Model Alliance: The COVID-19 Report Demands A Real Action
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| Source: The official website of Model Alliance |
I mentioned Model Alliance in multiple posts give recognition to various achievements this non-profit advocacy group has made over the years. Headed by its founder and director, Sara Ziff, Model Alliance aims to address both non-legal and legal issues in the industry, some of which seemingly proved to be intractable. Starting from October, I have been donating (click the link to make a charitable donation!) a small portion of my income to help them carry forward their vision. Today, in a nod to their self-effacing efforts, I am sharing the COVID-19 report it recently published. See generally, Model Alliance & ILR Worker Institute, Fashioning A Response: Results from the Model Alliance COVID-19 Survey and A Call to Action (2020). Of course, the pandemic took an exacting toll on all of us, but its impact, more or less, has not been evenly distributed among the society. The modeling industry is not an exception.
Authored by Ph.D researchers from Cornell and Columbia, along with Sara Ziff, the report starts out by emphasizing that, owing to their independent contractor status, "many [models] face financial distress with little or no safety net". Id. at 3. It conducted a survey of 212 working models from famed agencies to gauge the real impact of COVID-19. The responses are more shocking that you might have expected. Here are some of its findings (I'm quoting them verbatim to give full force to the statements being made)! Id. at 4.
One in five respondents (20%) said they did not currently have enough money to cover basic needs, and just over half (51%) said they could not cover essential needs in the event they were unable to work during the next three months.
Respondents of color—and black respondents in particular—were substantially more likely to say that they would not cover basic needs both at the time of the survey and following three additional months without income.
Fewer than one-third of respondents (30%) said they had received guidance, assistance, or resources from their agency in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Over half of respondents (55%) said they were owed money by clients, and around half (49%) were owed money by their agencies. A little over a third (36%) were owed money by both. Nearly one-third (30%) said they had outstanding payments for which they had waited over ninety days.
These issues stem, in not-so-small part, from the fact that some clients do not authorize the models' paychecks after the modeling services were rendered. This discrepancy in timing threw many models into financial predicament because they could not afford basic needs, including paying the bills. Even in these challenging times, some models expressed a deep concern that they fear being retaliated if they request or demand certain actions to help them navigate this personal crisis.
This scathing survey isn't meant to sound accusatory. It's about making this industry a safer environment where models are given the minimum protections that are pretty standard in other professions. In my opinion, the starting point lies in conferring models the employee status, at least for the purposes of the labor law. The categorization is important since it has far-reaching implications for unemployment insurance, paid sick leave, and many other support programs. Although not directly addressing models, Senator Robert Jackson introduced to the New York State Senate Bill S6699A, which attempts to set concrete standards for determining whether labor or services performed for renumeration qualify as employment. The bill is still under consideration in the Labor Committee as of now. Again, we are all facing difficult situations, and this move is, by no means, about putting models on a pedestal. I really urge every one of you to read the telling testimonies at the end of the survey. These are the stories of real models, I mean human beings.
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