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UPDATES WME Pay For Assistants Worse Than WMA
WME this week put in place that new pay schedule for WME assistants I told you was coming. The New York office’s was announced first, followed by the Beverly Hills headquarters. “Can you believe they decided to break the news to us in a meeting disguised to discuss our new health insurance plans?” one BH source tells me. “And, of course, nothing in writing… Just a scale told to us nonchalantly.” The new agency had to ”recalculate” the pay for WMA assistants (about $13.50 an hour) to be more on par with Endeavor assistants (about $9.50 an hour). Manwhile, Endeavorites were earning more overtime tham WMAers.
So here’s what begins August 1st:
Under 1 year – $11/hour
1 – 2 years – $12/hr
2 – 3 years $13/hr
Over 3 years – $14/hr
The pay increases $1/hr for every year over 3 that the assistant is employed.
Any raises from the end-of-year reviews have been taken off the table.
Official hours are from 9-7 PM and a 50-hour work week is expected.
There are faint rumblings of a walk-out, especially because the assistants tell me that they are taking on much more work. Needless to say, the famous UTA joblist is making the rounds especially among the majority of William Morris assistants who are taking a huge pay cut — on average 20% to 35%! — and sense that the ladder of opportunity for them no longer exists. The WMAers feel there is favoritism being shown the Endeavorites. They claim that whenever Ari Emanuel makes the rounds, he chats with many Endeavor assistants but does not take any time with the WMA assistants. It sounds petty, but this stuff does matter. On the other hand, not all th ese assistants are wet behind the ears. Many have law and business graduate degrees or years of working in other fields, and knew going in that the agency biz has a god-awful paying apprenticeship.Then again, there’ve been many California government crackdowns on what is tantamount to showbiz slave labor.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Time to download that call list and move on.
That’s what Ovitz and crew did.
Hollywood is a town of self-made opportunities.
Good luck kids!
It’s not as if assistants have no recourse… they can always quit. But some other schmuck is always chomping at the bit to take their place. And as long as they can answer a phone and tie a tie, they’re qualified.
The big racket isn’t so much what these assistants are getting paid, it’s that the guppies are still foolish enough to believe that there’s a substantial prize on the other end of their apprenticeship.
There will always be a handful of people at the top of the agencies who make an enviable sum of money. And they’ll do whatever it takes to preserve their way of life. Witness the incredible rate of agency consolidation and attrition in the last 3 years alone. So it’s more people grasping at an ever-diminishing pie.
Just wait till the broadcast model finally dies and the congloms stop paying packaging fees (already happening in cable). Sure the agencies will still be around, but, absent new revenue streams, they’ll be forced to move to Encino.
Agents make 10 MM plus a year with bonuses, side deals, make no mistake about it, I have seen the checks
I would work for 10 years as a assistant for 24k a year to get a guaranteed job like that but now I am to old (50) to even try it
anyone who complains will get replaced, there are thousands of hopefuls that will gladly take those positions in a flash
These kids will all wear this time as a badge of honor later in their careers. Shut up and pick up the phone.
Hi everyone- we are doing this a little different now and that is we will get all office supplies we NEED but not necessarily everything we like or desire. A $21.00 stapler does exactly what a $6.00 one or $35.00 box of pen and etc. I would sincerely appreciate your cooperation.
If the job isn’t worth the pay/opportunity, people will quit. One imagines there are plenty of other folks willing to take their place.
Much ado about nothing.
If the pay/opportunity isn’t worth it, people will quit. (And there are presumably plenty of other people willing to take the job.) This is no different from any other job.
Much ado about nothing.
UNIONIZE!!!!!
All it takes is more than 50% of the assistants to sign a union card to trigger an election. There are a boat load of attorneys who would walk thru the process any assistant who cares to start the ball rolling.
Another tack is to make sure ALL overtime is paid and not sloughed off with a wick-and-a-nod. Bringing in the state labor commissioner with the threat of massive fines and publicity will shape up the agency lickety-split.
