​“We are told to be loy­al, that this is nor­mal,” said Lau­ren Velos­ki of the long unpaid hours she worked for sev­er­al pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies. ​“You should antic­i­pate that your work­day will be 12 hours long,” one employ­er informed her.

But work­ers say these are the con­di­tions in real­i­ty TV itself, known more for­mal­ly as the non­fic­tion tele­vi­sion industry.

Velos­ki said she and her co-work­ers were required to fake time­cards say­ing they worked from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. In fact, she said, she often worked past mid­night, even until dawn.

The com­pa­nies didn’t pay a pen­ny of over­time. Indeed, the extra work was entire­ly unpaid in most cases.

Employ­ees also said the com­pa­nies, in turn, have no loy­al­ty to their work­ers, some­times putting them in dan­ger­ous situations.

​“They don’t care about safe­ty at all. Peo­ple climb moun­tains, do things that are unsafe. If they get hurt they [the employ­ers] don’t answer their phone calls or hire them again,” said 30-year indus­try vet­er­an Helen Smith, who asked me not to use her real name for fear of retaliation.

The Writ­ers Guild is wad­ing into this swamp, try­ing to ele­vate work stan­dards in an indus­try that’s famous­ly hap­haz­ard and exploitative.

Consolidating

Real­i­ty TV now accounts for a quar­ter of the work­ers in TV pro­duc­tion, includ­ing 15,000 work­ers in New York City. Of those, the Guild is orga­niz­ing 2,000 writer-producers.

​“Not every­one is aware that the shows we watch don’t just unfold in real time while the cam­era is run­ning,” said Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca East direc­tor Low­ell Peterson.

Instead, writer-pro­duc­ers write the nar­ra­tive arcs of each sea­son, craft sto­ry­lines, and write nar­ra­tion. ​“Yes, some­times they even write the dia­log,” he said.

Ten years ago, real­i­ty TV was even more like the Wild West, with a large num­ber of unsta­ble employ­ers. But a series of recent merg­ers has made the indus­try a bet­ter bet for orga­niz­ers. ​“Before that, col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing would have been very dif­fi­cult,” Peter­son said.

It’s also more prof­itable than ever, with real­i­ty show-heavy net­works like TLC and Dis­cov­ery mak­ing prof­it mar­gins well above 50 per­cent, a union analy­sis says.

The pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies them­selves are being bought up for sub­stan­tial sums by big­ger com­pa­nies, includ­ing many based over­seas. British media com­pa­ny ITV just paid $360 mil­lion for Left­field Enter­tain­ment, which pro­duces the top real­i­ty show ​“Pawn Stars.”

ITV also recent­ly acquired Gur­ney, which makes ​“Duck Dynasty,” and the com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing ​“Mar­riage Boot Camp,” ​“Celebri­ty Home Raiders,” and ​“Cake Boss.”

Not independent

To plump up prof­its still more, employ­ers are demand­ing ​“ever-short­er sched­ules and ever-longer hours,” said David Van Tay­lor, a 25-year indus­try vet­er­an, at a recent New York City Coun­cil hearing.

Most real­i­ty TV writer-pro­duc­ers work in short stints for shows, get­ting clas­si­fied either as inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors or as employ­ees who are over­time-exempt — though they clear­ly don’t fit the legal definition.

That means com­pa­nies get away with pay­ing a flat rate with no over­time pay at all, nev­er mind over­time pre­mi­um. ​“When I work on the week­end to meet these dead­lines, there’s no extra pay for that,” said Taylor.

But there’s pres­sure to put in the hours any­way because the job is so inse­cure. ​“If don’t meet the dead­line, I get the rep­u­ta­tion of some­one who doesn’t deliv­er,” he said. ​“I have to get a new gig every 12 weeks. That rep­u­ta­tion would be very dan­ger­ous to my livelihood.”

He said some shows that used to be devel­oped in nine weeks are now being expect­ed to wrap in six.

Pay has also gone down, from $2,500 a week two decades ago to $1,000 or less, Smith said. For a 100-hour week (about sev­en 14-hour days), which work­ers said was not unusu­al, that works out to $10 an hour.

Union push

Mean­while in the union­ized, script-based seg­ment of TV pro­duc­tion, said Peter­son, most scriptwrit­ers are paid well and get health care, vaca­tions, pen­sions, and resid­u­als when the shows are replayed.

​“A lot of peo­ple don’t know how good it can be,” said Smith, who worked union shows before she worked non-union.

The Guild has spent four years try­ing to bring that alter­nate real­i­ty to New York’s non­fic­tion TV employ­ers. So far three shops, account­ing for around 500 work­ers, have won con­tracts. Anoth­er com­pa­ny is in nego­ti­a­tion, and two oth­ers are fight­ing elec­tions before the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board.

The prospect of being hauled into court for wage theft has helped encour­age some employ­ers to sub­mit to elections.

Because the gigs are so short-term, the labor board includes in the elec­tion vote any­one who has worked a sub­stan­tial time for the employ­er in the past year, said Guild orga­niz­er Justin Moli­to. This is good news for the union, because it means many of those vot­ing don’t have to face a boss every day telling them to vote no.

Health­care, finally

The union hopes to win enough den­si­ty in the indus­try to cre­ate an umbrel­la con­tract, like the one that gov­erns script­ed shows, said Molito.

Mean­while, the shops with con­tracts have seen big improve­ments in their con­di­tions, although not up to the lev­el of script­ed shows, Peter­son said: ​“We just don’t have the den­si­ty yet.”

Even the threat of orga­niz­ing has helped. In the same meet­ing where com­pa­ny man­agers announced that the Writ­ers Guild had filed for an elec­tion, Tay­lor said, they also announced that work­ers would get health insur­ance for the first time.

Work­ers are ask­ing New York’s City Coun­cil to cre­ate at least a vol­un­tary code of con­duct for the indus­try. They also want to make sure that when real­i­ty TV com­pa­nies come look­ing for a tax hand­out, pub­lic offi­cials are aware of the dire work­ing con­di­tions and ram­pant wage theft.

Tes­ti­fiers at the June 25 hear­ing acknowl­edged that some of their work does not have the cachet of script­ed dra­mas. Accord­ing to Smith, ​“Duck Dynasty” writ­ers reworked scripts from the 1960’s sit­com ​“The Bev­er­ly Hillbillies.”

​“Some of the shows are friv­o­lous and throw­away, no kid­ding,” said Velos­ki, but ​“these are hard-work­ing people.”

​“Well, qual­i­ty is not real­ly a union issue,” said Smith, sighing.

Reprint­ed with per­mis­sion from Labor Notes.