Except that it isn’t. What IS illegal is for them to simply deduct the amount from your paycheck without your express consent. However, they are apparently free to bill you for it, and sue you if you refuse to pay the bill.
I’m going with:
“Even though these types of losses sometimes might be the employee’s “fault,” they are part of the employer’s cost of doing business and your employer has to cover the costs.”
And if they want to make the case that isn’t true, I’ll let them do their own research.
FYI I’ve been working in TV for 15 yrs. Stuff gets damaged/lost on every job by someone, and there’s always money in the budget to cover it. The folks I’m working with now are unanimously flabbergasted that the production has the galls to ask me to cover the cost of a missing walkie, but these guys also know that this particular production is UNIMAGINABLY cheap and greedy, and the head guys are making out like bandits, pocketing everything they can. So I have no desire to add to their personal spending money, nor is this standard practice in the TV industry.
That sounds reasonable enough but since you’re a contractor and not an employee, the rules might be different.
True. But boy it’d be fun to go to court and fight to change my status to employee. It’s been done before, fine line in the tv business b/n the two designations. And he’d have to pay a boatload of penalties and back taxes for 4 yrs if they find I’ve been an employee that long.
Obviously I have no interest in doing that for real. It’s just more good ammo to defend my position should they choose to come after me.
As a self employed person you you need to take responsibility for your actions, period. Remember with that cute little line you quoted above, YOU are the employer. The production co/show/whatever is the customer, not your employer.
I just ate about $1200 plus about 20 man hours of labor over a problem that probably was not our fault, but the customer would never believe in a million years that my team was not at fault and short of a jury full of Microsoft systems engineers and router gurus I would expect if I got sued over it I would lose.
Part of being self employed is the maturity to accept the cost of doing business…yours.
Drach ---- self employed and loving it…even after losing my ass on that job.
Again, that pertains to the deduction of losses and damage costs from your paycheck. It does NOT mean your employer cannot attempt to recover such money from you by other legal means, including litigation.
Also that bit you quoted is from a plain-language interpretation of the law; it should not be taken entirely at face value.
Wow, I love how I"m being told what I have to do.
Drach, I appreciate the input, and I don’t know what you do for a living, but I’m working under standard TV production “rules” if you will. I’ve worked on all sides of production, from entry level prod asst to top dog on a shoot. I know how budgets work, I’ve done them myself for about 50 shoots. And every single budget has a contingency fee in it, part of it set aside for lost/damaged gear.
I’m not naming the show I’m on, but I promise you it’s being run by a draconian head guy who frequently screws the crew over. You’re just going to have to take my word on that, but there are dozens of examples every week.
My only reason for posting here was to find out if legally they can come after me. The law is very unclear on whether or not I’m an independent contractor or self-employed. It’s a frequent battle with the IRS in this industry, and I’ve seen rulings come down on both sides.
It’s clear that in California, he can not dock my paycheck, and loss would be considered part of doing business. If he wants to start going after me with other legal avenues, that’s his decision, but I’m just glad he can’t dock me flat out. And as petty as this sounds, I’m perfectly willing to walk from this job over the $700.
(He once docked my paycheck 25% because I left work 1/2 day early… and I left 1/2 day early because we were completely caught up on everything that needed to be done. If any of you can find a mathematical system that can justify docking 25% of a weekly paycheck for missing 1/2 of a single day, I’m all ears.)
I’m tired of this guy fucking over his crew (myself included), and the RIGHT thing to do is have the production cover this expense like every other legitimate production would do, especially after a long term employee who’s put in hundreds of hours of OT without billing for them makes a first time mistake.
So no, I have no intention of paying them the $700.
I think what I can’t wrap my head around is the idea that an employer should expect equipment to get lost, and then to eat that cost. That system seems to have two drawbacks: it rewards inefficiency and carelessness, and it gives a free pass to dishonest employees. Why shouldn’t I steal a camera? They expect some to go missing!
The issue of how you’ve been treated in the past is irrelevant. Professional ethics is not dependent on past dynamics. Either you are ethically responsible for what you’ve lost (as you would be in my job), or you’re not; either your employer is ethnically out of line for asking for the money, or they’re not. I fail to see what past wrongs have to do with ethics.
