Talents go without…

Almost everybody looks forward to December. Well, maybe not everybody, especially a non-special but highly essential group of people called “talents.” Whether they are on-cam talents who read the news, give the weather forecast, host the program on radio or TV or the hundreds of behind-the-scenes staff members and crews who are simply not regular employees, all of them are referred to as “talents.”

So why don’t they, or we, particularly get excited or jovial when December or the Christmas month rolls around? you might ask. First let me share a few things about the life of talents regardless of their “billing” or position in the organization. Because they are not regular employees of the company, they are contracted on the condition of “no work/no pay,” regardless of whether it was their fault or the decision of the company to suspend or not have a show or program for the day. You can show up, but you don’t get paid.

Because you are non-regular, you don’t get any health insurance or HMO coverage, you are not entitled to sick leaves or vacation leaves even if you have been working for the same broadcast company for 10 years or more as a “talent” or talented janitor. It is no surprise that when a staff/talent gets injured or sick, their tribe passes the hat or does the rounds looking for a sponsor or a friendly public hospital they work with.

If you take a vacation leave or get sick, there are no guarantees that you will have a job to go back to and the rule remains unchangeable: no work/no pay. Even worse, some “talents” get their pay deducted to compensate for someone who had to take over the work. In order to have a life, you need to give up part of your living. They were referring to talents when they said, “Your only excuse for not showing up is if you are dead.”

Back in my early days, some talents took comfort in knowing that they had a bizarre form of job security because TV/radio stations paid staff members so low it was difficult to terminate or replace “talents” who knew how the station operated and could put up with the horrible schedules and working conditions, created by overbearing bosses or power tripping “stars.” There was a phrase that became popular then: “They can’t fire us; slaves have to be sold.”

Beyond those decades of labor violations and abuse tolerated by DOLE and given a blind eye by public information committees of Congress and the Senate, every time December comes, many talents are repeatedly reminded of what they will not be part of or benefit from.

Talents don’t get 13th month pay. Apparently, the law of the land is clearly discriminatory against “talents” who work the same jobs and hours as “regulars” do. In some outfits they are also not entitled to or in the list of people who get to take home a bag of rice or the chicken size ham, or bag of the cheapest local grocery items that most employees receive.

This is the reason why “talent” staff and personnel take it out on the buffet and the booze during Christmas parties and holler like mad for raffles and more raffles while singing their hearts out during the karaoke sessions. They are not simply drunk; they are undergoing self-healing and therapy. Yes folks, the over-worked and often forgotten talents get the least or nothing at all during December.

They also need to numb their minds and senses to drive away the annual fear of not being called back or “retained” in the New Year. Yes, Maritess, co-terminus political appointees have more job security than talents. Perhaps that is partly the reason some people in media beat up on politicians. They have been ignored and have shorter shelf life professionally.

I have regularly written about this in the past, especially before Christmas, but this year there is a special irony in the fact that Congress has gone out of their way to punish their critics in broadcasting but have for decades been blind or turned away from the ugly things I have just now shared. Several members of Congress casually pushed for cancellation of franchise for ABS-CBN and now SMNI, but nowhere have they talked about the welfare of affected employees who had to fend for themselves or actually did an honest day’s work gathering information to help “talents.”

Yes, several elected individuals in Congress and the Senate have been part of several “committee on public information,” “committee on labor,” etc., but except for a “once upon a time” visit to broadcast stations and “survey” of working conditions a decade ago, neither Congress, DOLE or even the Commission on Human Rights has undertaken an in-depth investigation of the unlawful and unfair treatment of mid-level to lower rank talents in the broadcast industry.

Why so? Do certain people fear media backlash? Do some people have too many skeletons in their past that they want to remain buried? Or is it really lighter on their conscience to go to sleep knowing the voiceless are excluded by their own industry and ignored by their “representatives?” I will soon be exiting from the broadcast industry but before doing so, I once again light this “candle” to cast a light on the dark side of broadcasting as I have in the past.

While the stations talk about being Kapatid-Kapuso-Kapamilya, the way “talents” are treated in the industry, we might as well add a new more truthful category: “Di-Kasali.” Perhaps it is time for “talents” in the Philippines to unionize.

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