The WGA and the Attempt to Organize the Unorganized: Anti-union misconceptions

The WGA and the Attempt to Organize the Unorganized: Anti-union misconceptions	Dec. 28th, 2007 @ 03:21 pm

Ron Galloway, a corporate apologist with a generally anti-union bent, has written a red baiting anti-WGA screed at Huffington Post (see Revolutionary Street Cred). Normally rabid anti-worker nonsense such as this is best ignored, but I think it provides a chance to clear up some misconceptions about the attempts of the WGA to organize the unorganized.

Galloway first says that "trying to co-opt reality and animation writers as part of their negotiations is a sub-optimal strategy by the WGA leadership." And later he says, "When the Longshoremen in Long Beach go on strike, do they try and pull in container manufacturers into the guild as part of the negotiation? No, they tend to the needs and concerns of their current members. Current. Members."


Apparently, Mr. Galloway in his continuous encomiums to WalMart, and similar corporate entities, has neglected to take into account the history of the union movement. Certainly, his reference to the longshore union shows little familiarity with the history of waterfront unions. It used to be standard practice for waterfront unions to strike in aid of organizing those who were not yet members of their union. The strike as a tactic in an organizing drive either to incorporate further members into the International Longshoremen Association (ILA) or to aid other unions in organization was not only commonplace but the main tactic for organizing the unorganized. All of those with even a cursory familiarity with the history of the West Coast waterfront unions would know this. In fact it should be general knowledge for anyone who even attempts to write on these topics. But people such as Galloway are so anti-Union that they don't let either facts or history get in their way when writing on the WGA strike. In fact, one would only have to take a couple of seconds to look at one of the typical educational resources such as the California History Online, which states in its section on the 1934 waterfront strike:

The ILA [International Longshoremen's Association] demanded improved wages and working conditions, coastwide bargaining rights, and the establishment of union-controlled hiring halls. The strike began in early May and continued through the summer.

Notice that the ILA demanded, coast wide bargaining rights. In other words, in their strike, they were bargaining for coast-wide jurisdiction over unorganized workers, many of whom weren't members of the ILA, or were members of other company unions. Many of these workers had waterfront related jobs but were not longshoremen, as defined by the waterfront companies, and thus were kept out of longshore unions by company definition. This company tactic should sound familiar to anyone who is following the writers' strike. The conglomerates who "own" the shows have simply redefined writing work as "editing" jobs or assisting jobs, in order to claim that people who write dialogue on animated programs are not writers. And if those writers try to join unions they, as often as not, are fired or laid-off.

In this strike there has been a lot of talk about how unprecedented it is for the WGA to ask for the right to represent writers in animation and reality shows, as part of their contract negotiations. There has been denunciations of the WGA leadership as ideological radicals and as focusing on non-economic "jurisdictional issues". The companies and their intellectual propagandists talk about Patric Verrone as if he were Harry Bridges (the radical leader of the 1934 ILA strike) or Walter Reuther, (the social democratic leader of the UAW).* If I were him I would consider this a high compliment, but in fact it is just the usual kind of scare tactics that companies use against unions. The strike demand for the right of representation of the unorganized is in fact a typical demand of all unions who are attempting to organize against union busting companies or companies that play one union off another union. The UAW used these kinds of organizing demands in the hey-day of their organizing of the Big Three; the Teamsters did it when organizing over-the-road independent drivers; and yes, the dockworkers did it when they were trying to organize. When-ever a union is actually organizing the unorganized, instead of simply (and selfishly) trying to create a monopoly for current members, some sort of job-action in favor of non-members is typically engaged in by that union. This does not mean that bargaining to represent some unorganized sector in an industry is an inflexible demand. In fact it is a matter of power and negotiation. And it does not have to be absolutely accepted or rejected. There is a lot of middle ground in such negotiating positions. It is a middle ground that the AMPTP moguls refuse to even explore. For instance one compromise would be for the bosses to agree simply to not oppose organizing drives. In other words, the bosses can withhold immediate recognition of specific unorganized bargaining units, but agree not to oppose any union (WGA or IATSE) in their attempts to organize a unit. Or the companies could agree on recognition of a union in principle but only accept a specific bargaining unit at the time of a simple signing of union cards, without delaying all union recognition until a NLRB administered vote occurs. But most of all they can agree that they will stop harassing union organizers in their attempts to organize.

So the attempt to organize animation and reality show writers is not an all-or-nothing negotiating position, except that the masters of the AMPTP absolutely refuse to negotiate.