That said, I know nothing about your industry, and I have no reason to disbelieve your experience, and I know nothing about the law, so I suppose my contribution isn’t worth much to this thread…
I don’t think the situation is anywhere near as cut and dried as that. I’m an hourly employee who is frequently on jobsites with hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of tools that are owned by my employer. Sometimes tools are legitimately lost, whether it’s a screwdriver that ends up on top of a ceiling tile somewhere or a flashlight stolen out of a toolkit. I can’t do my job if I’m required to keep my tools in sight 100% of the time, and if I’m going to be billed for every tool that’s misplaced then I’m going to spend a lot of time searching for anything that goes missing. So, which is more efficient from my employer’s perspective? To eat the cost of the occasional lost tool, or to pay me for hours of non-productive time spent looking for stuff? Even with all due care and attention, occasionally stuff will go missing when you’re on and off of job sites constantly.
As it happens, this isn’t an issue for me. I just go out and buy replacements on the company credit card, and my boss trusts me not to abuse the situation. I think it cost him about $50 over the past year - I believe the items in question were stolen, but it’s possible that one of them is sitting on top of an amp in the back of an audio rack about 250 miles away. I didn’t realize they were missing until a week later, though, so I can’t be sure. Perhaps I should drive the company van back to find out?
If he continues to make noise about it just present him a bill for your “hundreds of hours of OT” with a $700 credit noted for the radio.
Best way I can explain it is this. We once had audience waiting to come see a live location shoot. Due to massive technical difficulties, we ended up starting the shoot about 4 hours late. One angry audience member (who was not forced to wait but did it so they could watch the taping) said if they ran their business like that, they’d go under.
He completely didn’t understand what we do.
We don’t do the same thing day after day. We do vastly different projects on a daily bases, jumping around from one location to another. We deal with different contact people several times a day, unique challenges for every single shoot, unique location difficulties, etc.
It’s the epitome of controlled chaos.
Sand can get into cameras. Water can douse a microphone. Gear can be dropped. Etc.
If an employee is consistently careless or a thief, that’s easy to discover and you fire the person.* But if the occasional problem happens, it’s part of the risk inherent in production. As that’s a known and expected factor, there’s coverage for it built into the budget.
- We had a corrupt producer pull a similar stunt, and we all knew it was intentional. Wasn’t enough to go on to press charges, but more than enough for him to get fired, and several other productions we know that were ready to hire him were warned to avoid him. Last I heard he went back to a smaller market to work there, his reputation as a thief had spread too far among the LA community. So it’s not in anyone’s best interest to take advantage of the “if you break it production buys it” philosophy by robbing their employer… but accidents in these wild and constantly changing circumstances absolutely happen.
filmyak, do you actually receive a “paycheck” and if so, who’s it from? Do you get a W-2 or a 1099? The thing is, if you don’t receive a paycheck because you’re a contractor, then you’re receiving only billable hours that you submit, and you handle all the taxes, insurance, and so on on your own, right? If that’s the case, because it’s not a paycheck, it may not be protected according to the sources that were mentioned above. Maybe you work through a contract house, and they give you the paycheck and handle the billing and taxes and so on? If that’s the case, you’re their employee, and the producers are their customer. In that case, the producers could only come at you civilly, or charge back to your contract house, in which case they’d decide whether or not to eat the loss or pass it on to you.
So… how are you paid?
Did you see the episode of Dirty Jobs where the boat the crew was on sank? The poor guys were still trying to film, but the equipment was a total loss. And the alligator guys just kept on releasing gators not fifty feet from the swimming crew.
I get a 1099 because I go through my own s-corp, but that’s by choice. If I wanted to I could get a W2 and get a normal paycheck. There are just tax advantages for me to do the s-corp approach.
Like I said, it’s a gray line as to whether I’m an employee or contractor.
That was outstanding. Barsky frantically trying to save equipment, Mike laughing his head off, and the dedicated cameraman filming it all. Once of the best Dirty Jobs moments ever.
All I can say is, after this I would have been billing them for every single second of OT.
And I agree, which is exactly what happened. (That incident was recent… I told them flat out it was the last time I’d ever do extra hours for free for them again. Haven’t done it since.)
I know this is an old thread, but I just wanted to add one last comment. When I worked for NBC, they never insured their cameras. The reason? In their local news division, the probably owned hundreds of very expensive cameras. They discovered it was more expensive to buy insurance for all the cameras that it was to simply replace the one or two cameras damaged, lost or stolen every year.
From Law Offices of Timothy C. Karen website:
If the item is insured, and the employer intends to claim, wouldn’t it be fraudulent to demand reimbursement from another, additional source?