are you tired of the bull chips yet?
Updates
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2025
During the last General Membership meeting it was announced that motion picture production looks to be picking back up in the spring. While I am happy that many of our members will finally catch a break after the extended hiatus, I'm still left with a feeling of trepidation when it comes to stage. After years of speaking out about the problems on the other side of our mixed local it finally felt like we were starting to get some traction regarding the long standing issues that have been holding us back. My concern is that stage will continue to be neglected, and the next time Hollywood goes dark there won't be any live event work to get us through the hard times.
The truth is that stage could be so much more than just a relief valve. There are opportunities all over the island chain that we could be taking advantage of, and our current Business Rep's attempt to organize on Maui was an important step in the right direction. We will always be dependent on outside forces for movie and television work, but if we made organizing venues a core strategic objective it would help immunize us from the Hollywood boom and bust cycles (not to mention increasing our influence in the legislature the net time the tax credits come up).
If we take our role as Hawaii's entertainment labor union seriously then it requires us to expand our influence beyond our current comfort zone. If you are tired of watching your friends and family move away then you understand how important this calling is.
THIS Is YOUR Union.
You paid for it.
So why do you keep electing people who Make the problems worse?
IATSE 665 is facing a time of crisis along with the rest of the industrialized world. In the past we had enough work and money flowing into our coffers that it was possible to get away with semi-competent administration and moderate levels of corruption, but with the shutdown of the television and film industry our future is by no means certain.
Riding out the storm will require the restoration of traditional union values as well as retooling our skillsets and business model. As a mixed local we are blessed with the opportunity to adapt to changing circumstances, but this is not possible if we keep electing people who will work tirelessly to promote themselves and preach about social justice issues but can’t be bothered to sign contracts that were delivered to them on a silver platter.
What this union needs is an executive board who thinks beyond the next election cycle and looks for the problems coming down the road instead of waiting until the last minute to panic. The ideal candidates will put the needs of the local first, give you the information straight, respect your time, and respond directly to your concerns instead of ignoring or gaslighting you. We've had enough of being told what to think. It's time to put aside the plastic lei platitudes and focus on the policies that will actually make a difference.
we have tried everything else. it’s time to get back to basics
Focusing on Live events
Hollywood is in serious trouble at the moment with an estimated 30% reduction in film and television jobs. While it's important to stay on top of our local tax credits and incentives, we can't afford to wait around for the situation to fix itself.
Live events have also experienced declining sales for the large touring acts, but fortunately there has been an increased interest in smaller local shows and productions. Promoters, venues, and A/V companies are having difficulty keeping salaried employees and have shown a lot of interest in using our team of on-call experts, but sadly we waited until the TV and Film work slowed down to start taking these relationships seriously.
These are regular gigs that could provide a significant portion of our members with a decent living, but decades of short-term thinking left us in the position of having to bargain from a place of desperation.
Supporting Small Business
It takes time, effort, and consistency to develop these relationships. Some of us have been trying our best to keep this part of the industry alive despite lack of support from the hall, but now that the movie jobs have dried up there are proposals circulating to make job placement more "fair and equitable".
What this really means is displacing the workers who have shown loyalty to stage and spent years making far less money and living modestly. This betrayal of our dedicated stage workers will cause even more of them to walk away from the union, and the employers will be left hanging when the "equitable" hires go rushing back to the first Hollywood production that comes along. The current Business Representative has her faults, but at least she kept the balance in this regard. If we elect someone who hands out favors at the expense of solidarity then we will eventually be left with nothing.
Instead of playing a self-destructive game of musical chairs, the answer is to go out there and GET MORE WORK. It's always easier to cannibalize and destroy existing opportunities than to create new ones, but doubling down on the short-term thinking that got us into this mess will only make the situation worse.
Ending DEI
Equality means that everyone gets a fair shot and the best performers come out on top. Equity means someone chooses the winners and losers, which is why the concept has been so popular with the most tyrannical regimes in history.
The purpose of a union is to unite the workers, and therefore it makes no sense for us to continue entertaining policies that were clearly designed to divide us. No one should be have to apologize for their heritage or sit through struggle sessions that punish them for their beliefs. DEI is pure performance art that poses no real threat to established power, and therefore it is of no use to organized labor.
On the other hand turning people against each other in order to make them easier to control is a tactic of Colonialism that goes back to the Roman concept of Divide et Impera. Now it has been promoted as a civic religion that favors fealty above competence, and when applied to our industry it has resulted in property damage, injuries, and even deaths.
Radicalized identity politics clearly came from corporate marketing departments and academia, and has only managed to sustain itself with billions of dollars of propaganda and financial incentives. The ultimate irony is that it's terrible for business, and every company who dabbled in wokeness so far has paid a hefty price.
If people want to work on racist activism then they are free to do so on their own time, but in order for our organization to offer the highest quality of products and services then we need to restore Equality of Opportunity. This is especially important at a time of increasing economic instability where our greatest challenge is staying competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace.
fighting InFLATION
The United States currently has a national debt of $38 trillion dollars which will never be paid off. The only question that remains is the manner in which we are going to default. Most of governments who faced this predicament in the past have typically chosen to keep printing money until their currency is worthless.
