Australian crew to take 15 per cent pay cut to secure 20,000 Leagues
Disney is working on a deal with the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance that will see the local production crew behind 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea adopt US contracts.
While the MEAA has agreed to the move, negotiations continue on what stipulations the contracts will include for local crew.
Previous contracts of a similar nature have included reductions in penalties for night shooting and other stipulations that mean an overall reduction of daily pay of up to 15 per cent.
However Mal Tulloch, director of the entertainment and crew section of the MEAA, says local crew will not be worse off under the agreement. “Australian and US conditions level out when you consider all the entitlements,” he said.
Working with U.S. film companies is all about collaboration.
Bend over.
This is really quite disgusting. We are PAYING Disney – one of the giants of the global entertainment industry – $21m to make a movie here, and now asking the crew to be paid less than Australian award wages?
What the hell is this about? Imagine if the Government was to PAY Apple to open Apple Stores in a bunch of cities and then the Apple store employees were to be paid at US rates. That’s pretty much the size of it. And it stinks.
I hope the MEAA is as flexible with the many lower budget Australian productions unable to cast Americans due to rate penalties…
MEAA are hypocrites. they will do what it takes to get big budget films, but seem intent to stop low budget films from getting over the line.
for just an industry association, i think they have way too much say.
So what return does Labour expect to get on giving $21.6m to Disney?
They should only have agreed to a 7.5% cut and then filmed 10 000 Leagues.
I don’t think the Federal government has just given $21.6 million to Disney. On top of this is the 16.5% rebate Disney will also claim. They’ll shoot, employ some Australians for the duration and then leave. Australia will get no ongoing income from the production. It is far worse than continuing to subsidise the local car industry. At least with cars, infrastructure is built and maintained and the cars both exported and sold here. Would the Feds finance a one-off car? When are politicians going to realise that Disney is running a manufacturing industry, no different to General Motors? It is dumb economics and poor policy.
Idea – Get rid of this agreement with Disney, put the 20+Million of Fed Gov money into the Australian film industry and get more Australian works produced. Imagine how many Australian movies can be made with that money!
We will also then see an increase both to the available work for our casts and crews, as well as further promotion of Australia as a great place to film.
Best of all, it gives our creators a chance to produce our ORIGINAL stories, instead of a story that has been told again, and again, and again as Hollywood is want to do.