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The flaw with unions is that it interrupts the vassel/liege relationship that is so vital in today's modern dark ages.
Kerik indicted oncharges of corruption
Hose 'em off!
Give those damn dirty fucking hippies the first real bath they've had in weeks.
Serves them right, those overly clever, pseudo-literary, money-leeching scum.
I've been reading the United Hollywood blog for a couple days now and these two links there deserve extra attention as they give a couple basic facts about the strike:
This link explains about residuals and why this isn't some bonus or extra, but delayed payment which the writer agrees to get only if the work sells well, otherwise taking a much smaller payment than they would. This one explains something important about how much writers make there:
As John Aboud, who is a strike captain for WGA, noted in a comment to my post last week on the strike, that even with all the money Hollywood has made, most writers are not well paid (although those at the tippy-top are copiously compensated).
“Median earnings of all members of the Writers Guild is only $5,000,” he wrote. “How can that be? About 48% of members do not earn any money from writing in a given year. Of those writers who do make some money, one quarter earn less than $37,700 a year.”
Ouch!
Woody Guthrie!
Damn right.
Also, Bob Harris says
Incidentally, since this video was made (apparently a couple of days ago), the WGA has offered to withdraw the request for the share of DVD revenue promised almost 20 years ago.
The other side didn't even budge in response.
Tells you a whole lot right there.
And he links to that short video that explains the strike as well.
thx for teh tunage
th'one I always liked best is "Which Side Are You On?," Pete Seeger's version of which never fails to bring a tear
I think I can do without TV while the writers fight for their rights.
Without unions and union history, we'd all be serfs, working 16 hours a day, on some godforsaken Halliburton project............ all for the betterment of whoever was Tsar/President/your-choice-authority-figure.
A woman on the show was bemoaning the fact that so many jobs were being outsourced and wondering how we could possible compete in a global economy. Krugman relied, "One word. Unions."
It can be argued that one of the points of outsourcing -- maybe even the point -- is to undermine the unions. When the jobs are gone, the unions that protect those jobs no longer have a purpose, or a membership.
I'm in a really weird situation right now -- I'm temping for a company that's being picketed and will be hired on full-time on Monday as a member of the service union. Which is not striking in support, AFAIK.
I think the strikers were speculating that I was a scab yesterday because I was carrying a messenger bag. (For those who don't know, if you're walking around a studio lot with a messenger bag, you're a writer.) Sadly, it was only a bag with my knitting in it. 
Oh, and to this day I will not shop at either Vons/Pavilions or Albertson's because I'm still pissed off about the grocery strike. I chose Ralphs (Kroger) as the lesser of the three evils, but I'm not thrilled about it.
I went to a talk by Paul Krugman last week and he made a good point about unions: they are not just for manual labor or manufacturing jobs. We automatically think of the steel worker or the long shoreman, but in today's world we need to think of whole new categories of workers as people needing the protection and strength of unions. I mean, writers? That is a category of worker that probably wears glasses and spend a lot of time in libraries!!!
A big fan turnout would be helpful. The one thing the studios really don't want is a consumer backlash
One has to wonder exactly how many pimply fanboys there are who are at this very moment scheming to get their amateur scripts submitted as scab labor.
--
In doing some research on a related subject, one of the things I found (which I, and I imagine a great many others in this country, didn't know) was that HUAC was first initiated in late 1937, rather than much later, post-war.
Its primary function was to smear unions as Communist, and since the AFL and the CIO were, at the time, competing for members, the committee used AFL operatives in 1940 to claim that the CIO was heavily infiltrated with Communists.
The post-war attacks on Hollywood by that committee were, in effect, a continuation of what was begun before the war, only against much more visible targets. It's very telling that Walt Disney was happy to testify against Hollywood notables precisely at the time that there were attempts to organize his studio.
And to think the union busting/bashing had as it's greatest White House advocate a guy whose major management experience prior to public service was.... it's on the tip of my tongue, anybody here remember? A true Republican believer.
