The illegal practice to which I'm refering to is that of hiring unpaid "interns" to work for productions, usually smaller independent productions, but sometimes the bigger boys abuse the practice as well. Sometimes, although rarely, these positions are worked for school credit, but most of the time it's just young kids getting duped into working for free. I actually don't mind the practice, for the most part. In fact, one of my first jobs was working three days on a short as a grip for free and I learned more in those three days about the film business than I had learned in all of college. Unfortunately, though, some unscrupulous employers tend to take advantage of this practice and make their "interns" work for days, weeks, and even months for free, all the while promising them paid work that they may or may not give in the future. My story is about such an employer.
All of last summer I worked on the Nickelodeon show 'The Naked Brothers Band'. I worked in the art department as a PA (Production Assistant), which mainly consisted of driving a cube truck and picking up props, scenery, furniture, etc. and bringing it to and from the stage. We also had a couple of "interns" with us in the art department that were there every day of the week, and sometimes putting in extra time on the weekends. One of these "interns" was a great, hardworking, and loyal young Chinese-American kid named Chi. There was nothing Chi wouldn't do for them, and often if he was sent on a run to go pick something up, you could see him literally running down the street from the stage to go and get it in the sweltering summer heat. A good bit of the time Chi was put on the truck with me to give me a hand loading and unloading, which is a "luxury" many productions forgo to save a little money (which they've already done by hiring a cheap PA like me instead of a much more expensive teamster like they should). Chi was invaluable to me most of the time, as I don't think I could have completed all my pick-ups and drop-offs in time, or sometimes at all, without him. He did this job for a good three to four months without pay, working various odd jobs on the weekend, without a day off, to actually earn money to pay his rent, which, although is less expensive because he lives out in Flushing, Queens, was still his responsibility without aid from rich parents (his family moved to North Carolina from China when he was young and his father owns a deli/grocery there).
This year I got asked to reprise my job on the show for the second season, and after a few weeks Chi showed up again working in the office and helping me on the truck. Unfortunately, they told him, because of a lot of the higher-ups getting pay raises, the budget for this year was actually LESS than the first season, so they wouldn't be able to pay him at all this year either. Many interns at this point would have simply quit, but my friend Chi is hardworking and loyal to a fault, and since our production designer, Ethan Tobman, had got him a handful of jobs during the past year, he stayed on.
I knew that this was wrong and voiced my opinion about it regularly. I knew he would even be willing to work at half the rate I was getting and still be able to make rent, but they said they didn't have the money for it. When the accountant, whom I had become friends with the last year, asked me why Chi wasn't getting paid (Chi was well liked by almost all the staff on the show), I told him the whole story and he said he would talk to the producers about getting Chi paid. In the meantime, I felt obligated to help out Chi, since he helped me out every day, and I gave him twenty bucks out of my check every day he worked. It wasn't much, but I knew he needed the money, and if they couldn't figure out how to find it in THEIR budget, I would show them how easy it was by taking it out of mine.
The final straw came when they made him dye some carpet tiles for the kids bedroom on the show. The previous year, Chi, along with the other intern at the time, had to work on a weekend and devise a way to dye these tiles for the set, even though it was a task they were untrained for, and probably supposed to be an union job. During the break from the previous season, many of the tiles for the room had been lost or damaged, so they need to make about 30 more or so. The other intern from the previous year had long since moved, and Chi was the only person that knew how to dye the tiles and match the color right. So they set him up in an unventilated room downstairs, to keep him hidden from the union guys, with a couple of hot plate/stove-eye things and a cauldron-like pot of boiling hot water that he had to painfully dip his hands into to rub the dye in because they didn't give him the proper tools needed to do the job, and they put him to work.
When I walked into that room and saw him rubbing the dye in, only to jerk his hands out of the boiling water and shake them off before the heat got to intense, his hands turning purple and green that would last for the next few days from the dye, my heart sank. I knew I had to at least get him proper tools, and I knew that this was essentially slave labor. I did what ever I could. I brought in one of the union 52 guys to show him our "dirty little secret", our own "Chinese sweatshop", and he told me he'd talk to the union rep about getting him paid. I showed our office coordinator, Jeremy McGuire, the burns on Chi's hands and he said, in a patronizing way, "Chi, you've got to tell us about this so that we can get you the right tools", obviously only concerned with the potential lawsuit implications.
Chi finished all the tiles, and nothing happened. The union guys said they couldn't do anything for him. The accountant said he had talked to the producers and they were still "looking for the money in the budget". I was still paying Chi $20 out of my paycheck everyday. They had gotten him to work for them for free, again. In fact, one day after Chi had helped me out on the truck all day, they told me that he couldn't be in the truck with me "for insurance reasons" even though he had done the same thing the entire previous year, and then they said they would start looking for someone to hire to put on the truck with me. I asked them why they couldn't just start paying Chi, and they told me because they wanted somebody stronger that wasn't so "clumsy" and wouldn't get hurt, even though he had done the job the entire last year. And then they needed a few more tiles dyed.
I told Chi all that they had said, and I told him he should demand to get paid. It hit him that they simply did not respect him at all and he needed to do something about it. So, he went into the office and gave them the ultimatum: either they paid him to dye, or he would leave, taking the vital information of how to do it with him. At first, Jeremy, the office coordinator, told him they would invoice him for it, and we thought we had won a small battle. He probably wouldn't have asked for much, maybe $100 or so for the job, much less than hiring a union professional. Just a few hours later, apparently after Jeremy had a talk with our heartless production designer, Ethan Tobman, he was told that there would be no discussion - he would have to do the entire dye job for free. He hadn't been forewarned to wear the proper clothing for the day, and the tools which Jeremy the office coordinator had seemed SO concerned that he needed for the job were nowhere to be found. Yet they expected him to do it anyway. So he walked. They told him that he needed to tell the other "intern" the formula to get the dye right and he refused. I was so proud of him for finally standing up to them. And then they fired me.
At the end of the day, they called me into the office and told me that "it just wasn't working out". I asked them why and they said I was being "insubordinate" for telling Chi to stand up for himself and they wouldn't give in to that kind of "bullying". I asked them how they could be so heartless as to have him work for free in the first place, and Ethan's reply was that he had given Chi other jobs in which he had gotten paid, which supposedly demonstrated his great "concern" and "caring" for another individual's well-being. I talked to the head producers before leaving, and they promised me to rectify the situation, whether it be getting me and Chi back on the show, or jobs on another show, but I still have yet to hear from them at all.
If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't change a thing. Like I said before, it's amazing how much my friends and family have supported my decision, and a few have even said I was their "hero" for standing up for what was right. It's sad, though, that they simply got away with it, and continue the practice as well. I can only trust that one day they'll get what they deserve and God and the karma police will come for them. Until then, I'm still getting calls for other jobs and struggling to pay the rent. But at least I did the right thing.