Finally, what a disgusting bunch of criminal scum inhabit the agency world, especially the big agencies! Sickening! What an abomination they must be in God’s eyes. . .
fuck’em, let them leave–there will 200 others in line waiting for their jobs and good luck finding a job in this climate. And even if they do find a job, they still are going to be assistants making 550/week. If they think they are going to find jobs as jr. execs or whatever, forget it, do they know how many qualified Execs have been laid off and are out looking for jobs willing to take a demotion if necessary? WME knows all of this and that’s why they are doing it–because they can.
And another thing, the END assistants just got a raise thanks to the merger, they should be psyched.
This is the business, always has been and always will be–it’s called paying your dues by working long hours, taking it up the ass and not getting paid. Put another way: it’s Social Darwinism–if you can’t hack it, then go back home, live with mommy and daddy and work at the local bank.
I will say it once, I will say it again…
1) If you are an assistant for more than 2-3 years without getting promoted, you gotta leave and do something else.
2) They keep the salaries low on purpose to weed out kids from Bodunk towns who were not brought up by parents with the means to support them. Agencies want kids pushing mailcarts who know that Barney’s isn’t just a bar in West Hollywood. They want kids who are polished from the start.
I’m sort of shocked by all of the people saying that the assistants should suck it up and that it’s better than being in Iraq. Is that the standard for a good job now? Anything that isn’t nearly getting killed in Iraq? The fact that many assistants get help from their parents doesn’t make it right for them to not be paid a living wage (and i think $400-500/week in los angeles barely qualifies). What about people who may have real talent for this business but don’t have that financial safety net? What do they do? And don’t tell me “if you work hard enough in this country, anything is possible.” The logic underlying that statement should be “things are fair enough in this country that if you work hard, you’ll be rewarded,” and not, as a lot of these commenters seem to think, “no matter how many ways management tries to screw you, if you fail to get ahead, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough.”
I don’t care what business there in, but we have labor laws in this country and state, and they need to be enforced. If they are really working 10-20 hours a day, then they should be payed over time, minimum, or someone should be sued/go to jail. Maybe Hollywood would be a better place if you didn’t either have to be independently wealthy or half-insane to get a decent job. Maybe we see better movies, too.
Also, maybe part of the problem with Hollywood is the culture of nastiness engendered by expecting people to mortgage their lives for a slim hope. No wonder schaudenfreude rules.
I realize there’s always more people banging on the door, but Hollywood doesn’t have to be THIS bad.
When you combine two companies and one set of assts is underpaid and the other is overpaid, guess what happens: they meet in the middle. It’s not personal, it’s just business. Plain, logical business.
Does anyone really think that Ari walks through the offices and gets chummy with lots of assts? You’ve got to be kidding, nobody is dumb enough to believe that, so excuse him if he talks to Patrick Whitesell’s assts or something. Give me a break.
Of course, all the negativity is coming from the WMA side, so I’m not particularly surprised it would be negative and nefarious methods were rumored. Nobody wants to take a pay cut, but reality happens, and some of these people are bitter and are trying to paint quite the apocalyptic picture. And considering the new company won’t allow just anyone to have multiple assts, and the formerly overpaid / underworked assts there will actually have to do the job of one person. How brutal. You’d think these people never worked at agencies.
The funniest part of it all, of course, is the potential ‘walk out.’ Hilarious. Even if you managed to get a group of assts planning on walking out, half of them wouldn’t even do it because there are people standing in line hoping for that opportunity to be so miserable.
Welcome to Hollywood.
Faint rumblings of a walk out? I’m sure its pretty faint, in fact inaudible. If they walk out, they’ll be fired and replaced tomorrow. And whining about favoritism in the entertainment industry? Gimme a break.
This is pathetic. I worked at WMA over 16 years ago and I was making more than that THEN!
Whether they have a trust fund or not, the assistants work their asses off…job as an assistant at a talent agency is a heck of a lot more than 50 hours a week…they work very very hard for that money, for very little reward.
This assistants are the ones who make those companies work! I’m sure David W. and Ari E.’s salary aren’t being cut.
