JSA because of change to contract?

Ames

:wall:

Sometimes I wonder why I try to help the ungrateful little cow.

I told her all your comments, especially yours Toto, but she's not interested. All she wants to know is the situation with benefits, and whether she can refuse to sign to agree to the wage cut and they'll have to keep her on at that level.

I told her to start looking at theatres etc, as Toto suggested. But that'll only be till xmas and she's got a job till then anyway. I tried to explain that quitting now and getting a job in industry will look better on her cv than staying till Jan and being let go with a demotion on her cv, but she wouldn't listen.

I told her what you said, Toto, about phoning places. But you're wrong! Her uni told her to email, then phone two days later. Obviously a case of 'those who can, do, those who can't, teach'. You'd think she'd have realised now from being ignored by everyone that the uni approach isn't working, but no.

So, please can everyone stop trying to be helpful and think of the long term and what's best for her and just answer her questions.

1. can she quit and go on jsa
2. can she refuse to sign for the wage cut and get them to pay her for a job she's not doing.

:mad:

Toto

When I say 'little live experience' I mean regular work as a FOH/Monitor engineer with a pretty big name. The thing is if she wants to be a FOH engineer she is competing with an awful lot of very experienced and talented engineers. The industry is all about creating a name for yourself. She won't be thought of as Miss Ames but as the FOH engineer for X Y and Z band. It's harder at the moment because of the recession, there are loads of big names sitting around waiting for a gig at the moment.

She needs to be versatile too. Gone are the days when a FOH enginner just did that job. Now they are expected to tour manage and often do monitors from FOH too. It's only when you get to the level of doing big tours when you get to just do your main job.

Has she joined crewspace? http://www.crewspace.com/preview/cs-tour.php
That's a good place to get contacts although the chances of her getting much work through there is minimal. She just doesn't have the level of experience that most of the engineers there have (sorry if that sounds harsh).

I am assuming here that she wants to do rock n roll. There is always the corporate industry which pays better usually and is easier to break into. She shouldn't rule that out as an option because you do very often do bands on corporate gigs.

A good way to learn while doing the job is to do loads of work for small local bands. The good thing about that is that you often work on bloody awful PA. If you can learn to get a decent sound on crap equipment you can do great things on a decent PA. Put an advert in the local paper offering to do sound for local bands, free for the first gig, you just never know when one of these up and coming bands will get signed, truthfully 95% won't and the majority will be rubbish but she can use it as a learning experience for monitors.

Toto

Ames wrote: »

:wall:

Sometimes I wonder why I try to help the ungrateful little cow.

I told her all your comments, especially yours Toto, but she's not interested. All she wants to know is the situation with benefits, and whether she can refuse to sign to agree to the wage cut and they'll have to keep her on at that level.

I told her to start looking at theatres etc, as Toto suggested. But that'll only be till xmas and she's got a job till then anyway. I tried to explain that quitting now and getting a job in industry will look better on her cv than staying till Jan and being let go with a demotion on her cv, but she wouldn't listen.

I told her what you said, Toto, about phoning places. But you're wrong! Her uni told her to email, then phone two days later. Obviously a case of 'those who can, do, those who can't, teach'. You'd think she'd have realised now from being ignored by everyone that the uni approach isn't working, but no.

So, please can everyone stop trying to be helpful and think of the long term and what's best for her and just answer her questions.

1. can she quit and go on jsa
2. can she refuse to sign for the wage cut and get them to pay her for a job she's not doing.

:mad:

aww that sucks Ames. Never mind, she will learn the hard way. She will have to change her attitude though because she won't get far like that.

You are a sweetie for trying to help her.

Ames

I'll try suggesting that Toto, but you can lead a horse to water...

By your definition, she has no live experience!

She wants to work in studios ideally but thinks that she has to do live to find a way into that, not sure if that's true.

No idea if she's joined crewspace, again, I'll tell her about it.

She's happy to do corporate, but I don't think she's seen many jobs advertised.

She was planning to set up a company of her own doing sound for small local bands but her partner pulled out and she didn't think she'd be able to do it on her own, and I think business link said there would be problems. Doing it for free to build a name just isn't something she'll consider. I have a few contacts I could have used for her - I know people at the playhouse who could have helped her get voluntary work in their project for young people, there's a charity that teaches sound to disadvantaged kids who I have some links with, a friend has strong links with Opera North, there are various local mini festivals I know the organisers of.... In June I invited her to our 'community day' where there were loads of bands, she turned up as everyone was packing away. She says that if she does voluntary/community/free work then it'll look bad on her cv and she wont make it into industry.