It's a rather considerable walk from the Century City mall on Santa Monica Boulevard down to Pico.
Others might consider parking at the Cheviot Hills Park (on Motor Ave. across from Fox) or the Rancho Park Golf Course on Pico.
A heads up to all the readers here, as of about 8pm EST, Broadway is about to shut down as well. It may or may not start tomorrow, but we stagehands have approval to strike.
We've been working in good faith without a contract since June, while the producers have been enjoying records profits for years. The producers have tried every PR & parliamentary trick in the book to get us to strike, and up to now we've resisted (the stagehands have never struck Broadway, BTW, in over 120 years). The New York stagehand's local (IATSE Local One) sent a letter out to the press that explains the issues at stake and that text is here: http://www.iatselocalone.org/new...ws/
press83.html.
I have contended for some time that the entertainment unions could very well be the last bulwark against the final collapse of the organized labor movement. The wave began to crest thirty years ago when Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun fired all the air traffic controllers while the country cheered. It has been a painful several decades for unions, but I think that wave breaks here. We can beat this, but to re-iterate Digby, we need your help.
Artists and labor leaders have always been among the first ones hunted when the fascists take over. Well, the slow-motion coup of the last thirty or so years is no different and both targets are in danger in these fights.
I think this is the line in the sand. Come stand with us.
Right on, Digby. This is direct action anyone can support. Beats the absolute living F*CK out of emails, too.
i was lucky enough to walk the warner brothers line on tuesday with HARLAN ELLISON. he told me the writers would have to strike every four years from '62 into the late seventies. he also said we have it pretty easy, because back then, "a motherfucker would get out of a truck with a wrench and tap one of our motherfuckers on the head." he felt there are a couple of generations of softness between then and now, and no more sense memory embedded in us to know when and where and why to strike.
Harlan Ellison would know. He's been around so long I think he taught Moses how to write. A real gentleman, from all I've read about him, and one hell of a writer.
Digby, thanks for the petition link.
One of the favorite right-wing complaints about unions is that the wage hikes they negotiated were one of the causes of inflation in years past. In fact, unions were only trying to make sure their members kept up with the rising cost of living.
The real causes of inflation have more to do with fed policy and a variety of other factors, and the way things are going right now, it's not too hard to imagine we're at the beginning of another inflationary spiral. They can't blame the unions this time around (although they might try anyway).
In fact, the marginalization of unions is certainly among the biggest factors in why the average joe or jane today makes less he/she did a generation ago (inflation-adjusted).
I'm about as pro-union as you can get, and ancestors of mine were in that union fight against Hollywood.
BUT -
This is the wrong fight to pick. Copyright residuals in the internet age? That business model is dead. The train has left the station. There is no such thing as "intellectual property." It's gone. Forget about it. All done but the funeral.
You have to produce something of actual value before you can have an effective union. Not information. Information is free. Sorry.
As of now, writing is a hobby.
.
To digress slightly:
The wave began to crest thirty years ago when Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun fired all the air traffic controllers while the country cheered.
Thence air travel in this country has become more and more inconvenient, unpleasant, and even unsafe (news articles today about runway near-misses) as the airlines race to the bottom. Soon they will load passengers into giant catapults; sign the waivers about grievous bodily injury or death and bring your own parachutes.
I live a few miles due east of Santa Monica, and my experience during the strike against Ralphs, Albertsons, and Vons/Pavilions was quite different. I was horrified to see so many people walking right past the pickets into the stories, especially when there were non-striking stores (Gelson's, Whole Foods) nearby. Before the strike, the workers at the local Pavilions all wore support-the-workers buttons indicate the years, and often decades, they had worked for the company. Six months after the strike ended, few of those familiar faces were to be seen, often because the company dispersed them to different stores. Now it seems like every month there's a whole new set of minimum-wake workers.