Since 2020 your savings has already lost 20% of it's value. How many years of your labor does that represent? Federal spending is still out of control, which means even though the rate of inflation has slowed down recently this process will inevitably begin picking up speed again.
At some point the rate of inflation will force us to start renegotiating our contracts in terms of months rather than years, and our union needs prepare for these difficulties rather than get blindsided by them. The silver lining on this cloud is that plenty of other countries have gone through the process, and their citizens have shared many stories of what it was like and how they managed to successfully navigate it.
Bringing Back ACCOUNTABILITY
The word Solidarity gets used a lot less recently, and that's probably because it reminds everyone of the founding principles of the labor movement that we are failing to live up to at the moment. We've grown far too tolerant of scandals, drama, nepotism, selfishness, and criminality. The result is that a large percentage of our members have "checked out" and are accepting non-union work.
This completely undermines the collective bargaining process, and if the pattern continues we will eventually lose everything that our predecessors fought and even gave their lives for. The infection starts at the top when the leadership sets a bad example, and as the demoralizing effect filters down through the ranks it puts the entire organization in danger.
The only way to stop this decline is to hit the reset button (starting from the top), declare that the rules will once again be enforced, and then proceed to make an example of those who would put their own interests above the common good. It can be an unpleasant process in the beginning. Some people always push the boundaries to see what they can get away with, but when a code of conduct is consistently enforced it actually increases the overall sense of peace and security in a way that we have not experienced in a very long time.
TRAINING FOR SUCCESS
As a mixed local our greatest asset is having a wide variety of skills under one roof. No matter what economic headwinds we face are there will always be a need for people who consistently train in order to capitalize on new opportunities.
This means looking beyond our current roles of wrangling props, painting backgrounds, fixing hair, and hanging lights. Smaller clients need intelligent motivated workers who are willing to take on more responsibility. There are regular opportunities for people who know how to operate boards, program LED walls, assemble A/V displays, and set up breakout rooms. By stepping out of our comfort zone and trying something new we make ourselves indispensable and create alternate streams of income during difficult times.
Up until 2020 we were headed in this direction by consistently offering top-notch training to the membership and were actually pretty close to becoming serious contenders for convention and trade show work, but the project was suddenly abandoned and we missed the window to take advantage of the return of live events and the resulting labor shortage.
We need to make this a priority again. The correct approach is to survey the marketplace and find out what the needs of the employers are, and then keep them in the loop so that training becomes a meaningful pathway to career opportunities rather than just a waste of time.
Securing Your Data
Have you been receiving unwanted spam emails and solicitation offers that specifically mention your membership in IATSE 665? There's a reason for that, and it has to do with sloppy data handling and cybersecurity practices.
Now that the government is pushing us to use our biometrics in a world where anyone can use AI to become a hacker, it's only a matter of time before our hall experiences a serious data breach and/or cyberattack. Once your bio markers are on the black market you can't get them back, and performing regular security audits is a lot cheaper than negotiating with ransomware attackers.
Unfortunately defending our data doesn't seem to be a priority at the moment. Recently a union-busting concert promoter posted a screenshot of a highly sensitive organizing strategy email on social media. It was an internal message only between members of the board, but for some reason there has been no meaningful investigation into how that happened. This is unacceptable, and until we figure out how this breach occurred we should assume that our entire server has been compromised.
Communicating with Purpose
When the calls go out late, clients wait weeks for a response, workers drive to jobs they are not scheduled for, and paychecks take months to get resolved it sends a clear message that the rest of us are just not that important. This is destructive for morale and undermines employer confidence so that even if we do our job perfectly it’s still an uphill battle to regain their trust.
Companies have started to think twice about using our services, which is especially dangerous at a time when we need to support the low budget indy projects that have the potential to restart a sustainable local movie and television industry. If we are too difficult to work with they will leave us behind, and with the bigger projects drying up that's a risk we can't afford to take.
The daily feedback of the members is also absolutely essential for making accurate decisions, and therefore you need someone who responds to your concerns and doesn't just blow you off. While it's impossible to make everyone happy 100% of the time, the vast majority of our recent dramas could have been resolved with active listening instead of defensive posturing.
Automated systems and text messages have their place, but nothing beats the good old fashioned phone call when it comes to checking in on people and seeing how they are doing. You can learn a lot more about what’s going on in someone’s life from the tone of their voice than you can from emojis and tapbacks. In these days of shortened fuses and increasing isolation it’s more important than ever to slow down the conversation and communicate clearly.
My Pledge
If you choose me for the position of Business Agent I vow to listen and respond to your concerns, defend your personal information, regularly schedule training that gives us a competitive advantage, restore order, banish divisive politics, and actively negotiate the new economic reality in order to maximize prosperity for those who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Things might feel like the end times at the moment, but it's actually just a new beginning. The future favors those who step up to face these challenges rather than run away from them.
Sincerely,
Jacob Holcomb
Grip, Electric, Rig, A/V, Stage Carp
Member Since 2010