WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
decisions, decisions...
more FPs below the fold
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/...
In recent weeks, the Ritz-Carlton hotel company, the NFL, and the Smithsonian Institution have all made news by asking people to do work for free. Such practices are hardly surprising in themselves—working for nothing seems to be a key building block of the new economy. But the fact that these requests come from such huge organizations with deep pockets raises troubling questions.
I could give many other examples. A few weeks ago, designer Dan Cassaro publicly shamed Showtime for its attempt to get free creative work from professionals as part of a “design contest.” Santa Anita Park recently called for volunteers to work at the Breeders’ Cup World Championships—an event that gives out $25 million in prize money to its well-heeled participants but wants folks in the neighborhood to serve as unpaid staff. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, part of the Block Communication media empire, is now asking writers to submit 750-word essays for no payment. I note that this newspaper is unionized, and its parent company reportedly paid Ted Nugent more than $50,000 to play at an event for a sister newspaper. But now it wants writers to donate their services?
These are not start-ups or struggling new media companies, but established businesses in old school industries. The trend is ominous. Web startups made it cool to build a business model on unpaid labor, but now cash rich companies with highly paid senior management want to play by the same rules.
The problem is among the Republican values of often faith-based philanthropy and volunteerism common to those aspiring to the status of the 1%, whereas actual charity is much more secular and diverse. Furthermore, it is becoming more important to in someways institutionalize those actions and activities as a matter of institutional non-profit fundraising
What can we do about it? Let me propose five simple rules of etiquette for this ugly new beggar-thy-neighbor economy:
(1) Only charities and non-profits should ask for unpaid workers to staff their operations or undertake time-consuming projects.
(2) If a creative professional wants to volunteer to help a for-profit business, that is permissible. But the professional initiates these relationships, and the business should not request or expect it.
(3) Businesses that ask creative professionals to work in exchange for “exposure” should be publicly named and shamed.
(4) When an organization built on free labor starts making money, it needs to start paying for work.
(5) The wealthy should never ask the poor to work for free.
In the case of number 5, the only requests are usually when I own a utility vehicle.
Yeah I am thinking of working for free, if only for several months if only to gain some new applicable work and technical experience - it actually supports something I was working on in terms of research before I got distracted by trying to find a real job among all the other FPs.
What's YOUR FP?
5:37 PM PT: Oh yeah, and I'm still finishing up TX work but 12/31 is the technical last day....TX would have been great if the salary had been better and I didn't have three residences to deal with....and of course if doing certain task were not so now very tedious for my ever so much more cynical self.