Southern California has always been an anti-union area. The anti-union bias is always evident in the news coverage. This week, for example, the reporters have emphasized how small businesses that rely on heentertainment-industry customers are being hurt by the strike, which is typically represented by some good-looking celebrity carrying a picket sign. Much as I would like to see the writers get their fair share, I don't hold out a lot of hope -- and wait until the neocons have to do without their weekly fix of "24"
I don't mean to be provocative on an issue that people are obviously taking very seriously, but am I the only one who thinks this Woody Guthrie solidarity has gotten absurd? Yes, writers deserve to be fairly compensated for their work, as does everyone, but is there any reason why writers (and actors) can't work on a buy-out? Everyone else in the entertainment industry is paid this way, including other creative positions like director of photography, set designer, costumer, makeup, etc. None of those people get "royalties", as they used to be called before someone figured out that name wouldn't generate much sympathy. And yes I know there's a whole romance to the role of the writer, how nothing can start before the word is put on the page, etc., but we are largely talking here about sitcoms and jokes for late-night talk show hosts. In economic terms those are commodities and the need for them can be satisfied in any number of ways by any one of a number of workers. And there's nothing that would prevent top-flight writers from negotiating their own deals, including residual payments, whether the union wins or not. Don't get me wrong, I hope the writers get everything they ask for, but can we be realistic about this? If you've ever bought a product made in China, you're potentially participating in greater economic injustices than anything a WGA member would ever endure. It's not like anyone's saying writers shouldn't be well paid - they'd just have to get their money up front. Am I wrong here?
Voting Present -
You may call it a hobby, but it is a hobby with outputs that create enormous profits for large corporations. Why shouldn't the creative artists share in the financial rewards?
In fact, the growing surge of non-professionals into media creation makes the need for unions greater, not the other way around. It lets artists know what their rights should be once they reach the monetized sector. The WGA isn't a closed shop in the classic sense. Any writer who creates a work that a studio buys is eligible for the union (way oversimplified, but...)
Taking a break from studying for a midterm tomorrow, but the writers for various TV shows are picketing as a unit. You can find out where the writers for your favorite shows are and have pizza, etc. delivered. Jane Espenson (Buffy writer, now doing Battlestar Galatica) has been updating on where the Battlestar writers will be each day. You can track down the others as well.
Voting Present--
Writing is only a hobby? Really? Last time I checked, networks were distributing the programs online and were selling advertising into those streams. Someone's getting paid for it. Intrinsically, there must be value there.
I support them, but I just wish they would stop churning out so much mind-numbing, racist, aryanist, pro-capitalist crapola all the time. Not everyone is thin, blond, upper-middle-class or rich, prep-school educated, with money to spare. And people who don't fit the above model aren't all stereotypes waiting to be ridiculed. But nevertheless, I support their right to strike and to build a strong union. Just stop slagging off on the rest of us and dumbing down America more than we already are, please!
Someone up there before me mentioned "Ronnie of the Ray-Gun" and I remember very well in August of 1981 when he busted PATCO, the air traffic controllers union. His administration had secretly trained a bunch of scabs and he cited "national security" in busting the strike and putting the scabs in the control towers.
It is amazing to me how the Republicans worship Reagan. It is even more amazing to me how people vote for Republicans who support programs that are the clearly against their own best interests -- for example, organized labor. Union membership has been very good to me (AFTRA) and I wouldn't be living in the house I have or having the health insurance I have without my union pension.
Union membership helps create economic democracy, which is just as important as political democracy. Union membership helped build the middle class in this country and Republican efforts to wipe out unions have resulted in a diminishing middle class.
i know dozens of union writers.
i know no millionaires.
every union writer keeps their households together with residuals.
Goodness, what a terrific post, and the quote of the song at the end. I wasn't expecting that.
Not sure the origin of the song (I haven't read thru comments yet) but I recognized immediately as a song or cover done by those youngsters Old Crow Medicine Show. So I'll scroll up and read to see where the song came from...
