Entertainment Employees Get a Second Take
You’re riding high, part of a creative team that produces the hottest show on television. Next thing you know, the young upstarts who once nipped at your heels have nabbed all the jobs. It’s been three months since your last paycheck and job offers are scarcer than real movie stars on Hollywood Boulevard.
What’s an assistant director to do? In most cases, collect unemployment. But in Glendale and Burbank, where the entertainment industry employs about 50,000 people, the Verdugo Jobs Center has started the first program in the region for Hollywood workers who may find the dream machine no longer needs them.
The center, which opened on South Central Avenue in Glendale in 1983, helps displaced show business types upgrade their skills, start small businesses or launch second careers. Located in a 1940s office building, the center’s programs reflect Glendale’s and Burbank’s increasing and sometimes risky dependence on studio employment, which has surpassed aerospace as the No.1 local industry.
The two cities--home to Disney, Nickelodeon, NBC, DreamWorks and Warner Bros.--are vulnerable to economic hiccups caused by threatened strikes and cyclical production slowdowns.
“We were concerned that in slow times or in case of a strike, the majority of the area could be out of work,” said Gavin Koon, a member of the Verdugo Workforce Investment Board, which oversees the center.
Koon estimates that in the next year the center will assist several thousand entertainment workers left reeling by the erratic nature of the industry. It already has helped Thomas Phillips, a former second assistant director for the Emmy-winning TV series “Cheers,” who at 52 found himself out of work for three or four months at a time.
“I tried sales. I tried other job centers and then I tried Verdugo. They got it,” Phillips said in a telephone interview from his home in Woodland Hills.
Counselors helped him match his skills with other career possibilities and he is now enrolled in Web master classes at EdNet Career Institute in Woodland Hills.
“My only other option was to be underemployed,” Phillips said.
Although the state does not track unemployment rates by industry, studies indicate that about 60% of show business employees are freelancers who drift from project to project and often have trouble keeping their careers afloat during down cycles, said Don Nakamoto, the center’s labor market specialist.
“The strategy is not to get them out of the industry,” he said. “Instead, we can help them start a side business, get training or connect to resources to help them find supplemental employment.”
People do not have to live or work in Glendale-Burbank to use the Verdugo center, Nakamoto said.
As of 1997, the latest figures available, the entertainment industry was responsible for 56% of Burbank’s economy, city officials said. Glendale officials have not computed the industry’s economic effect on their city but say it is significant.
Countywide, 251,000 people were employed in entertainment as of May, said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.. The industry--which encompasses TV, movie and music production and their supporting businesses--contributes $31 billion annually to the county’s economy, or nearly 9% of the total economic pie, Kyser said.
Study to Determine If Skills Can Transfer
Like other job centers, Verdugo provides primers in resume writing and job searches on the Internet. But because there are so many people employed in entertainment, Nakamoto decided to apply for a $150,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to study whether there are broader retraining prospects for the business.
“Nothing formal has been done to look at how the workers’ existing skills could be marketable in another area,” he said, adding he expects to learn this month whether the center will receive the grant.
In addition, a program of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees underwrites at least 75% of the cost of courses for members who want to retool their skills. The program is funded by a $3-million grant from the federal government and $1 million from independent industry sources.
Enrollment costs for the courses range from a couple of hundred dollars for an eight-hour session to several thousand dollars for a two-week program, said Jeff Henderson, a manager at the Verdugo Jobs Center.
“Grips are being trained in computerized lighting . . . anything artistic is being done on computer, whether it’s costume design, art direction or animation,” said Henderson, who manages the grant from an office on the second floor of the center. “With training, they have higher classifications and skills proficiency. That means higher wages and more hours working.”
In the past year, some 400 union workers have upgraded their skills through courses paid by the program, Henderson said. The number of show business workers who have used the job center’s other resources since Verdugo began focusing on the entertainment industry three months ago has not been compiled yet, Nakamoto said.
Helen Harwell, a 33-year-old production designer, is learning to use one of the latest 3-D animation programs, courtesy of the union grant, while she waits for her next movie to start production in August.
“I’m in classes with 20-year-old computer geeks who are absolutely amazing,” Harwell said from her home in Venice. “I’m also in class with a 60-year-old art director who worked on the Ed Sullivan Show.”
Harwell, who graduated from the American Film Institute in 1993, said she has seen a dramatic change in technology in less than a decade. “When I graduated, we were just beginning to see these kinds of computer classes,” she said. “Now, it advances so fast, you constantly have to upgrade. I think there’s going to be a division between those who can use these programs and those who can’t.”
