incredibly cramped quarters with nothing getting them up in the morning beyond the whole "Well, I've held out this long…" rationale. Which is to say, models are just like us. Except! In what other industry can your boss get away with telling an 108-pound cash cow like Coco Rocha: "We don't want you to be anorexic, we just want you to look it"? I mean, sure, it's one thing to "look" anorexic to me, an objective observer, but this is an industry, as we found out yesterday, in which the conventional wisdom holds that Karolina Kurkova is "fat"? Anyway, after last week's harrowing experience volunteering for the Plutocracy, Tatiana came up with some good ideas for reforming the business. We really do hope the agencies of the world take her advice! It occurs to me that frequently in these columns, there is a moment where, finally alone and generally late into the night of a long day, I find myself reduced to tears by some list of knocks and slights. Perhaps this only means I need a new device; I don’t think of myself as such a sad sack figure as all that. But this week, actually the night after my spirit-crushing turn as a volunteer clotheshorse for a designer who most definitely could have afforded to pay me, my sadness metastasized not into tears, but into a rage-inflected political platform that just might transform my industry.
Well, OK, first I cried. Then I thought: models should unionize to work for better conditions and rates of pay.
It’s a common misconception that modeling is easy, safe and highly lucrative — the reality is that the girls with the million-dollar campaigns are so rare I wouldn’t believe they actually existed if I didn’t see them at night clubs during fashion week. Most models I know are lucky if they are working at all; between agency commissions (70% in Paris, 50% in Milan, 20% in New York), travel expenses, and rent in the various pricey cities in which we are required to live, your eventual wages come so garnished I’ve known plenty of models who can’t always afford food. Even the girls who are lucky enough to work every day are doing well if they break even, and can sneak off to Germany or Los Angeles or Hong Kong and make a quick buck shooting catalog jobs every once in a while.
And safe? Once I was staying with a girl from Seattle in a ****ty one-bedroom (total number of models: six! Minimum in rent our agency would’ve made from the ****ty one-bedroom that month, assuming a consistent model population: $5400!). We were both on option for the same editorial (daily rate: $150 and lunch). She got the job.
She returned home nine hours later, hair and body painted silver. The magazine was doing a “green” issue; this eco-conscious theme was enacted in, variously, shots in which the poor Seattle girl had a tulip plant placed in her mouth, shots in which she had to lie on top of a scratchy 8 ft. hedgerow while the photographer shot from a crane, and shots in which she closed her eyes and shards of broken glass were applied to her face. They put dirt in her mouth and glass on her eyelids and painted her silver from head to toe. My roommate showered twice and vomited once that night.
Models have incredibly short-lived careers, and our collective youth, third-world origins, and the instability of the market we work in makes our bargaining positions, individually, weak. For every 15-year-old wunderkind who stalks 40 runways a season and books $100,000 perfume campaigns for college money, there are at least a hundred girls who turn 25 with a few grand in bank at best, realize their careers are over, and that they never graduated high school.
It’s also no wonder given how close many models are to insolvency that there are areas where modeling shades into prostitution; modeling sort of prepares you — trains you, even — to see your income in your own body. And also to hang around with plenty of creepy, older, rich dudes. A + B can = C. The BBC did an exposé in 2000 that caught Milanese businessmen on hidden camera trying to buy sex from models as young as 13 in night clubs, and uncovered evidence of agency bookers acting as procurers and drug dealers. In the furor that ensued, Gérard Marie and Xavier Moreau, two top executives at the Elite agency, lost their jobs. The industry promised a clean-up. There was talk of “standards,” of girls younger than 17 being accompanied by chaperones at all times, of blacklisting clients who used or promoted drugs.
Gérard Marie — who was filmed soliciting a reporter who he thought was a model for sex — is currently back at the helm of Elite Paris. I do not know if the man who explained his desire to sleep with underaged models thusly: “We are men, we have our needs” has reformed. I do know that such episodes of revolving-door contrition and forgiveness fill me with disgust, and that one of the biggest tasks of any models’ union would be to keep its membership safe.
A union would also offer, obviously, the benefits of collective bargaining. The overwhelming counterweight of the fashion business class’s wealth give models an unacceptably weak negotiating position. A union could help insure models’ best long-term interests are served by their jobs — a union could argue for retirement benefits, and, in the USA, health insurance coverage. A union could mandate that sufficient time be given for models under 16 to attend school, without setting back their careers. A union could also serve as a voice for models’ interests in the ongoing debate over what is perhaps our biggest immediate health issue — the slightly-underweight physique we are required to maintain. A union could protest and shame under- and non-paying clients, a union could mandate that appropriate food be available at every job, and a union could ensure that conditions on the job site always meet safety standards, so nobody has to pose covered in broken glass or eat dirt ever again.
The obvious counterpoint to modeling is, of course, acting. The Screen Actors’ Guild does an admirable job of representing the interests of a workforce that is dispersed over a vast geography, and which enjoys short-term contract-based employment, when it gets employment at all. It’s ironic that one of the reasons commercial modeling — catalogs, television ads and their ilk — is so rewarding when compared with high-fashion modeling — magazine editorials, runway, etc — is because of SAG’s vigilance; commercial castings in Los Angeles are not infrequently stated union jobs. And even the ones that are non-union are pretty highly paid. I have friends who are only able to work full-time in Paris because they have commercials still airing in the U.S., and receive the appropriate checks quarterly.
Individually, we are weak, and wealthy white men manage to make an awful lot of cash off our bodies and labor. Collectively, we could hold the industry we work in to a higher standard, and perhaps even change the nature of fashion itself. I imagine the union would have an awful lot to say, for instance, about those clients who put “NO ETHNICS” on their casting notices, and those agencies who fail to notice, or care, that certain of their charges have eating disorders.
Of course there are plenty of reasons to doubt any of this will come to pass. The economy is especially dreadful right now; any moves to unionize would be viewed as a threat by the class that controls the fashion capital. Besides, every year there’s a new raft of 14-year-olds from countries with economies far ****tier than ours, and these 14-year-olds are all six feet tall and very, very hungry. And, through no fault of their own, they exercise a huge deflationary force on the modeling labor market. But it occurred to me, as I was working that presentation for that designer who amuses herself by collecting Picasso, that the reason she was paying the security guards at the event and not me was because the security guards have a union. And I don’t.
I want to at least try my best to change that.