Just disgusting.
I work in PR and pay my assistants at least $15 an hour and we make 1/10th of what these agencies bring in a year. Our retainers are lower, the payoff is lower, but the training is not much different. the fact that they are lowering the assistant salaries tells me that either a) they are not doing as well as they say there are or b) the major executives who they work for are padding their pockets with lots of extras. Paying your dues does not mean you need to be poor or going broke. Its an honor to be selected to work at any agency, but to be expected to live on macaroni and cheese while their bosses eat at Mortons or The Four Seasons is beyond me.
When I was working as an assistant fifteen years ago, I turned down a job at William Morris that offered a pay of $400 per week (I could make an extra $10 a week if I carpooled!) because I felt I was not going to be able to make ends meet. Back then they did not offer overtime pay. I was not a trust fund kid with rich parents to support me, and with a 60+ hour work week there was no possibility of working a second job. After 15 years, they are still offering the same pay rate. Apparently the rate of inflation has hit every other company except William Morris.
It’s a tough job, but those that are good at it are kind of like the really good actors…they wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.
And most people in this country make those kind of wages (actually, the majority make less, i think) so they will find ways to manage, i am sure
regardless, let’s hope this industry figures out how to profit off of what it produces again – then everyone (talent and agents) can make some money.
All,
What about the overtime????
I, as an Asst at another Agency, recently had my overtime cut completely. Ive worked at multiple agencies, have NEVER been able to bill overtime for covering scripts. And who pulled this 5hrs per script #. Im getting my few hundred per week, flat, at a higher-end agency, with Zero overtime. Even when we had OT recently, it was very minimally billable vs. the actual hours worked both in the office and at home….We’re talking billing 3 hrs a week vs. working an extra 20+
The very idea that there are “rumblings of a walkout” at WME is so flagrantly ridiculous I’m surprised you even mentioned it, Nikki.
Please.
SO MANY people want those WME assistant jobs. Those people would be replaced within about 17 minutes. Locked out forever. Way to go, angry assistant?
Being an assistant in this business sucks. We all know it. The pay sucks, your boss is often unreasonable, unpredictable, and cold-hearted. You eat a ton of shit, and you act as if you like it.
This is what happens! Anyone, and I mean ANYONE who has ever been successful in this business has paid their dues, for years and years, as an assistant. I have ZERO sympathy for kids in their early-mid 20s who get the opportunity to work at a place like WME, CAA, UTA, or wherever and then complain about it when it’s really , really hard.
Yeah, LA is expensive. Yeah, it’s barely a living wage. But that’s the way it is, it’s always been that way, and if you don’t have some way to supplement your income, you might as well give up.
Only a tiny percentage of assistants actually make their way up the ladder. Because not everyone is built for the game. Not everyone has the ingredients. That’s why the wash-out rate is so high.
So, go ahead and walk out, kids…. that would be a brilliant, brilliant move. Start working on that screenplay. Which won’t sell, by the way.
Great for Endeavor, crappy for WMA. I’m spotting a trend….
If you want to make money in this country, you bust your ass, you shouldn’t get paid for working hard, you should work hard because you know thats the only way you’ll get to the top in America, the best country eva.
i believe the starting rate is $10 for 0-1 years, $11 for 1-2 years; $12 for 2-3 years, $13 for 3-4 years, and $14 for 4-5.. capped at 5 anything after 5.. well who in their right mind would stay as an assistant at that rate… this is from the mouth of the horse(s) pat galloway and carole cuntz.
What is one expected to do when their parents aren’t able to support them????
Many of us are in that boat and have NO ONE to help us!!!!
Here’s an Idea:
Instead of crying about the fact that you are not being paid enough, use the product that is all around you.
Perhaps the Assistants should light the fire underneath them, pull a Geffen / Diller / Ovitz / Meyer / and find a spec-actor-director-writer all the other Agents have turned away, and sign them and sell the product. (“One Man’s Trash”…).
From Bitching to Balls….Use the resources at your fingertips, and go you’re own way.
Who is gonna stop you?