Innovative deals with angry staffers (nix healthcoverage/Variety

more: http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=print_story&articleid=VR1117967134&categoryid=18

Posted: Mon., Jun. 18, 2007, 1:14pm PT Innovative deals with angry staffers
Dust settling in agency's decision

By PETER GILSTRAPInnovative Artists agents' assistants haven't taken to the streets of Santa Monica with cries of "Attica!", but mutinous rumblings are growing louder.
Last Friday, agency president Scott Harris announced that health insurance would only be provided to agents, junior agents, and key administrative staff. He cited cost-cutting concerns. The decision is retroactive to June 1.

What Harris sees as a way to avoid escalating medical premiums was perceived by support staff as a call to strike.

The roughly 70 affected staffers -- agent assistants, mailroom workers and other employees -- threatened a sick-out today in protest. However, a source inside the agency said only a small handful in the New York and L.A. offices did so.

n/t

... can be rife with hypocrisy.

I worked as a Production Assistant for 6 months on a feature film. Big names, BIG money.
I made $500/week for a 60 hour week.
I got so stressed that I got a bladder infection.
I didn't have healthcare (none for the lowlies in Hollywood), so I didn't go to the doctor.
Bladder infection got worse, turned into a kidney infection.
Wound up in the emergency room, waited for 9 hours, saw a doctor for a minute, got a shot.
Two weeks later, a bill came. It was larger than ALL of the money I'd made for the whole of the time I was on that shoot.
And they didn't pay me for the day I took off for being in the hospital.

This story doesn't surprise me at all.