Yep, and this happens all the time.
SETTLE IN FOR A LESSON ON UNIONS AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES, EVERYONE:
Read the below comment from Peter Cullen, originally posted in this article here:
“Cullen warns that Netflix hiring only cheap, non-union voice talent sets a dangerous precedent for the industry, which is heavily regulated by the Screen Actors Guild [SAG] to ensure fair pay and working conditions.
Cullen is arguing for something more than just a lost paycheck - he’s looking out for his fellow actors.”
There’s a lot of history to this, but I’m going to summarise a key event here so that everyone has context:
From 2016-2017, with original build up for the strike having started in 2015, there was a serious SAG/AFTRA voice actor union strike, specifically against video game companies who refused to treat voice actors, mo-cap actors, and others involved in the video game industry well.
This wasn’t just about wages, but about workplace health and safety, gruelling and misleading hiring practices, and more– Which isn’t just a video game industry concern; It’s video games, animation, and special effects industries that have very similar if not identical and long-running practices of mistreating workers.
It was the longest strike in SAG history, which is notable, and the union did indeed eventually win, although practices have largely not changed much and while some problems were addressed, many more still persist or occur under the table.
Notoriously, creative industries struggle to unionise in the modern era (let’s say ever since the Victorian Industrialisation period, which is the root of a lot of creative field abuses), and the mistreatment of people in creative jobs has been essentially hard-baked into not just specific studios or creative career paths, but it actually literally facilitates the sustained presence of the industries themselves.
By which I mean, Hasbro will still make money off of War for Cybertron and their Netflix deal. They didn’t hire Cullen or Welker because it was, on the surface, a cost saving measure– And a totally unnecessary one, because no matter what, this would bring in the cash for Hasbro. They would make no loss by hiring these two.
Yet they didn’t bother, despite knowing that if anything, hiring these two would only bring them even more of an income on return for the series as even more people would be inclined to give the series a chance. More people would watch it if these two were in it. Views = money. Hasbro knows this.
And they still didn’t hire them.
It’s not about the money; It’s about sending a message. It’s union busting.
They are punishing Cullen and Welker and intimidating other actors at the same time by saying, “we don’t hire union members”. Which translates into, “we don’t hire people who respect themselves and each other more than they respect the brand, and we like our workers alienated and paid as cheaply as possible with no regard for your wellbeing or experience with us”.
And this is a common thing in creative fields: Companies and franchises and brands know they will make money no matter what on certain lines of product, after a certain threshold of popularity is met.
Transformers is one of the most recognisable and popular franchises in the world.
Hasbro knows that they could hire almost anyone, old talent or new talent. And we know that their confidence in their brand is extremely high; They are willing to churn out lower quality shows because they know people will watch it anyway, at the very least kids will be into it no matter what because they’re kids and robot car people from space are cool, and they have an immense amount of security and power as a company because of that. And they are very self-aware of this.
A common cynical and abusive practice is to purposefully bring in less experienced people who are more vulnerable to manipulation and mistreatment in the workplace that are willing to put up with poor workplace practices because they are either dazzled by the opportunity to work on a major series, they know that working for X production will massively boost them up for other more impressive or long term work, or cheaper and less experienced people are dazzled by even the lowest tier pay checks from huge entertainment companies like this. Pennies to a global franchise powerhouse, but good as gold for those looking for work.
Now, do not blame the people who took these jobs, because actors need to eat too – And that is part of the problem, in all industries, but especially in creative industries.
Gary Chalk came out and actively apologised for the bad voice direction/vocal performances in War for Cybertron, as he rightly should, but this is likely as much as he is able to say about the whole project without getting fired. We know Hasbro is willing to do whatever with their talent, just because they can. The axe is hovering over his neck as well, and that’s why companies do this kind of thing to their workers.
Creatives are notoriously underpaid and mistreated at work. From wage theft to actual physical injury on the job, the abuses of workers in creative industries goes almost totally ignored, because a lot of it is behind the scenes work that nobody ever sees.
Our bar is on the ground in hell for workplace standards, and I’ve done and still do a lot of creative work; I’m speaking from experience. I’ve done performing arts, I’ve done illustration and multimedia visual arts, I’ve done fashion design and photography.
Every creative industry does this kind of thing to keep their workforce and talent pool divided, stratified and therefore positioned against one another as competitors in a very selective job market, and keep workers afraid.
By explicitly refusing to re-hire Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, some of the most well established names in voice acting with Frank quite possibly being one of the most prolific voice actors ever to live, what Hasbro is doing here, is making a threat.
Hasbro is saying “these two are some of the best of the best, and we will still not hire them purely to spite their self-respect”.
It’s malicious, hateful, manipulative, genuinely mean-spirited, and actively threatens the power and practical legitimacy of not just SAG but any such worker’s union.
Hasbro made a decision to weaponize their casting process in a spiteful and unnecessarily rude and blatantly passive aggressive way.
I have supported SAG/AFTRA for years, and especially non-screen actors and non-screen creative workers in the entertainment industry.
We have to call this union busting scum bag behaviour out for what it is, and we need to let Hasbro know that we’re on the side of the workers, not the side of the corporations.
And Hasbro has done this before; We all know about how they dropped the ball so badly with the Aligned Continuity, but all we know for certain about that is fairly fragmented:
They hired a new incoming director for Transformers Prime who held an opposing creative vision for the series right as Beast Hunters was about to start, the whole season was essentially scrapped short notice and re-tooled at massive stress and inconvenience to all involved, and it didn’t perform as well as prior seasons did– So Prime was cancelled.
With Prime’s cancellation, because Hasbro has the money and the means to pretty much pull this kind of massive waste off without caring all that much about the impact on their company budget– Yet they still cite the “failure of Prime”
I don’t know how many of you have worked in big creative industries before, but I’m telling you that you don’t just randomly hire a brand new director for your flagship franchise/brand/product without being VERY aware of who that person is and what their conceptual vision is for the thing you’re about to put them in charge of. Especially when that thing involves literally millions and millions of dollars.
We have no real details, because of course, creatives can never talk about industry stuff because everyone will get fired.
And that’s a huge worker’s rights issue, in and of itself. The problems can’t be addressed if nobody knows about the problems, and we can’t put pressure on big media franchise companies like this if we don’t know the nature or extent of how bad working environments or conditions may be.
Hasbro obviously has issues with treating their animation project related staff well, from production team members who are left bitter by the experience, to voice actors who are pushed aside for daring to demand basic rights as working performers.
We don’t know the details, but I hope the above helps shed some light on why this is so insidious, and Peter Cullen is 100% right.
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