2015-01-26 - 10:18 a.m.
Well, I just had a look at my income for the two years since my knee accident at work; my income has been halved since 2012.
Now, I may have a union which guarantees a good wage, but it doesn't guarantee me work. Our seniority was bargained away about 2006. I spent years - a decade at least, working for my seniority so that I wouldn't have to kill myself at work as I got older - all for naught.
We are dispatched our work and we get laid off when it's done. We call the hall make ourselves available and go on to the next job. You can be laid off at any time, and they can fabricate reasons, or more often someone not entitled to stay gets kept and folks who should be working, aren't. Seniority does apply in layoffs and hiring extra crew but they find ways around it so the new favourites can be kept.
I have to go to work wearing a brace now...They can't lay me off because of it, but they can sure as hell fabricate some other reason to lay me off (I'm not alone - it's an industry-wide sickness). This business requires 125% and wants NOTHING to do with you if you can't do it. A 50-hour work week is normal, 60-70 is not unheard of. One of my depts works 12-hour days, 5 days a week, or more. We only get a half-hour for our lunch breaks too.
So, now I need to find a new line of work. Dispatch hasn't called me in four months.
I may whip out my fancy-schmancy drivers license and drive the short bus for the disabled - a branch of our transit system which provides service for w/c bound people. The idea of sitting/driving all day doesn't appeal to me, but if I were to work a normal eight-hour work day, I'd have the energy and ability to take better care of myself when I'm not at work.
The film business is brutal and some depts are particularly hard on bodies - I have two of them, and a third which is somewhat prone to causing repetitive stress injuries. If I can come home from work before 7pm, not having killed myself at work troweling concrete or plaster, moving furniture, painting, sanding, scraping, or aging sets, I will have the energy to do more than eat, shower, and fall into bed. And, my weekends wouldn't be spent doing all the things which most people do on their lunch break, during work hours, or after work - groceries, doctor visits, banking, vet visits, vehicle repairs - all sorts of stuff.
It's a horrible life - good money, but a horrible way to live. No wonder the average lifespan for an IATSE painter is 54.
Aside from my work BS, I'm in the process of applying for a UK passport...I believe I qualify for ancestral citizenship, and I'm fed up with this town. It costs now, on average, $1000/mth for a one-bedroom apt in this city.
We have a sociopath at the helm here in Canada, and thanks to our non-voters he may well get voted in again this year (he got in last time with only 36 - 39% of eligible voters voting).
I don't think I'll ever be able to go home to the US - wages are too low and they'll likely not figure out universal health care in my lifetime. I can't afford to be old in the US, The politics are insane in the US too...So, that leaves the UK, and while the politics are equally scary there, I would have lots of genealogy research to do, there's good scotch, great music, and loads more history than this town will ever have. I also have loads of friends and cousins there.
I'm not sure that I'll go, but I'm making plans for change. It'll take me a year to pay off debts and sell everything - assuming I work :D
Who knows? Maybe I'll get a well-paying normal job here, get my butt into some subsidized housing for seniors, and things will be okay...but, just in case.