The fact is that the companies, in the case of the current situation in the "entertainment" industry, have engaged in firing people who try to join the WGA. In the present political situation this is the typical union busting stance of most companies... and it happens to be an unfair labor practice. But because our labor laws have become toothless over the last quarter century, it is much easier for companies to break the law than it is to accept union members among their employees. It has become increasingly clear that the only way most unions can organize is through the strike and picket-line weapon.

This situation is not unique to the WGA. In fact the Hollywood unions are far behind in realizing that they have three choices: 1) give up organizing altogether and become restrictive craft unions, with a small elite membership, that tries to maintain a monopoly of the labor force in a small sector of an industry; 2) become a company oriented union that offers the bosses sweetheart deals in exchange for a closed shop and non-opposition to increased membership in limited areas; 3) an all-out organizing drive with publicity, picket lines, job-actions, demonstrations, and if necessary strikes, along the model of "Justice for Janitors" and some other unions. When Mr. Galloway is not acting as an anti-union apologist for WalMart or Wall Street, he is in favor of the first two kinds of unions -- unions that represent narrow interests and never encroach on the hallowed rights of management decision making, unions that only care for a few members, and don't look beyond their own little grievances. The WGA leadership has shown time and time again that they care about union organizing, even beyond their own industry. Verrone and the WGA leadership have been strong in their support of other unions, even when those unions have opposed them.

In reality there are really only two choices for the WGA. Either they fold up shop or they try representing the interests of people whose only possibility of countering the tremendous power of multinational corporations is collective action. Patric Verrone and the WGA leadership have chosen the latter path. Far from being a "sub-optimal strategy" the attempt to organize the unorganized is the only principled strategy that a good union can take. They may or may not have the power (including combined support of other unions in solidarity) to succeed, but at least they are trying to fight.

* Notice they never compare Patric Verrone to Caesar Chavez or the WGA to the United Farm Workers, even though their basic outlook qua-union is not dissimilar. There is a vast difference between the mostly college educated WGA and the mostly immigrant UFW but the basic idea of putting pressure on bosses to organize the unorganize is similar. So why not make the comparison. Because basically it would provide too much sympathy to the WGA. It would make people think that this is actually an small union fighting leviathan corporations.

Jerry Monaco
28 December 2007
New York City

[Caveat: I am not a member of the WGA, nor do I speak for any of the officers or members of that union or any other union. I have been a member of other unions in the past and I am a supporter of a stronger union movement in the United States. J.M.]





This work is licensed under a Creative
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music: CRIMETIME OTR - MOST Popular Old Time Radio OTR Station on LIVE365! Detectives and Mysteries oldtim

Tags: 1934, dockworkers, ila, organizing, patric verrone, picket lines, strategy, strike, strike tactics, tactics, tv, unions, waterfront, wga, workers, writers

Ghosts of Strikes Past: Class Struggle, Strike Breaking & Blacklisting In Hollywood

Ghosts of Strikes Past: Class Struggle, Strike Breaking & Blacklisting In Hollywood	Dec. 24th, 2007 @ 02:11 pm

I highly recommend Class Struggle In Hollywood, 1930 – 1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, & Trade Unionists by Gerald Horne for anyone who wishes to gain an historical perspective on the current situation that led to the WGA strike and in union movements in general.



This book has been on my reading list for a long time, combining as it does my interest in labor history and in the history of Hollywood. The occasion of the WGA strike has brought me to finally pick up the book. What I am most interested in is to read about the origins of disunion between the Hollywood unions, and the role of the WGA and IATSE in this history. As Gerald Horne says in the preface of his book:

This is a book about labor-management conflict in Hollywood. It concerns the attempt of the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU), a federation of craft unions led by painters and carpenters, to confront not only the major studios but also a competing union, International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) and its allies in organized crime. CSU went on strike in 1945 and was locked out in 1946. However, it fought its antagonists to a standstill in 1945. They were routed in 1946. The vanquishing of CSU erased progressive trade unionism for generations to come in one of this nation's most significant industries. (vii)

I hope to offer a complete review of Class Struggle In Hollywood, 1930 – 1950 in a future post. For now, I would like to write about something more personal -- the circuitous route of how I came to know about the events detailed in Gerald Horne's book.

