CineMontage

Q4 2019

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46 C I N E M O N T A G E F E A T U R E "The energy in the room completely changed," she said. She said she ended up not getting the job. What makes it worse is that there's little formal guidance to help parents- to-be with interpreting rules, f illing out paperwork, meeting deadlines and scaling other hurdles. "There was no hive brain to tap into," said Shields, who might have qualified for state benefits but wasn't aware of it. "There's no reliable place to tell you how to do this." Emily Streetz, who was six months pregnant with her first child when she spoke to CineMontage late this summer, s a i d s h e's p re p a re d to go a b o u t s i x months without pay if necessary, relying on her savings, when she delivers her son in November. But she's also applying for the state's disability and family leave benef its, which can cover at least 16 Like many Guild members, Emily Streetz has done her best to navigate the workplace during her pregnancy: "It feels like there's a secret underground group that you have to find for answers." P H O T O : M A R T I N C O H E N er been able to financially move ahead, especially since we had kids during a recession. It cost us a house. We still rent. We tread water." Shields isn't alone in deciding to foot the substantial bill for her own maternity leave, with other women in the post-pro- d u c t i o n c o m m u n i t y s a y i n g t h e y ' v e taken a similar path rather than trying to navigate a complicated system run by the state of California's Employment Development Department. "The system can be confusing for any worker, and California workplace rights are based on your status as an employee," said Jenna Gerry, senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based non-profit Legal Aid at Work. "If you're not in that classi- fication, like those in the gig economy, it's even more confusing." For those who do wade into the state's bureaucracy, they're faced with more questions than answers about their eligibility for paid family leave and dis- ability, their down-time pay rates, their partners' potential benefits, and other vital issues. This adds to an already complex and delicate situation where women are the minority in the industry, dealing with sometimes unsympathetic bosses and the demands of 16-hour workdays while being pregnant on the job and starting and raising their young families. Parenthood itself can be fraught in the world of post-production where workers are generally expected to put their personal lives on hold for the sake of the show. One woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve work relation- ships, recalled an interview where she told a producer she had a young child at home.

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