 

[Fontenrose]

Great comments from some of the readers (of article in last post). Wow so many comments:

There are a lot of people saying, models can't unionize because of reasons a), b) and c)... But to me, those just sound like all the more reasons to unionize!
There is really no difference between acting and modeling. None. There are many agencys who deal in both, actually.
So why should actors get safe, fair working conditions while models get told to strip down in front of middle aged men for little to no pay?
There is no reason, except that models are usually underage girls, and underage girls are young, and inexperienced and it's damn easy to take advantage of them. They are effectively powerless. All the more reason to unionize!
I support you Tatiana!

I completely agree with you Tatiana. There are so many issues that models have, and we need to unite. The industry believes that we are unorganized and naive, but we should prove them wrong.

Remeber that scene in Ocean's Thirteen where the hotel manager can fire a waitress because her job title is not 'waitress' but 'model who serves'? I wonder what the broader implications of model unionization could be for women in other industries. From the linked articles in the comments it sounds like there's a lot of will to start this. Don't let the naysayers get you down.

As a consumer of the purveyors of imagery employing models, I'd be willing to forgo any magazine, program, or clothing line which discouraged a labour organisation for models or refused to hire Union models.
I'd also be willing to spread the word within my circles to help gain support from the consumer level.
Good luck, Tatiana, and to all who are willing to fight for fair treatment and safety.

There are actually international unions and many jobs that cross borders are unionized, such in the shipping industry. You can definitely unionize across borders, it happens all of the time.
Also, think about sports teams, isn't it a similar deal where a few top players make millions but a bunch of the less famous players don't make all that much? Despite it being a short term gig with contract work, all of the players in the NFL, MLB, and MLS belong to the union because they know it is important to everyone and it is vital to protect yourself when you rely on a physical attribute that can go away.
Everyone will always say that no one will join the union and it won't work but frankly, if one person thinks her job is so bad and they are willing to organize, 9 times out of 10 everyone else on the job site is thinking that too. And then you organize and then you have a UNION!
Viva la Revolution! Solidarity!

There are actually international unions and many jobs that cross borders are unionized, such in the shipping industry. You can definitely unionize across borders, it happens all of the time.
Also, think about sports teams, isn't it a similar deal where a few top players make millions but a bunch of the less famous players don't make all that much? Despite it being a short term gig with contract work, all of the players in the NFL, MLB, and MLS belong to the union because they know it is important to everyone and it is vital to protect yourself when you rely on a physical attribute that can go away.
Everyone will always say that no one will join the union and it won't work but frankly, if one person thinks her job is so bad and they are willing to organize, 9 times out of 10 everyone else on the job site is thinking that too. And then you organize and then you have a UNION!
Viva la Revolution! Solidarity!

And T.A's response:

Thank you! Really. Thanks so much.
If anyone has any tips on how to pursue my particular pie-in-the-sky models' union idea, please, please e-mail me. [email protected].
Because I know ****-all about labor organization, but boy do I have enthusiasm to burn.