When I first moved to New York in the early 80s, I met some veterans of some of the incidents that led to one of the first post-war strikes. It was the 1945 strike by the CSU and the 1946 lockout by the moguls of the CSU in Hollywood. Vince, who was in that strike, had been a carpenter and was living in Hoboken when I met him. He and his friends were black-listed for their participation in the strike. In fact they were black-listed not for being communists – the Communist Party had actually opposed the first post-war strike – but for being militant union leaders. What is little known, and generally suppressed by all parties as an inconvenient fact, is that the blacklist was not primarily used against Communists but against union organizers and militants. Further, the blacklist was not primarily used against writers, actors, and directors, the people we usually read about, but against set-designers, carpenters, painters, lighting-designers, etc. It is convenient for us at this late date to think of Hollywood blacklisting as mainly an activity of the past, and an activity that occurred during a limited period of time during the height of the cold war. This is indeed the case when we talk about stars and other well-known creative talent. The best way to discipline "troublesome" creative talent was to accuse them of being a communist, a homosexual. or a drug addict. Essentially, this was a form of blackmail by the bosses. But carpenters like Vince were not blackmailed in this way. If they were union militants of any type they were simply blacklisted. After the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935 this kind of blacklisting of pro-unon employees was illegal, but it was still maintained, and especially advocated by extreme right-wing bosses like those who ran Disney. The blacklist of Hollywood union militants began long before the well-known Hollywood anti-Communist blacklist and lasted for a long time after. I would argue that it is still maintained to this day. For example, I think there is evidence that animation writers who try to organize with the WGA, instead of with IATSE, are still blacklisted in the industry. The current labor laws are so toothless that there is not much that can be done about this legally.

But even before Vince told me about the Hollywood strike and lockout of 1945-46, I had known about some of the incidents in this strike because of my love of film noir. The first time I heard of this strike was when researching a movie I was obsessed with since about age 13, "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers." It is a strange title for a strange movie. It existed at the cusp of the collapse of the studio system. The movie was a very operatic film noir. In fact the fact that nobody has made an opera of it is either an indication of copyright problems or of the lack of a modern Donizetti to write the piece.

"Strange Loves" starred Barbara Stanwyck, who is also an obsession of mine, and was written by Robert Rossen, and directed by Lewis Milestone. Barbara Stanwyck, was one of those great self-trained actors, and one of the few to make her own way through the Hollywood star-system. She was also a right-winger and one of the first to jump on the anti-communist band wagon. Curiously, her politics never stopped her from working with left-wing talent. What she most desired for herself and other people was hard work, morning and night, and a little political hypocrisy went a long way in allowing her to work with people that she would otherwise want blacklisted. Milestone was a director who got around. He had been in Hollywood since the silent days. He was a good director but not someone I consider spectacular. Robert Rossen is probably best known now days for writing and directing "The Hustler," but he also directed "Body and Soul" and wrote and directed the 1949 version of "All the Kings Men." He was one of those screenwriters who got fed up with having his scripts gutted by producers and directors, and decided that he might as well trying directing his own work. The movie also has the distinction of being one of Kirk Douglas's first starring roles.

What I mainly knew about these Rosen and Milestone at the time I started my research on "Strange Loves" was that, later in their careers, they had both been called before House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify. Both Milestone and Rossen were members of the original Hollywood Nineteen, which later became the Hollywood Ten, when ten of the 19 were indicted. They were both suspected left-wingers but both avoided indictment each in a different way. Milestone took the 5th Amendment and somehow, I don’t know how, avoided blacklisting. Yet in the aftermath of his refusal to testify his movie-making abilities went downhill. My guess is that after his refusal to testify he did not look for controversial subjects, nor did he take chances in his movie-making. He certainly sought out controversial subjects previous to his testifying, and "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers", was the kind of loopy movie making that no one would expect from an old-time director like Milestone. The whole thing feels like some strange combination of a modern dress western (lone gambler-gunman comes to town to confront his past) and haunted house tale, completely with dark old mansions that mysteriously carry memories of past murders.

At first, in 1951, Robert Rossen also took the 5th Amendment in front of HUAC, but in 1953 he testified. His testimony was classic self-justification and makes a wonderful read. In Victor Navasky's Naming Names one can find the following account of Rossen's testimony.