To be honest I'm now at the point where I think I've done everything I can, and I just need to leave her to learn from her own mistakes/poor decisions.

Oldernotwiser

Ames wrote: »

:wall:

1. can she quit and go on jsa
2. can she refuse to sign for the wage cut and get them to pay her for a job she's not doing.

:mad:

1.If she gives up a job voluntarily she can be sanctioned from receiving JSA for up to 26 weeks.
2.She can refuse to sign, be sacked and then #1 will apply.

I know I said this on your other thread but why don't you just let her get on with it for herself? She's got plenty of time in the day to use the internet in the library and she's taking no notice of you or anybody else.

Don't stress!

Ames

She's got the internet there, but it's not very reliable. I'm even having to send a job application off for her cos she left it till the last day and can't log on now.

Thanks for your answers, I think I'm just going to point her in the direction of Acas and leave it up to her.

Toto

Ames wrote: »

I'll try suggesting that Toto, but you can lead a horse to water...

By your definition, she has no live experience!

She wants to work in studios ideally but thinks that she has to do live to find a way into that, not sure if that's true.

No idea if she's joined crewspace, again, I'll tell her about it.

She's happy to do corporate, but I don't think she's seen many jobs advertised.

She was planning to set up a company of her own doing sound for small local bands but her partner pulled out and she didn't think she'd be able to do it on her own, and I think business link said there would be problems. Doing it for free to build a name just isn't something she'll consider. I have a few contacts I could have used for her - I know people at the playhouse who could have helped her get voluntary work in their project for young people, there's a charity that teaches sound to disadvantaged kids who I have some links with, a friend has strong links with Opera North, there are various local mini festivals I know the organisers of.... In June I invited her to our 'community day' where there were loads of bands, she turned up as everyone was packing away. She says that if she does voluntary/community/free work then it'll look bad on her cv and she wont make it into industry.

To be honest I'm now at the point where I think I've done everything I can, and I just need to leave her to learn from her own mistakes/poor decisions.

The hard facts are that in order to set up a sound company you need to have an awful lot of money. In excess of £100,000 as a minimum. You can't survive in PA world without owning your own equipment, you simply can't compete with the other companies if you are hiring in PA per gig. You also need to have plenty of contacts because getting the gigs in the first place is pretty tough, most event organisers etc use companies they know and trust. Relying on local bands is useless. They don't have the money to hire PA, they will always use the venue equipment.

Please ask her to forget that idea, she is trying to run well before she can crawl.

Studio work is worlds apart from live work. To be honest she should know this. Getting experience in one will do nothing to help her work in the other. Studio engineers use different equipment and the whole set up is miles away from live work.

Ames

Business Link told her that about the sound work, originally they wanted to set up a studio till they were told that they'd never raise the money, then it was live recording, then it was making cables to sell on ebay, then the partner stopped talking to her.

It's interesting to know that the two areas are so different. I did wonder, but assumed she knew what she was doing. To be honest, I think her advisors at uni have been either telling her stuff that's just wrong, or she's not been listening properly.

I think it's just time to let her learn for herself.

I've just spoken to her again, she wont speak to Acas cos she doesn't want to appear arrogant when she speaks to her managers. She's going to phone the letting agent on monday and tell them she can't afford to keep paying, so I've got to go take the rest of her stuff out of the flat.

Toto

One last point I will make is that she is setting off on a back foot regardless of how good she actually is. The thing is women are not viewed well in sound world so she will have to work that bit harder to prove herself than a man would. Truthfully I've yet to find a good female sound engineer, I suppose partly that's because they don't tend to get the good gigs but also because they tend not to enter the industry on mass anyway (trust me, I've come across plenty of awful male engineers too).

I was a woman in a man's world for 20 odd years, my instrument is viewed as being the domain of men and I really did need to graft hard to perfect my skills before I began to get decent gigs. It's tough and she will need to change her attitude a bit sadly.

Ames

I agree, but she gets all awkward when you try to push that angle. She did an essay about her experiences working at a festival, a few people told her to push the problems she faced and overcame as a woman in a man's world, but she saw it as irrelevant. She's a drummer too btw!

I don't think it helps that all the people she's friends with in the industry just keep telling her to go for it and she'll get there, they're not giving constructive advice and seem to be giving her the impression that if she just applies to enough places she'll get her dream job. I know they don't want to discourage her, but just going along with her mad ideas isn't helping.