Absent that, here's a link to OCMS page with about 4 songs of theirs, which are performed with the same down-homey goodness that they did the Union Maid with. I forget the a href thing so
http://www.myspace.com/
oldcrowme...rowmedicineshow
reagan was a member of the screen actors guild, so he would have to strike or be a scab. we'll never know because, thank god, he's dead.
schwarzenegger is going to have to poke his head into this pretty soon. i don't know if he's WGA, but he's certainly in the screen actors guild, and they're picketing with the rest of us.
duh, woody guthrie. i should have known, well that's an embarassing comment now. cretin. I.
The picture of the Warner's strike reminded me of something... a few of those cops were from Burbank, sent by the then city government. It may be fruitful to note that just a few years later, most of those same city leaders were jailed on corruption charges-- the whole kit n' kaboodle. So there is justice if you wait awhile....
"...but is there any reason why writers (and actors) can't work on a buy-out? everyone else in the entertainment industry is paid this way, including other creative positions like director of photography, set designer, costumer, makeup, etc."
you're smart!
"john? paul? we really appreciate you guys writing and performing 'sgt peppers lonely hearts club band'. here's a hundred dollars for your trouble. from now on, we own the music, the rights to all the music, and all the money it generates. fair, right?"
"george lucas? 'star wars' was terrific! thanks for making it for us. it's going to make us millions and millions of dollars. you're only going to see this hundred bucks."
"norman lear? 'all in the family' is a huge hit! we're making so much money selling advertising space during the show that we could afford to pay you a lot more than this hundred dollars. but we won't."
and by the way, all the hair, makeup, set designers, costumers, and everybody else on a TV or movie set are in UNIONS.
Type 4, close but no cookie. You're not wrong, just that your aim is a little low. Reagan was PRESIDENT of the SAG. That's right, union busting scumbag Reagan ran the fucking SAG.
P.S. Reagan was able to bust the PATCO because he pulled a cute little trick. You see, up until then military trained (and even working along side civilian) ATCs were not considered good enough to be civilain ATCs. The ONLY way was to go through the FAA ATC academy in OKC, Ok. Then Ronnie showed up one day on TV and said the military (past and present) could fill the gaps and FAA policy changed by the end of the broadcast. Nobody ever mentioned that it wasn't true. Though I will admit that the military was capable, my room mate in the USAF was an ATC.
"I support them, but I just wish they would stop churning out so much mind-numbing, racist, aryanist, pro-capitalist crapola all the time. Not everyone is thin, blond, upper-middle-class or rich, prep-school educated, with money to spare. And people who don't fit the above model aren't all stereotypes waiting to be ridiculed. But nevertheless, I support their right to strike and to build a strong union. Just stop slagging off on the rest of us and dumbing down America more than we already are, please!"
They're not selling anything, really, that America isn't buying. Don't fault writers for knowing their audience.
My SIL works for Ralphs and was part of the strike a couple of years ago. She recently told me that the workers got much of what they lost then back in the next negotiation, including getting rid of the two tier pay system.
I was amazed and asked how it happened. She said the grocers polled and found their was little public tolerance for another strike.
That set me up to think their would be more public sympathy for the striking writers. Isn't everyone feeling the pinch right now and thinking they could sure use a raise? I know I am.
If you get a raise maybe I will too (hopefully one big enough to cover the increase in my lucky to have health care coverage.)
French Unions will be finally smashed by Sarkozy after a long struggle. Hooray! Screw the unions and their blackmail tactics.
I've loved reading about all the fan groups of the various shows sending pizzas and flowers to the picket lines. Fans know - the writers are bigger stars to them than the actors, in some ways (if not always as pretty)
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a Programmer's Guild of America? 
Sarkozy tried once and backed down faster than the speed of light. You don't fuck with strong unions who have good leadership and public support. The only hope for fascists is to have unions who are wimpish -- like so many American unions, alas, and also our own here in RSA -- and to get the public to hate their own civil liberties.
