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