BECTU - subs increase?

[paulears]

I'm seeing on Facebook people saying BECTU have increase the subs by 33%. Insensitive at best, and considering the members with no work, pretty much a slap in the face. No doubt, it's going to cost them dearly. As one person on FB said - I only joined to get the PLI and with no work, I don't need it.

 

I left because of the way fees are based on your invoice totals and not your profit (which is the self-employed person's income), and they just didn't get it.

 

Anyone know if this is correct?

[sandall]

I left because of the way fees are based on your invoice totals and not your profit (which is the self-employed person's income), and they just didn't get it.

Haven't heard about the increase, but I always flatly refused tp pay a sub based on turnover, rather than taxable income, especially when I was doing installs on fairly slim margins.

[itiba]

No it's not correct.

 

Every few years BECTU will bump you up one subscription band in expectation that you're earning more. It's very easy to e-mail them and inform them otherwise and part of the admin that adults carry out on a daily basis.

 

Any reasonable person would expect the sending of such a letter from BECTU to happen automatically so we don't have to pay someone sat a desk to do it manually. Unfortunately computers don't know about the sensitivities about the timing of Covid-19 and so when a person received a letter this week they overacted and blasted about it on facebook followed by all the sheep that can't do a basic google search.

BECTU are actually dropping the rates on the lowest three bands by £1.25/month in October 2020 "to reduce the burden on those members on the lowest incomes who are under the most financial pressure, and introduce a stronger element of fairness into the system. This results in reduced subscriptions for approximately 8,700 banded rate members paying by direct debit and up to 1,200 more who pay via the 1% of income scheme."https://bectu.org.uk...snyuvgphffsnyu/

We degrade unions at our peril!

 

I left because of the way fees are based on your invoice totals and not your profit (which is the self-employed person's income), and they just didn't get it.

 

And this didn't sound right so I spent a couple of minutes getting the rulebook up available here

On Page 5: "Gross annual earnings shall be defined for this purpose as a member's pre-tax earnings"

 

If you google pre-tax earning you get:"Pretax earnings is a company's income after all operating expenses, including interest and depreciation, have been deducted from total sales or revenues, but before income taxes have been subtracted"

So yeah that's your profit.

Edited March 20, 2020 by itiba

[sandall]

I haven't read the rule-book, but the reminder letter still says "Gross Annual Earnings". Maybe there has been a recent change in the rules, or the Membership staff, but on several occasions when I phoned to renew I totally failed to convince the person at the other end that if for example I do a £100k install on which I make £10k, ignoring other outgoings this would bump up my Gross Profit (i.e. Gross Earnings) by £10k, NOT £100k. On one occasion it had to go to an "officer" to be resolved. These days I just send a cheque, which is usually accepted without hassle. Edited March 20, 2020 by sandall

[itiba]

I haven't read the rule-book, but the reminder letter still says "Gross Annual Earnings".

 

Yeah but any term like that is almost always defined somewhere.

 

That particular definition has been in their hand book which has been in effect since at least 1 January 2017

 

 

 

 

 

[paulears]

That's the problem - gross annual earnings are your invoices. In my case, if I invoice the client for say £1000, this might cover three people's work on a show, and the £1000 would be actually £333 for me. Often there will be equipment charges - sub-hire from somebody, so maybe a good proportion of the invoice is paid out to the hire company. Their system cannot cope with the concept that gross annual earnings are NOT remotely profit. If HMRC understand this, why don't the union. Here's an example of how the system doesn't work.

Hi Paul

Can you provide this information on letterhead and the amount we require is the gross income as subs are based on gross and not profit.

 

Thank you

Profit is what I have to spend if I take everything out, effectively my wage maximum - my turnover means I'm VAT registered, but my profit is a very small proportion if that turnover.

 

They pointed me to the rule

in case you want to check, it’s Rule 9 and you can find it at https://www.bectu.org.uk/about/rules#Subscriptions .

 

 

The concept of the subs being based on earnings is flawed. Surely anyone self-employed realises with a shock that earnings are not all yours to spend? If you have a job where the salary is £30 grand, you know that apart from tax, NI and pension - you get the rest. We generate an invoice for sums owed and somehow the operating expenses are NOT allowed. Cost of stock and staff is an operating expense, but BECTU do not allow you to detail this - they want invoice totals.

 

I don't suppose it matters, I'm out now and haven't missed them at all.

[itiba]

That's the problem - gross annual earnings are your invoices.

 

No they are not. Bectu's own rules states "Gross annual earnings shall be defined for this purpose as a member's pre-tax earnings" and if you google pre-tax earning you get:"Pretax earnings is a company's income after all operating expenses, including interest and depreciation, have been deducted from total sales or revenues, but before income taxes have been subtracted."

It's unfortunate that the presumably London living wage admin assistant you spoke to doesn't understand the intricacies of degree level accounting terms but further discussion based on their actual terms and conditions would have no doubt yielded positive results.

I'm out now and haven't missed them at all

Perhaps not directly but we all benefit from the union existing.

 

[paulears]

To be honest - this is often commented on, but Equity, BECTU and the MU are also used to set pay grades or rates as some kind of standard, which production companies find handy - so X grade =X pounds with no leeway for negotiation. This is fine when you are starting out, you get perhaps more than you might be worth, but as you get more experienced and in demand, your pay is capped. There's also no scope for half-way arrangements. Venues cannot negotiate any variation. So you start to get inequality. How many riders are now designed to prevent paying BECTU rates for getouts? Quite a lot of the less box office friendly shows cannot afford the BECTU rate getout. The ones that have crews working on blocks of hours with minimum calls vs those that charge just for hours worked, or those that fund the outs themselves. I'm not anti-union at all, but often find at some of the venues I'm working at that the outs tend to be frantic, to beat the hours, or they'll not have any house crew for the out required, and then take ages to do a small amount of work, because they're on their clock. They make me smile sometimes because they deliberately avoid asking for any help, totally unaware we're being paid until they're gone at the venues expense, so we'd be quite happy to speed things up, just so we can go home.

 

You also get those crazy Equity & BECTU vs MU timetables where the musicians work in 3 hour blocks, so break with the Tec and Turns unable to do much without the band, then the band come back and the Turns and Tec break, and the band have an hour to play nothing at all. You then get the West End vs real life pay disparity. Obviously the West End folk know their extra rates are justified and the rest know they're not.

 

The unions never seem to modernise working practices and get together for the benefit of everyone. All that happens is more and more people are on buy-out contracts, or contracts that pay union rates, but do NOT have all the little bells and whistles - dressing time, extra call pay and stuff like that - yet often they believe that half an hour is actually 45 mins because of the history, without it being actually in their contract.

 

One union meeting I arranged made me quietly laugh when the rep when asked what the subs actually paid for said in all seriousness 'his wages'!

 

I've no beef with union membership at all - but in all the years I've been members of them, they've been quite useless when asked to do things. Just my experience of three. Nothing I have seen them do changes my mind.

[itiba]

Oh yes well that's all a different topic. False claims of union subscription increases aside the question of whether Unions should set pay grades is an interesting one but I'm far too busy to contribute to it to be at a point where I could do it justice.