Whip me again, please, O mighty Dominatrix Madame Bushetta!
Ah, unions. Back in '69, we finally got the UE and the IUE together and actually struck GE. Cold winter that. I was also teaching school days, and damnation if the NEA didn't strike within weeks of the GE settlement. After a 25 year "career" with the Fed'l Gummint, 18 of which I spent running a union local, I finally retired. These days I will not enter a store that is not unionized, and buy food at Publix, a family-owned, Republican-donating and (gasp!) unionized grocer.
Unions. Gotta have 'em. Did I mention my momma was a Teamster?
You probably know this, Digby, but Chris Matthews is very anti-union and pro "right to work" laws. He fundamentally misunderstands the issue (perhaps it is deliberate and disingenuous, or perhaps he is quite stupid). Sometimes the things that come out of his mouth seem to reveal a genuinely parochial, unschooled ignorance about economic and social history.
It goes back to Aristoteles. Dtrong Middle class == strong nation. Weak middle class == weak nation.
America's 60 years in the sun is about over.
And it wasn't liberals who brought it down.
Thanks for the props for unions, Digby. I'm glad Krugman is also talking them up. Years of propaganda have to be undone.
Commitment to unions (aka working people) is just one more reason why many progressives worry about Hillary: that Mark Penn guy whispering in her ear heads Burson Marsteller, the PR company whose main work comes in: helping corporations bust unions. And helping tobacco companies explain how smoking is really good for you. And producing VNR's for corporations that are lying about one thing or another. Etc.
Burson Marsteller at SourceWatch.
Lovely.
Type 4 -
The Beatles don't receive any residuals for Sgt. Pepper because they sold their catalog years ago and no longer own the rights to those songs. In music a songwriter owns the song and leases it unless he decides to sell it - a buy-out, in other words. As far as I know the Beatles were never in a union. George Lucas is in the DGA and in the WGA, but he made his fortune by negotiating directly with 20th Century Fox to keep merchandising rights for Star Wars. He owns his own studio today because of that negotiation, not because of a union contract. Norman Lear is in the WGA but he's primarily a producer, and if CBS didn't want to meet his terms when he was pitching "All In The Family" he could have just sold it to another network. This kind of thing happens all the time in TV and has nothing to do with residual payments to writers.
As far as everyone working on a TV or movie set being in a union, well, it shows what you know. This might have been true back when Jack Paar was big but not in the cable era. Basically in TV the only people in unions today are directly employed by broadcast networks or studio crews, and most everyone else is a freelancer. Most of the TV on today is primarily non-union - if TV was all-union all the time there would be a lot less of it. When Current TV solicits videos from its viewers, do you think they're only looking for all-union submissions? They barely even pay people.
In movies, whether or not it's a union shoot mostly depends on budget and where filming takes place. Even people who are in film unions usually balance union and non-union jobs every year, depending on what work is available, and many states have so-called "right to work" laws specifically designed to avoid union contracts. Lots of movies, even big ones, shoot in these states for just this reason or else they go to Canada or Romania and no one in this country gets employed whether they're in a union or not. I'm not saying any of this is fair or right, but it is the way it is and has been for some time.
I haven't been in a craft union for almost ten years, although I've continued to work for broadcast and major cable networks. Today the only people I know in a union are writers, and all the writers I know (I know a lot) have willingly cheated on their union contract at one time or another, usually by taking jobs where they are called "producer" instead of writer. There is no union for producers, and this unofficial arrangement is rampant in TV. That's a dirty little secret you won't hear the WGA talking about while they're calling for solidarity.
Again, a little realism please?
A small suggestion: turn off the TV. Turn off the TV and read a book or, as good or better, do something with the people you like and ignore the media until the WGA wins.
if CBS didn't want to meet his terms when he was pitching "All In The Family" he could have just sold it to another network.
