BECTU, the UK’s media and entertainment trade union, has posted an article highlighting some of the issues VFX workers are encountering at MPC in London. In the week leading up to the UK premiere of ‘Jungle Book’, BECTU conducted a large scale survey. According to the survey’s results, MPC workers had serious concerns about the company’s “coercive working culture”, and “excessive unpaid overtime”, to name a few. For more information on this story, you can read the full article on the BECTU website.
Conditions for VFX workers at MPC London
Related Posts
CGPress is an independent news website built by and for CG artists. With more than 15 years in the business, we are one of the longest-running CG news organizations in the world. Our news reporting has gathered a reputation for credibility, independent coverage and focus on quality journalism. Our feature articles are known for their in-depth analyses and impact on the CG scene. “5 out of 5 artists recommend it.”
I so much love the city of London … but these work conditions are nuts.
Archviz here I come! 🙂
Another group of people complaining about work. If you don’t like staying late then don’t. Stop giving in to these types of companies. Say “NO”
I cannot speak for them, but changing jobs isn’t that easy when you have bills, family, etc.
Unionizing is doing something. At the least they are getting together to fight for their rights. How can this be a bad thing?
I thinks its less about giving in to the companies than peer pressure. Usually encouraged by middle management keen to encourage a culture that gives the appearance that their team is hard working and passionate. Anyone else worked in a studio where stacks of pizza boxes were collected as some sort of trophy? Nah.. its not cool, its poor management.
I thought it was only in Germany 🙁
Many Company make bad calculation for VFX, and that pay the worker finally. Nice effects, bad moral.
It all depends on how hungry you are but personally I don’t work for free. I had job interviews where they either mentioned unpaid O.T. and/or unpaid on-call.. I stood up mid interview, shook the guys’s hand and said sorry, this wont work for me.. GL.
But I agree, sometimes you dont have a choice, we all need to eat right? Not fun.
And now the costs are being raised more becauase of the rental only policy, who do you think is going to pay for this?
The worker of course.
In Spain is the same story, and the worst thing is that those companies still have earnings, so it’s not just that they are making bad calcs, is that they think they can put this kind of pressure over the worker, is that if you go home at the end of your work time “you are not being a good worker, you are being selfish”
It’s all crap they say to justify the low price they give to the clients, it’s not bad calculations, it’s done in purpose to be aparently really very competitive in the market, when the real thing is that they are making modern slaves, the companies of that size should be forced to pay over time hours, yes or yes, and if they don’t want to pay for those hours… don’t make the worker work those hours, is that easy!
Regarding of people not having a choice, that is entirely true, is the government the one who should regulate this things with very simple things as the one I said, over-hours should be paid, and if they don’t pay those hours they may receive a sanction that would be used to pay the workers for those hours (not another amount of money that goes to the government just because it goes to the government)
And with thouse measures they will say “then things will go wrong… everything will crash…”… well yes… for them, but not for companies that do the things correctly, not for companies that don’t have to be worried because of over-time, because they put that on the contract and budget, or because they organize and evaluate the work correctly, is that simple…
This affects also small studios, because then they hire small studios for half the prize they real value of the project and then those studios are forced to do it because of the same reason… they have to eat… and the market is small… and if you are problematic you won’t work in the future… etc etc etc… this is because the government has to make simple rules, and let me put in bold “SIMPLE”, to control this for big companies, if they have to pay a small studio, ok, but they have to pay the real value of the work, not half the price…
… and then they will say “then we will go to india… they are cheap…” well yes… but not the good ones, and the bad ones are cheaper like in every other place BUT the work will be badly done so… how would they justify the SUPER-DUPER price they put for a shot? how will htey justify the SUPER-DUPER price they pay for renting licenses? how will they justify the SUPER-DUPER rooms for the directors and producers? I don’t know but I don’t care… if they think they can maintain that ok, but with the real work value, not making people to give them their time away…
Ok, a bit of a big rant, but I am so fed up with clients arguing prices and comparing apples to oranges, a client recently said to me that they did not have the money for a FX shot beucase it’s cost was four times the money they had for four times the frames for roto… so you are compairing a shot that needs photo real 3d modeling, shading, lighting, photo real rendering, 3d fx (smoke, and dust), camera matching, 3d tracking and photo real compositing with some roto shots????
Ok… yes… you can’t do it, that’s it… and that is what we said… without the money needed we can’t do the shot, if they don’t know what they are planing to do in their project… how can they even start to making plans for it?????????
Incredible but, sadly, true story 😛
I think it comes down to the culture in the office. Which is set by the managers and such. I have worked in places where the 3d department would get up and leave on time while the compositors and designers stayed late.anyone new who joined would also fall into the same trap of staying late. No one actually forced them to stay but they just felt awkward to leave in time. And probably because of that managers and producers were happy to keep making changes and dithering coz they knew people would be around to make changes.
This is the result of counties like china having people working for $1 a day.
Globalization killed what the french revolution achieved.
It’s unfortunate.
In this case I disagree…
People working at $1 a day will never achieve the requested quality and profesionalism the projects need, in fact for complex projects companies are starting to run away from cheap places like India (thinking in cheap studios, not in good quality studios that work for the real job cost) and that is because very often the work done by those studios has to be redone in house, so in the end that cheap amount of money is lost money.
The trick here is to achieve a good balance between quality and price, and it can be done, but big companies should not be able to do whatever they want without a cost or repercusion.
This is all IMO of course.
Cheers.
are you seriously blaming China for what’s going on in Londons’ studio?
seriously?….
@Juan3D: they’re still adding more offer to the market than what the demand takes. That lowers the price everywhere else.
@jake: What’s so strange about it? The entire city of denver went bankrupt with cars being manufactured somewhere else. How many thousands if not millions of jobs were lost in other industries bc globalization.
This is just one more case of the same.
It’s Detroit, not Denver 😉
Right! Detroit. That’s embarrassing. Thanks
The most People in this Business really can´t complain ! I know a few people working in health care, they had to work longer, later, harder (yes, not Internet all da) and have way more responsibility for the real live of People.
At the same Point they get just 20 percent of the Money of an Artist and NO famous Projects for which they can proud of.
This is really complain on a high level. If you want to be rich, choose another boring Job. If you love what you do, stay.
And do not think vfx vendors earn much money, this is not treue, at least for smaller ones. They have to be cheap to get the Job from the studios. Big vendors on the other side have contracts with studios about certain amount of Projects and Money per year.