Been an Atlanta area Production Assistant for four years now. It’s a Gig economy in this business so you only ever work for 3-6 months at a time with a show (a nightmare for building credit but that’s beside the point) and you deal with “Dry Seasons”
Currently, I am in a dry season, sending my pretty extensive resume all over town and only getting sporadic few days at a time work. But that’s not the shitty part. The shitty part is that these shows simply don’t care about paying their most overworked, under appreciated crew.
This current show I dayplayed on took 2 weeks of me working to send me the necessary start paperwork. Ordinarily I wouldn’t work a minute without having filled out that start work, but if you do that as a PA (or even a higher up crew position) you’ll be let go immediately and scrubbed from that Assistant Director or Production Supervisors contacts. (An unofficial blacklist).
Then, after finally getting the paperwork, i worked another two weeks and still haven’t received a single check. Now, another week later, having worked all the days I was booked I haven’t seen a dime.
I asked my immediate supervisor and she said “UGH! Yeah they haven’t paid me or X,Y, and Z either! I’ll add you to the list.”
She then told me that her boss, the Key Second Assistant Director, asked Payroll for an estimate on when her PAs would be paid and they said they just didn’t have one.
I’m not mad at her, she’s in the same boat and we’re all sinking. I’m mad at the production and at the fact that this has now happened to me FOUR TIMES on FOUR DIFFERENT shows.
This is exactly the kind of thing the IATSE wanted to strike over! But here’s the thing, because PAs aren’t IATSE and can’t ever unionize, no one cares. It’s okay not to pay us. We have no protection and no workers rights.
I just want to get paid. End of rant.