You do know that CBS was the second network to pick up "All In The Family," right, and that it damn near didn't make it on the air at all? There are only so many broadcast networks, and once you've been turned down by a couple, good luck with the rest.
FWIW, the last time the WGA struck, Norman Lear was, in fact, on the picket line. (Harlan Ellison mentions meeting him there, as I recall.)
I love the attitude that "writing is just a hobby," by the way, because "information wants to be free." Actually, information wants to be expensive, even if it's very hard to corral it. I'm a working writer. I work full-time, make $22 an hour, and I only have an audience numbering in the low double digits (literally). If I were mamash on television, I'd want my crummy four-cent residuals.
Incidentally, the rest of the world calls "buy-outs" work-for-hire, and it absolutely sucks to not own your own back catalogue. The Beatles are kind of an exceptional case, since they sold their catalogue as a set, long after it was worth a womdigious amount of money, which is generally not the way it works out here in the real world. Most of us in the "work-for-hire" biz wind up selling our catalogues one job at a time, piecemeal, and if anything becomes a hot property, well, sucks to be us.
(Siegel and Shuster, the creators of Superman, sold their creation for what must've seemed like a fortune to a couple of broke kids in Cleveland in the early years of the 20th Century. In their old ages, Siegel and Shuster wound up living in poverty and fighting for a share, let alone a fair share, of the wealth they'd created. They're pretty much the canonical example of just how badly a work-for-hire can wind up sucking for a content creator. Think about it.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity
It's very telling that Walt Disney was happy to testify against Hollywood notables precisely at the time that there were attempts to organize his studio.
And yet which entertainment company is one of the most unionized today, with unions for everything from theme park workers to secretaries?
Walt may have fought, but he lost at his own studio, and in a major way.
(Yes, fishbrake, the clerks and secretaries at Disney are all union. Didn't you know?)
Cowards cringe an traitors sneer
Like the class war never happened here
but don't forget as the future fades
Plenty Tough and Union Made!
hey, fishbrake!
i'm CURRENTLY a television and film writer, and i've been WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY for the last fifteen years, so i guess i don't know what i'm talking about.
but thanks for missing the point of all my examples, and thanks for your support, you short-sighted fuck.
Fishbrake revealed that he works on non-union movies. He should have moved up in the world by now.
Predictions of the next 911 by a Professional Geologist.
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Author: B Billy Marse, Professional Geologist
Brief Description:
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The environmental changes of Glacial Respiration determine all biological evolution and can explain why higher forms of intelligent humans developed. Further, Glacial Respiration releases the secret hidden by the Knights Templars, Masonic Order and all religions. Uncovers an advanced Blue-Blooded semi-industrial Atlantian Civilization that was built and destroyed many times over for the last million years. The book ends with an explanation of how linear western religion will be physically ended and describes the construction of the doomsday device capable of fulfilling its own self defining prophesy, “Revelations”. H2onE2 is a mind-expanding experience that stimulates the soul, instinct, intellect and is an almanac to the past, present and future of humanity. Rise, awaken and evolve into H3 human consciousness.
The discovery:
As a Professional Geologist, I attempted to link the Dust Bowl/Great Depression to a pre-glacial condition or mechanism and ended up writing the book H2onE2. I felt that there was a strong connection between the Dust Bowl and transition back into Glacial Winter. I did notice that my professors scientifically crumbled every time I mentioned the relationship. I could not go back in time or locate indisputable proof. The proof came from understanding all educational disciplines including history and theology. I soon discovered that all religious text both eastern and western continually described significant climate change conditions relating to Glacial Respiration. For years I fought off mixing science and religion until I discovered that the origins of all religions were founded or created to help humans psychologically survive the harsh earthen environment. Without reason I soon accepted that the world's complicated religions were the same. This came true and I continued to write and discover. Everything came into place as though I was unlocking a 10,000-year-old puzzle. I also realized this puzzle was opened before I discovered it, by someone else, some other group. If so, further understanding of this knowledge might be extracted from significant historical events. Lastly, this is the vital information needed to make future predictions.
