Well....I'm sorry to say there's very little this guy's gone and said which
should not be pretty clear by now about the way the
project-account-and-pillage managements that have taken over virtually the
entire Arts and Media industry--and, for that matter, makers of shoes,
junk jewelery, chain saws, insurance policies, feed grain and ratcheting
steam bevels.
There is no one, virtually no one anyway, who works at any sort of media
concern larger than a family-owned, field-loving mom-and-pop firm who
wouldn't see the same impulses driving essentially similar policies--often
stated just as bluntly, on he grounds that if you don't like it you can
always leave. (Which some do!)..
There are book authors or multimedia title/game developers dealing with
exactly the same situatiuon--advances followed by endless payback unto
debt,. their sould owed to the company store. (There's a song for
somebody--16,000 sales and what do you get?) ...The really petty and
utterly unnecessary pain reported here, like that healthcare issue, is
shared among many non fulltime employees too--but maybeis especially bad
for musicians.
I'd just suggest that the best place to deal with that kind of issue is in
the artists unions/guilds...which had better be taking that on (as they
have, to a point that can still grow, for actors and freelance writers) or
be hearing from the same people, graphically. Nobody but those "special
cases with the clout to ask for it if their lawyer happens to bring it up"
will get those benefits from accountants unless they fight for them.
I say all this with no pleasure at all having worked for one sort of media
firm or other--as a freelance and a pat-time and a full-time, for the
last 27 years.
Barry M.
