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    LasersBurnHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:24pm

    Leftfield is the bottom of the Barrel in NYC. They treat their employees like shit. I have hired many people and said that they had shady practices, contracts, a sweatshop like vibe, and a habit of laying off employees right before they would be required to offer them benefits. Their rates (except for editors) are below other NYC standards.

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      all-hail-rngesusLasersBurn
      9/23/15 2:49pm

      a sweatshop like vibe

      Oh it’s not just a vibe. Speaking from personal experience it’s very much a sweatshop there. Rows upon rows of underpaid and overworked fresh out of college kids staring at computers.

      Also they graveyard shift most of them. Hope you like working until 4 am!

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      somenameorotherLasersBurn
      9/23/15 2:58pm

      I just got back from shooting in the hellscape of San Jaoquin and one of the camera operators worked on one of the Real Housewives shows. His tales of working for Leftfield were harrow examples of why there is a union. He quit after a week of working seven or eight hour shoots without a bathroom break since the honey bucket was set up pretty far away and the five minute walk would “waste too much of the talent’s valuable time if we break”

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    The ever-present football-player rapistHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:11pm

    Each and every one of you can carve out your own career path and find your own way. That is what makes each one of you unique.

    If everyone’s unique, then they’re not: they’re all similar in that regard.

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      Misteaks were madeThe ever-present football-player rapist
      9/23/15 2:19pm

      No one is really unique. We just think we are to make ourselves feel better.

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      clickSuckaThe ever-present football-player rapist
      9/23/15 2:27pm

      Only way to carve a path is to be ruthless with a Katana and hope their veto power and finding your replacement doesn’t wound your career.

      Though this type of mentality (“Winner takes all”) is at the heart of the American psyche, it has only resulted in psychopathic work environments for all...and it’s resulting in the need for unions.

      Had businesses realized that ruthless work environments are not ideal, and taken measures to ensure worker satisfaction, then they may have avoided the union option.

      This behavior, also, applies to the current political climate, which is infected with business over people favoritism.

      The beginnings of a soft revolution are underway.

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    aprilphreshHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:20pm

    I will admit that “unions prefer tenure over talent” is a thing I kind of agree with, as I’ve worked in partially-unionized workplaces with some un-fireable dead weight. However, I think soap operas disappeared because nobody was watching them, not just because of high budgets.

    All said, if I received this letter from my boss I’d side with the union because he sounds insane and embittered.

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      getitrighteverybodyaprilphresh
      9/23/15 2:26pm

      I’ve worked in nonunion places. And pretty much every place had unfireable dude club or nepotism hires that made horrible decisions, created an awful climate driving off great talent and basically cost more than they were worth.

      So...that ol thing of unions creating unfireable jobs is wrong.

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      somenameorotheraprilphresh
      9/23/15 2:44pm

      “Tenure over talent” may seem, on face value, like a semi-valid criticism, but in this town? Nope. There are more members in the rank and file than there are jobs. Hiring is based on talent, familiarity (the most common, actually), recommendation, etc. Seniority is pretty far down the list. A new production is going to go with crew that has a good portfolio, knows someone, worked on another project with the producer, or is recommended long before the member’s union tenure is considered.

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    FreshlyShavenHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:11pm

    “When asked for a location where the vote would take place we offered up a conference room and they demanded that it be in a different conference room.”

    Those motherless fucks.

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      SessileRaptorFreshlyShaven
      9/23/15 2:27pm

      Probably because the original "conference room" that was offered was actually a broom closet that was already occupied by an angry tiger.

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      BoudicaFreshlyShaven
      9/23/15 2:31pm

      A different conference room? I mean, the third floor conference room with all the broken chairs is the only one we can offer b/c all the others are booked solid the day of the vote.

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    Armageddon T. ThunderbirdHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:11pm

    I stand with organizing the labor at this company. Also, euthanizing the ‘talent.’

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      7-11's HostageArmageddon T. Thunderbird
      9/23/15 2:33pm

      Yup. It’s fucking staggering how many people are aware of this, and yet.

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    Hip Brooklyn StereotypeHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:14pm

    “THE UNION IS PROMISING WHAT LEFTFIELD IS ALREADY OFFERING AND WANTS TO BUILD WHAT LEFTFIELD ALREADY HAS WITHOUT THEM, AND THEY HAVE NO TRACK RECORD OF DELIVERING THEIR PROMISES WHERE LEFTFIELD DOES.”

    Stop yelling, “new employee”!

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      mrblergHip Brooklyn Stereotype
      9/23/15 2:24pm

      New employee took a... bold stance.

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      Hip Brooklyn Stereotypemrblerg
      9/23/15 2:26pm

      New Employee is the embodiment of courage.

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    all-hail-rngesusHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:38pm

    As a former employee of an LFE company I can say that their salaries do not have a track record of increasing. At least for us poor non exec scrubs.

    Well they do increase...by 2% on an already undercut salary.

    Also we were told that they wouldn’t interfere with hiring or firing and shortly before I left multiple people were let go and from what I heard it was a command from upon high. Also those vacation days they mentioned got cut from 10 to 5.

    And the 401k was non matching.

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      Blahall-hail-rngesus
      9/23/15 3:05pm

      I just love employers giving raises lower than the rate of inflation and then bragging about it. Yes, thank you for making my annual pay cut smaller this year! That’s so generous!

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      TiredofTV1all-hail-rngesus
      10/28/15 11:18pm

      Sounds a lot like Bunin-Murray who brag about their health care, which costs the employee $80 per week (more than I was paying on the free market) and the 401k program that does not match and has higher account fees than I’ve ever seen before. They also do an tiny annual rate bump, but typically they hire people at such a low wage to begin with ($1600 per week for a segment producer?!?) that you would have to work for decades to be paid industry standard.

      There is no share the wealth mentality when it comes to all these reality companies.

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    MattHamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:18pm

    “We’re not anti-union. We can and do work with unions. Pre-established unions for other workers that we don’t have any control over so we’re pretty much forced to work with them. However, we’d prefer it if you didn’t unionize. We have a suggestion box and that kind of just as good, right? I mean, your suggestions are just that and are legally non-binding, unlike say a contract that a union might negotiate with us. But you can trust us to take your suggestions seriously and to implement them if they don't involve us having to be inconvenienced in any way imaginable."

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      7-11's HostageMatt
      9/23/15 2:32pm

      Precisely.

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    ham6450Hamilton Nolan
    9/23/15 2:28pm

    I used to work as a producer at a marketing firm and we got an email very similar to this one during one particularly crazy shake up(sans union. Unionizing was never in the cards). Our hierarchy also mentioned the projects they had so benevolently passed up on. I’ll never understand why ownership thinks that’s such a powerful sticking point. They must be out of their mind to think anyone would believe their quality of life as part of a production team had anything to do with those decisions. It’s pretty shameful to parade around projects that would have been a financial waste of time as some sort of humanitarian sacrifice.

    Oh, and the folks who sent the email I received were living in a rented mansion in one of the most expensive areas of Maryland while their paid for mansion was being redone. Gross.

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      BlahHamilton Nolan
      9/23/15 2:37pm

      “And for god’s sake, don’t ask why a union vote is happening in the first place! Unions just show up at the reception desk uninvited by anyone and we generously agreed to an election. That’s how it works! Really!”

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