2
"Much as I would like to see the writers get their fair share, I don't hold out a lot of hope -- and wait until the neocons have to do without their weekly fix of "24""
Hmmmm.... I just read that the new season of "24" has been cancelled. From your lips to God's ears!
"A small suggestion: turn off the TV. Turn off the TV and read a book or, as good or better, do something with the people you like and ignore the media until the WGA wins."
Even if you cannot bring yourself stop watching your prime-time shows, I urge everybody here to stop watching daytime soap operas. they have proudly and openly admitted that they plan to hire scabs.
Sure, as soon as they show up at our local Paper Mill!
Americans don't even have a way of talking about themselves as workers any more. Now, of course, they are consumers.
It's always scary to hear people who I know work for wages prattling about the "free market" and the "corrupt unions".
Type 4,
I know name calling feels good, but as a writer you should be more creative. Also, using all-caps doesn't make your argument more persuasive.
If you are interested in discussion rather than insult, my whole point in all this is that the union/non-union line in production has become very blurred over the last few decades, and it's not as black-and-white as people who don't work in the industry imagine. The WGA is one of the few strong unions left, at least in television, but in my experience its members don't take their obligations very seriously when it's not to their own personal benefit. This is true of most union members, not just writers - people are often willing to look the other way if it means getting a job or not getting a job, which is perfectly understandable. But that's also why I think this "Norma Rae" vibe coming from the strike is a little absurd.
As far as your media career goes, have you ever taken a non-union job despite your WGA status? I promise I'm not trying to taunt you, I'm just curious. It happens a lot.
Thanks and good luck with the strike.
*******************
I'm about as pro-union as you can get, and ancestors of mine were in that union fight against Hollywood.
BUT -
This is the wrong fight to pick. Copyright residuals in the internet age? That business model is dead. The train has left the station. There is no such thing as "intellectual property." It's gone. Forget about it. All done but the funeral.
You have to produce something of actual value before you can have an effective union. Not information. Information is free. Sorry.
As of now, writing is a hobby.
.
Voting Present | 11.08.07 - 10:25 pm | #
***************
Ahh, the "information is free" bullshit that internet thieves glom onto like a life raft to explain away their greed.
Because if you can steal entertainment on Limewire now, it's really "free"? Are you sure it's not just a case of you being a cheap thieving asshole and depriving artists of the money on they need to live? While they provide you with more entertainment?
And furthermore, your family has benefitted from the unions you're writing off? Just more evidence that you're an asshole of the first order, Judas.
No comment except for how amazed I am at how many professional writers, and unionized ones at that, read this site.
-
Well, as the saying du jour goes, 'If you want a creative position in the entertainment industry, become a lawyer.'
Ever increasingly, entertainment industry executive mandarins seem to believe that they are the stars, and that the system would fall apart without their presence and brilliant ideas (hey, how about Flintstones 3D, starring Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as Fred and Barneyat $40 mil per? Brilliant!)
Great. Here's your chance to prove The Player right, and make your future blockbusters without the inconvenience of having actual writers to deal with. Good luck with that!
//
I live a few miles due east of Santa Monica, and my experience during the strike against Ralphs, Albertsons, and Vons/Pavilions was quite different.
There must have been quite a bit of neighborhood variation, because I lived in Mar Vista, which is due east of Santa Monica, and a lot of people honored the strike. The parking lot of the Ralphs on National and Sawtelle was pretty much empty every day, as was the Vons at National and Sepulveda and the Albertsons at Sawtelle and Palms.
Trader Joe's and Whole Foods were hopping, though. There was even a donation table set up outside Trader Joe's at the holidays for people to donate food to the strikers.
The Beatles were , and are, in the musician's union.
