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SAG-AFTRA actors are in their fourth week of the ongoing strike, unable to promote their struck work. The timing means this autumn’s magazine covers will be the first round of glossies to be hit. Models are finding themselves for hire as stand-ins where actors might otherwise be, up for slots usually reserved for celebrities with a project to promote. However, models often face many of the same issues the entertainment workers are protesting — or worse. Is there any onus on them to stand with the strikes?
The actors’ strike — as well as the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike — is bringing to light many of the overlapping issues faced by fashion industry workers in entertainment, including menial compensation and the looming impact of AI on already-unstable jobs. On Monday, UK celebrity stylists announced plans to unionise for the first time, in a bid to secure industry-wide standardisation and transparency, and they’re calling on others to join. But modelling — a notoriously exploited profession — is not likely to form a union of its own.
“Actors and models experience very similar issues at work, but exist under completely different legal frameworks,” says activist and fashion model Sara Ziff, who founded non-profit organisation Model Alliance to to encourage fair treatment and equal opportunities for fashion workers. As of now, models lack an independent body to safeguard their best interests — namely fair pay and workplace safety measures. Instead, they’re subject to an absence of health and safety standards and often lack insight into and control over their own finances.
The Model Alliance was formed as an advocacy organisation and alternative to a union, Ziff says. Models are often hired as independent contractors, which are barred from legally unionising in the US. This means that, since most laws consider models to be independent contractors, they are unable to officially unionise, and instead need to seek out alternative avenues for organising.
“The fashion industry, unlike other areas of the media, is notable in its absence of unionisation,” says Tamara Cincik, founder of think tank Fashion Roundtable, who lobbied Bectu (the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union — for film and TV workers) to open a division for fashion stylists in the UK.
The Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes have had a knock-on effect across the creative industries, where workers are standing up against low pay and unfair work conditions.
“Like actors, fashion workers are struggling for professional dignity behind a veil of glamour and prestige,” Model Alliance’s Ziff says. “And, because the fashion industry infamously lacks regulatory oversight, fashion workers are much further behind than actors and writers in the entertainment industry.”
The Model Alliance helped to form The Fashion Workers Act in New York state, a bill that, if passed, would regulate predatory management companies, which manage models, content creators and creative artists that currently operate without oversight. It sets out to offer a first step in securing protections for models by closing the legal loophole wherein management companies can escape accountability. It would require companies to be transparent about models’ agreements and finances, and protect their health and safety. The bill is currently going through the process required to become law: in 2023, it passed in the senate but not the assembly. So in 2024, it needs to pass both the senate and assembly before going to the governor’s desk for signature. It’s a near-term solution in an industry where unionisation is not an option — at least, not now.
Overlapping concerns
While models pick up work during the actors’ strike, they’re still facing similar issues, including job security and inconsistent pay structures. As models are typically hired by brands as independent contractors via management companies, they’re subject to the whims of these largely-unregulated organisations.
“Fashion is opaque about who gets paid what and this enables a culture of complicity in bad behaviour and miss or non-payments and poor treatment,” Fashion Roundtable’s Cincik says. “So much work is for free that unless we have a more transparent payment and hours wired system, it’s hard to see how it will change.”
There’s also overlap in the AI concerns flagged by SAG strikers. “The actors are striking in part because of AI — AI has the capacity to decimate fashion as much as film. The lack of ownership of one’s image or voice needs to be addressed,” Cincik says. “In fashion photography, the photographer often owns the image that the team has created. I’d argue that this is not fair on the rest of the team. AI is this issue on steroids. Legislation needs to safeguard our image, voice and identity or it will be a Wild West of fakes and lies and corruption.”
New York attorney and former model Kaitlin Puccio agrees that concerns around AI taking over the jobs of writers and actors without fair compensation is a realistic concern for models, too.
“Since this is a fairly new technological development that would apply to the modelling industry, there are not many existing contracts that models can look to as a guide for negotiating their own contracts when companies want to use their likeness in perpetuity,” Puccio flags. “The concern is that a company will feel empowered to take a photo of a model, create AI renderings based on that photo, use it forevermore, and not compensate the model beyond the initial photoshoot. This means that instead of being hired for multiple campaigns, the company will pay the model once and create AI versions of the model to use in various future campaigns.”
In the modelling world, this issue has been raised before, as modelling agencies began to experiment with digitising models’ likeness. Los Angeles-based Photogenics, for instance, did so in September 2022. The agency didn’t disclose specific rates, but said at the time that all parties involved (models included) would receive a portion of the profits for each job. Now, AI’s newfound prevalence and the SAG strikes have pushed these concerns to the forefront. However, renewed attention doesn’t necessarily make a solution any easier.
Notoriously difficult
A key issue is that many models consider their agents to be their main advocates, according to Fashion Roundtable’s Cincik. But, she says, this can backfire, the agent being anything but an independent organisation. “This is dangerous as, of course, the agent can be the one who rips you off. I have heard many horror stories of models not being paid vast amounts of money by international agents and having to write that money off. That’s disgraceful.”
Models may be coerced into signing contracts that assign power of attorney to their agents, according to Model Alliance. Oftentimes, they're placed under intense pressure, sometimes in a second language, to hand legal power over to their agents — whether or not they consider them advocates.
The Fashion Workers Act was drafted to address this problem. It would require management companies to: establish a fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their talent; provide models with copies of contracts and agreements; notify formerly represented models if they collect royalties on their behalf; register and deposit a surety bond of $50,000 with the NYS Department of State; and protect the health and safety of models, including by establishing a zero-tolerance policy for abuse. It would also require agencies to discontinue “bad practice” such as resenting power of attorney as a necessary condition for entering into a contract with the management company, taking interest on models’ payments or collecting signing fees. Essentially, the act sets out to offer the protections a union would otherwise offer — were it in existence.
Though it remains a reach, unionisation is the best possible long-term outcome, Cincik says. “The union route is the best one. Labour rights are hard won and easily lost. Unions organise training on bullying and abuse, and with young models many working overseas, any support on empowerment and education is clearly valuable to upskill talent.”
Correction: Given that TFA did not pass the assembly last year, it must pass the senate and assembly in 2024, not just the assembly as previously stated. (10/08/2023)
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