@BT

Thank you for showing me more of your side of the page. No doubt WGAE does a great job keeping up with its current and lapsed membership. If IEAU follows suit keeping up with lapsed membership it still raises a few questions/potential issues if they aren’t administering royalty payments.

If they are administering royalties the issues are covered under fiduciary regs. If they are not the question of info/data sharing comes into play. Its one thing to forward a notice to a lapsed member reminding them to update contact info. It’s another if the union is providing current contact info on demand to anyone who says they owe royalties to a performer.

Hopefully Sabrina will share her experience and knowledge of how the EU processes royalties which could shed some light on how they address ‘one hit wonders’ and much more.

I don’t think we really disagree…
From my other comment, “If they can get producers to agree to use only union performers, which is going to be a HUGE challenge…”

Except an project like this would require a real ‘organization.’ With lawyers, cpa’s, a full time staff, an actual headquarters, with real offices, and a big enough BUDGET. Who in porn today has the ability, and up front money to put this together?

This new union needs to stop thinking about these pie in the sky, unreal things that will never happen. Choose a few small battles that you might be able to win, and then build upon that. You can’t hit a grand slam until you get the bases loaded, and right now this new union is still inthe field playing defense, they are not even up to bat yet. To set up a royalty system would easily cost half a million dollars, if not more, and just the monthly operating expense of rent, employees, everyday bills that any business incurs to do the everyday tasks would cost thousands per month. And don’t even try to say that union dues would cover it,,,there aren’t that many performers in the US to even come close.

UNION, choose some battles you can win, and for gods sake, show some balls, support the health and welfare of performers first, and issue a statement in support of prop 60. Then maybe you will get the support and assistance of some REAL big money donors!!!

Have to disagree Toby. Producers will simply keep hiring non-union performers, and any real union will not allow members to work with non members. They do the same thing with any performer who advocates for producer paid testing, and safety measures on set, They simply won’t get hired. Every single top performer could quit the business today, and production would not miss a beat. New “stars” would simply be created. They are as replaceable as batteries. And porn is not now, nor has it ever been anything close to a multi billion dollar industry. That original 14 billion dollar figure, so often repeated in the mainstream press from over 20 years ago was simply made up out of thin air by AVN magazine,,OUT OF THIN AIR! It was immediately debunked by Forbes magazine, but the press stuck with it. Filling out a survey at AIM years ago, a female performer who was easily one of the top 5 performers of the day, and is one of the top 20 performers of all time said she made,,,dancing, escorting, film combined $250,000.00 in her best year. Not even in the same ball park(pun intended) as any professional athlete.(not even a US soccer player)

Why not you? Beyond simple to answer, because you don’t have it written into your contracts. That would be one thing that any entertainment union would never stand for. See how many performers ever get hired if they insist on royalties, or residuals in their contract. This would be a frivolous lawsuit at this point, and who ever files it may end up paying the defendants court and lawyer costs.

Again, apologies for not being clear. In mainstream, the union does not process royalties, and I am not suggesting that a porn union would process royalties in porn.

In mainstream, porn is the arbiter of all contracts. Any contract signed by a performer, a writer, a director, a music director (and, I presume the trades, but don’t know), starts with the minimum rates, terms, benefits and, yes, residuals, established by the union. Its essentially a standard union contract. A producer can offer higher pay than the union minimum but it can’t offer less.

As an example, it’s been nearly 20 years since I wrote a television movie, but back in the day, the minimum pay to a screen writer for a two hour television movie of the week was $38,000, payable in four installments that were a specific percentage of the total, based on milestones; an 18% contribution by the producer to the writer’s pension plan; and residuals of $25,000 each time the television move was rebroadcast after the original. That was the standard deal. Now, when I did my first project, even a first timer like me got a minimum of $50,000 – that was the going rate. But the union rate they had to adhere to was a minimum of $38,000.

When I say that the union was the arbiter of all contracts, a writer or performer was not allowed to begin work on a project until their contract had been submitted to and approved by the union. Every contract was on file.

It was – and is – up to the production company to make payments on time, including residuals (and agents hammer this too because they get a cut), but if the production company doesn’t live up to its part of the bargain – if the production company doesn’t pay the fee or doesn’t pay residuals, then you file with the union. They’ll work on enforcing it for you. For instance, if production companies are violating the rules, they will not approve future contracts and union members will not be allowed to work for them.

The argument has been: Royalties, residuals, a piece of the pie for performers will never work in porn because too many performers are one time wonders.