As far as I know the Beatles were never in a union. fishbrake
If you are ignorant about basic facts, then you probably can't grasp more complex ideas.
http://unitedhollywood.blogspot....n-for-
good.html
Steve Carrol is honoring the strike. It'd be nice if all the entertainment biggies would to.
Fish - join a union. If you qualify.
'Union' is a good word. Solidarity.
Let America be America.
I can think of three other words which would be good if brought back into common usage and political practice and dominance.
Fair Trade Protectionism.
Digby, good post, but I want to correct something here:
A couple of years ago you may all remember that the Southern California grocery workers went on strike... we shopped at neighborhood grocery stores and those that hadn't been struck, changing our habits in a simple show of solidarity.
Only one store in Southern California was actually struck. The other two chains did a lockout of workers. This was a union-busting move by the supermarkets to prevent the unions from doing rolling strikes (which would have inconvenienced southern Californians a lot less).
Kynn - that's not the case.
As for Unions...this country fought a civil war to preserve a Union. Let's never forget it.
my dad was GM UAW and I worked for once year at Meijer warehouse (grocer in michigan) under UFCW for one year. I felt bad for meijer because the founder was very dedicated to providing great pay and benefits to his workers but Wal-Mart was crushing his ability to survive. Cashiers made $16-$18 an hour and they gave benefits to part-time workers as well. What I liked best though, and I realized this after working for an auto suppliers who was non-union for 7 years, was having that union rep, my "attorney" sitting with me whenever there was a question of policy. I only got called to the office once and that ended up being resolved because of a misunderstanding in paperwork. But at the auto supplier you had no rights and no knowledge of the legality of a situation. If you were off on disability, the company would call you and threaten you with losing your job if you didn't come back to work. They failed to mention that as long as your doctor says for you to stay home, then they couldn't fire you. Or they would make things up to protect themselves from getting in OSHA or other regulatory trouble (not enuf room to explain). The pay and benefits were good but this concept of "at-will employee" sux. You are at the whim of your employer. They sit you down in front of all these corporate big-wigs who know the rules and you have no one on your side. You have to kiss-up to the boss for fear if he's unhappy with you, he will can you.
I say, every law or whatever Reagan did and those imposed since, should be repealed. That will start to fix all our problems.
Great post, Digby. My late father was a stage-hand at KNBC in Burbank in the sixties and seventies. He was a union man and walked many picket lines. That union allowed my brother and I to grow up with a stay-at-home-mom and live a modest but decent life in Southern California. My father didn't even graduate high school.
I have two advanced degrees and belong to a social workers union, but I can barely get my colleagues to support union activities. They look down on the union. They all aspire to be managers and think the union is for low-lifes. Meanwhile, management chips away at our wages and benefits...
Yes! I grew up in a management family in a union town. I remember reading the strike bulletins that my father brought home. I learned one thing about labour relations that has never left me: A company gets the union it deserves.
If the carmakers are having trouble with the UAW/CAW, they should remember the battle of the River Rouge and who it was that broke Walter Reuther's back.
Strikes are never really about money; that's just how we keep score. They are about a sense of unredressed grievance. The current economic and political climate in North America is ripe for a resurgence of unionism, as people figure out that the structures of power that they are counting on are not really addressing their needs.
I like the Union Maid quotation, but I'm fonder of the Strawbs version of Part of the Union: "'though I'm not too hard/When I show my card/I'm some kind of Superman!"
Strike!
Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret happens to be a writer, and his entire comment on the strike was that this is likely to be long, because the union will want the "golden residuals". He understands there are real economic interests at stake here. The Traditional Media has a blind spot about revenues from the Internet.
"my experience during the strike against Ralphs, Albertsons, and Vons/Pavilions was quite different. I was horrified to see so many people walking right past the pickets into the stories, especially when there were non-striking stores (Gelson's, Whole Foods) nearby."
wow, that was not my experience east of there. The republican areas of LA were highly sympathetic to the strikers-- the big markets were empty, absolutely, and Trader Joe's and Jons were packed to the rafters.
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