We artists may lack the hard handed romance of coal miners
or factory workers, but we’re getting ultra screwed too and our pal Barry
Hoskyns has just drawn the line…
“Calling all freelance
content providers (musicians, writers, actors, photographers, designers etc):
Join me in WITHDRAWING UNPAID LABOUR from the
creative and media industries. The exploitation of freelance content providers
has gone on too long, and we are all responsible for letting it happen.
Please do not:
• Write, act, photograph or design for free
• Provide images, music or performances for
free
• Do radio or television interviews for free
If a company or corporation asks you to provide
your time and skills for nothing, TURN IT DOWN. You have nothing to lose by
saying NO.
If you have any concern at all for your economic
future as a content provider – and for the future of subsequent generations of
such providers – please don't ignore this issue.
PASS THE WORD ON to any content providers you know.
Further thoughts for those with a slightly longer
attention span…
TO THE EXPLOITED:
• If you allow yourself to be seduced by the myth
that your unpaid labour will "look good on your c.v." (or equivalent
blah), try to see that you jeopardise not only the welfare of your replaceable
elders but your OWN long-term economic future.
• You set up a paradigm whereby you in turn become
replaceable. The rolling exploitation of unpaid workers and perpetual interns
is based on a false notion of deferred reward.
• If we do not start demanding recompense,
ultimately humans will have no value. As Jaron Lanier states in his essential
new book WHO OWNS THE FUTURE?, "Capitalism only works if there are enough
successful people to be the customers."
• How is it that our online habits have huge
big-data value to tax-avoidant entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon yet NO
VALUE WHATSOEVER when we request payment for our contributions to the networked
information economy?
• We must return to the core humanist principle of
valuing not just institutions and material things but actual living humans.
• If the present economic paradigm prevails, it
will vindicate Margaret Thatcher's contention that there is no such thing as
society. Wouldn't it be nice to prove her wrong?
TO THE EXPLOITERS:
• If you are making money from the labour of
others, then you should share that wealth with them.
• If you knowingly exploit somebody while telling
yourself, "Why would I pay someone if s/he's willing to work for
nothing?", how do you sleep at night?
• If you habitually hire interns, at what point
does their work experience end? At what point does somebody actually become
WORTH PAYING?
• The culture of internship and work experience
sustains class inequality, because only privileged kids can work for free. Only
THEY receive the economic subsidy the government withholds from those born poor
and with little hope of educational betterment.
• This is not only a moral but a MARKET imperative.
In the long term markets will collapse if there aren't enough people sharing in
the wealth.
THANKS FOR LISTENING.
Barney also adds a footnote
from dreadlocked Silicon Valley maverick Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns The Future?:
“As much as it pains me to say so, we can
survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists and
photographers. What is not survivable is the additional destruction of the
middle classes in transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education
and health care. And all that destruction will come surely enough if the
dominant idea of an information economy isn’t improved.”
The secret
word is Slave
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