by Stephanie Brown and John Vitale
The Membership Outreach Committee extends a big congratulations to the editorial crews and staff members who have enjoyed recent organizing successes. The trust, commitment and honest communication our members develop — sometimes with strangers, at first — is a testament to the foundation of our union. Because we are a large membership, spread out across the country, and very solitary in our work environment, it is important that we find every way possible to communicate and remind each other of the strength we have as a post-production community. It is the committee’s mission to help link the members of this Guild and share with the masses the wisdom our membership can impart.
Our committee plans to publish an electronic I AM THE UNION resource magazine very shortly. A link to it should be in members’ e-mail inboxes before Thanksgiving. The goal is to facilitate solutions utilizing your ideas and to help distribute innovative tools to better assist you in addressing workplace issues. Through the many classification-specific roundtables that have been conducted recently, we’ve gleaned some helpful workplace-coping mechanisms and tricks-of-the-trade from our members that we feel are important to share with all. We will be relaying them through this digital publication, in addition to organizing helpful links to areas of the Guild’s website that enhance these ideas. Be patient if we have not yet had a roundtable representing your classification. We hope to soon!
The mission of the I AM THE UNION electronic magazine is to encourage self-advocacy, but also to remind us of the value of relying on our fellow brothers and sisters for support as well as the Guild field representatives for enforcement when necessary. We are our own first line of defense, but we are all in the fortunate position of having built- in protections at many layers.
I AM THE UNION is a reminder to all that the power of our Guild comes from each person.
There will be a section in the electronic I AM THE UNION magazine that will include a link to what we hope will become a “living” document. This will be an area for members to share effective tips that help resolve dealing with unreasonable demands or supervisors. Let us collectively define what is “reasonable.” And let’s create a layer of confidence for each other so that when we say, “Enough is enough,” we can say it with the complete assurance that our community of post-production professionals at large agree.
I AM THE UNION is a reminder to all that the power of our Guild comes from each person. We build from each other’s strengths, grow from our collective creativity, and remain strong through our commitment to ensure that our contracts are upheld.
Please join us. Send your ideas. Join a committee meeting. Participate in Facebook discussions. Share with your fellow members. And by all means, visit the I AM THE UNION Facebook page.
If you have any questions for the Membership Outreach Committee, contact us at outreach@editorsguild.com.
