JOAN FITZGERALD and Peter Enrich’s Feb. 19 op-ed “State should yell ‘cut’ to film tax credit’’ offers the usual ivy-covered, statistically generated commentary to this debate. If they stepped out of their offices at Northeastern University and sauntered to where wage earners are struggling to meet mortgage payments, they might reassess the value of “transient’’ jobs.
In Dorchester and South Boston during the summer production season, on the set of the “The Zookeeper,’’ just one of the movies then in production, they would have seen many employees who were happy with their transient union jobs. At the Franklin Park Zoo set, where I worked, there were more than 100 employees for a number of months. They included carpenters, plasterers, painters, greenspersons, Teamsters, dressers, electricians, and laborers, many who had been laid off from other industries.
These jobs that some would call statistically insignificant kept families together and talent in Massachusetts. Perhaps from the heights of academia, these jobs might not matter. I can only assume that the tax revenues generated from hotels, food, tools, first aid, snacks, and general living expenses are equally unimportant to their statistics.
“Project-by-project’’ jobs are how my fellow movie workers and many in the other trades earn their livings.
Roger Danchik
Boston 
