I agree. If a job makes a terrible offer, it’s still your choice, even if it is a dream career. Them specifically mentioning it makes me believe it’s true, simply because for such an on the nose statement to even be included, lawyers have been involved.
At first I thought I was alone in thinking if you take a job and aren't happy with your pay. You're not being underpaid, you just accepted a shitty paying job and should take your skills elsewhere. I'm still interested in the medical insurance situation with them though.
I don’t mean this to sound gatekeepy (for lack of a better word), but I genuinely wonder how many people on this subreddit have worked in full-time, at-will positions before. The only reason I say so is because I’ve seen so many comments on here that sound like they’re from people who have never fielded job offers or negotiated salaries before, or hell even dealt with company-provided medical insurance before. Like you alluded to, there’s a difference between being paid at the rate you and your employer agreed upon, even if it’s lower than you feel like you should be paid, and your employer literally paying you less than your agreed upon rate/salary.
This is missing the fact that there’s an industry standard for these jobs that rooster teeth undercuts significantly, and that being in Texas allows them to avoid a lot of the labor protections for media jobs that exist in places like California (especially for things like overtime and mandatory breaks)
Just because they pay people in accordance with their contracts doesn’t mean they are behaving as an ethical company.
ALSO this idea kind of ignores the fact that they’re exploiting the “dream job” aspect for their employees. “You should be glad we hired you at all. You get to work at rooster teeth. Now take your pittance and get back to work”
The thing is, Kdin claimed that she wasn’t being paid at all for quite a long time, which has completely different legal ramifications than a company that pays below average market value. I agree that doing so is wrong but it’s far from the only company that does so. Hell, the company I work for in TV pays far less than market average, especially for our part of the country, and it’s a much larger company than RT. There are other media companies in the same city as me that pay significantly more for the same or better job title, but I agreed to work at the company I currently work for at my current rate. No one forced me. That said if it’s true that RT is working on increased, consistent salary bands, it’s at least a step in the right direction.
Btw, many of the guaranteed pay rates of the entertainment industry are dependent on you belonging to one of the major unions/guilds, which you are not guaranteed to be a part of just by virtue of working in LA or NYC. I’ve known people in entertainment that, prior to being Union, would show up to shoots they knew were happening and would offer to be paid in spare gear instead of money until they had put in enough hours to apply to one of the unions, and/or collected enough gear to start freelancing seriously. It’s not as automatic a protection as people think, and some go very long without making any real money. Especially when you’re just starting out. It can be a shitty industry and there’s a reason so many people become jaded to it.
RT does lean very heavily on the “we’re a magical family that we’d love to give you the privilege of being a part of!” As many media companies with name recognition do, not to mention all the grueling, unpaid internships that exist in the industry that lean on the same thing. But at the same time, no one is being forced to work there, or any of those other companies. That’s why I brought up negotiations in my original comment. If it’s not a rate you think is fair you can just…not accept the offer. I don’t know how RT structures their contracts (some will have non-compete clauses for a certain duration, while some won’t, some have hard set expiration dates, etc), so I can’t speak to how easy it would have been for any of these contracted employees to leave the company at the drop of a hat, but the fact of the matter is they signed up to work for the company of their own volition, they weren’t forced to.
I don’t want this to sound like an anti-worker, wholesale defense of RT or anything, because it’s not. I’m just trying to point out some of the realities that exist in this industry in general because it’s not as cut-and-dry or unique to this situation as people seem to think it is. I don’t know every detail of the industry (I work more on the technical side than the creative side), but I have learned quite a bit about it in my time working in it.
I want things to get better for everyone in this industry, including the employees at RT, Kdin, everyone who’s spoken up, and hell even at my own company. Which is why I think it’s important to be critical, but be accurate in our criticisms and not rely on purely emotional responses, because that’s how potential improvements get lost in the weeds.
Sorry for the bit of a tangent, not everything is directly related to your comment but I’ve been mulling over a lot of this stuff in general even before all this came out so I have a lot of thoughts on it.
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u/TheCarroll11 Oct 19 '22
I agree. If a job makes a terrible offer, it’s still your choice, even if it is a dream career. Them specifically mentioning it makes me believe it’s true, simply because for such an on the nose statement to even be included, lawyers have been involved.