My argument, and this is all I have been trying to say, is that in mainstream, you have the same thing. You have someone like me who lives in a small town on the East Coast and who, through luck and pluck, was able to wrangle a scriptwriting gig out of a production company plus ABC way back in 1990 that turned into five years of regular screenwriting and a pretty good living – all in California. In 95 or 96, when the industry had changed, I went back to my old life of magazine journalism in a small town 3,000 miles from Los Angeles. Cut all ties to the industry, including leaving the union about 10 years ago. And yet, more than 25 years after my first gig, the union continues to keep track of me (I did get a residual check years after I stopped screenwriting); notifies me of my earnings history; tells me what my pension will be worth; and the death benefit on my union insurance policy.

My point: If mainstream can keep track of me for 25 years, there’s no reason that a porn union can’t do the same thing for porn talent interested in collecting what they are due. And, if the union mirrors mainstream, where it approves contracts before the work begins, there is an incentive for production companies to act like real businesses and treat its performers according to union contracts, including residuals. If they don’t, no one will be allowed to work for them.

Now, having said all of that, do I think it’ll work in porn? I have my doubts having nothing to do with the people running the union (and I know nothing and have no opinions). My doubt is based on the fact that porn companies really don’t give a crap about “rules” – heck, the whole ethos around porn is that we operate outside the normal rules of society – and too many performers are in it for a $500 check for giving a blow job. You’ll always have pirates and outlaws.

But if performers are serious about this and if the porn union is serious about enforcement, there’s no technical reason it can’t work, including royalties. For instance, you promise a performer 1 cent every time their scene is watched on Brazzers.com. The latest scene by Synthia Fixx on Brazzers has 125,000 views. That’s $1,250 extra to Synthia who probably got paid $1,500 to begin with, since its anal. She has 3 scenes on Brazzers, with a total of 642,317 views, or an extra $6,432.17. In all likelihood that would double her income for those 3 scenes.

Julia Ann has 55 scenes on Brazzers, the oldest, going back to 2008, has 532,000 views. The newest, from this past August, has 112,000 views. If I use an average, Julia Ann would have made an extra $177,100 for her work on Brazzers over the last 8 years, or an extra $22,135 a year. That’s for one studio with residuals. If you figure that people will continue to watch her work for sometime, she’d have a small income for some years after she retires. Phoenix Marie has 200 scenes on Brazzers. Her most recent has almost 358,000 views. Her first scene, from 2007, has 873,000 views.

A penny might be too much, but even a half a penny a scene, residuals would add up for someone who makes a career out of porn like Julia Ann or Phoenix Marie.

@BT

“IF” the union is processing royalties they will have to adhere to fiduciary regulations. The responsibilities are essentially the same regardless of what the account is called….pension, insurance, royalties or any other kind of income that can be considered wage income.

I think we were looking at different sides of the same page though I may have confused matters by addressing the concern that undeliverable royalties would make some stakeholder fat wallets fatter.

Sometimes I don’t do a very good job of explaining myself. As someone who was a member of one of the performing arts unions for over a decade, the Writers Guild of America East, the point I was trying to make was simply this. In mainstream, the union is the enforcer of contracts. When I would get an assignment to work on a television movie from a production company, the signed contract had to be filed with and approved by the WGAE before I could begin to work on the project. Writing contracts at least include structured payments: You get something like 25% for signing; 25% for turning in a treatment; 25% for a first draft; 25% for a polish. Each of those payments is recorded with the WGAE. As a writer, you also get residuals every time your movie is rebroadcast. Those payments are recorded with the WGAE. So, regardless of whether they are administering my pension and insurance as a matter of law, they also have a record of all payments owed me and paid to me. If you as a writer have a beef with a producer, you take it to the WGAE (or WGAW if you live in California) and they are your arbiter. Now, TV writers like me come and go, but the WGA keeps tabs. Every now and then, someone calls me just to make sure they have my correct contact info. So unless the writer is just a complete moron and says I want to live in a yurt off the grid and have nothing more to do with the money owed me, the WGA ensures that you get what’s coming to you.

There’s no reason whatsoever that a porn union could not fulfill the same role in porn when it comes to residuals/royalties or any other benefits unless talent is just too stupid or irresponsible and refuses to update their information so they can get what is rightfully theirs.

Thanks to Mike, I’ve been checking out the Rialto Report. If those guys can track down gals from the Golden Age, like Susan McBain, for interviews, I can’t believe a professional union couldn’t keep tabs on people who have earned money.

That part of it shouldn’t be rocket science.