Certainly many of those who named names resisted the informer label. Consider the exchange between the Committee and the writer-director Robert Rossen (BODY AND SOUL [1947], ALL THE KINGS MEN [1949], etc.), who in 1951 refused to name names but appeared again in 1953 ready to go through the name-naming ritual. "I don't think," he told the congressmen, "after two years of thinking, that any one individual can even indulge himself in the luxury of individual morality or pit it against what I feel today very strongly is the security and safety of this nation." Congressman Clyde Doyle of California tried to paraphrase Rossen's position: "In other words, you put yourself, then, in a position as a result of your patriotism or patriotic attitude toward your nation, which you came to subsequent to January 25, 1951, where you were willing to be labeled a stool pigeon and an informer, but you felt that was perhaps the privilege rather than a disgrace?"

MR. ROSSEN: I don't feel that I'm being a stool pigeon or an informer. I refuse--I just won't accept that characterization.

CONGRESSMAN KIT CLARDY: Well, Mr. Doyle means--

MR. ROSSEN: No; no. I am not . . . disagreeing with Mr. Doyle, but I think that is a rather romantic--that is like children playing at cops and robbers. They are just kidding themselves, and I don't care what the characterizations in terms of--people can take whatever positions they want. I know what I feel like within myself. Characterization or no characterization, I don't feel that way.'

Navasky, Victor S. NAMING NAMES. New York: The Viking Press, 1980, "A Note on Vocabulary"

Rossen not only named names but gave as many details on his political life as possible. He dramatized himself in world-historical terms. He was a good writer I think, because the coil of his thought could be seen through every bit of what he said, and often what he wrote.

I am trying not to be judgmental, because even though I believe that the committee and all of the red-baiters were scoundrels, I don’t believe that we can judge every individual who named names on a predetermined moral scale. None of us know what we would do in a similar situation. I don’t believe in heroes and it seems to me that the demand that people act as heroes is a demand for a special elite of humans who sacrifice themselves for the future. I would like to get as far away from the ideology of heroism as possible. As Bertolt Brecht wrote in his play Galileo, "Pity the nation that needs heroes."

What does all of this have to do with "Class Struggle in Hollywood" or with "The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers"?

During the filming of "Strange Loves" the painters and carpenters from the Conference of Studio Unions went on strike. Milestone refused to cross the picket line and briefly filming stopped. One day in October 1945, Barbara Stanwyck and some of the other actors went up to the roof of the studio and what they saw was cops and IATSE thugs beating up the CSU pickets. There was a battle raging outside of the studio. Kirk Douglas, who was in his first big role with a starring actress, agonized over the fact that he had crossed a picket line. Milestone and Rossen both did not know whose side to take. The CSU was a truly militant union that wanted to organize everybody in the industry on an equal basis. This strike could have been a beginning of true industry-wide union solidarity in Hollywood. And there Milestone was, a sympathetic leftist sitting the battle out. And there was the cast and crew of "Strange Loves" standing on the roof watching the battle between police and strikers, watching the barricades set up in front of the studios, the burning police cars, cars tipped on their sides and dragged to the middle of the street to serve as barricades against the high-pressure fire-hoses and the club-wielding thugs. Hundreds of CSU picketers, but none of the strike-breaking thugs, were arrested. Eventually the CSU was defeated and I would argue that the Hollywood union movement never completely recovered. The reverberations of this defeat can still be felt today in the lack of solidarity between the IATSE leadership and the WGA, and IATSE's traditional pro-company stance.

One reason why Rossen and Milestone did not know what position to take in relation to the CSU strike was because the Communist Party, had opposed the strike as a break of the World War II no-strike pledge. This is ironic because the CSU was accused of being a "Communist" union. It was not a Communist union, far from it. In fact there were no communists leading this particular union. But the union was red-baited and the leadership was jailed. The studios launched a media campaign against the union. The studios also made sure that IATSE got preferential treatment. IATSE at this time was very close to the mob, and it was in fact the Los Angeles gangsters who supplied the anti-CSU IATSE goon-squad. This was the story I was told by some of the veterans of the strike.

The historical lesson here is something that every unionist should know. In the post-war period government and management all opposed the threat of militant unions. At this time there were more militant unions than corrupt unions. One way that management opposed militant unions was by red-baiting them. In many cases the unionists who were being red-baited were not communist or even "leftists". They were simply good union leaders. This was the case with the CSU. Another strategy that management used in opposing militant unions was to find unions that were friendly with management and to promote the interest of those unions over and above the militant unions. A related strategy, and one of the most important, was for management to call in the mobsters and the unions allied with the mobsters. In every case across the U.S. in the post-World War II years – among electrical workers opposing General Electric and Westinghouse, among dock-workers in the east, among Midwestern Teamsters – management and government promoted unions allied with mobsters in order to defeat unions that actually had the worker’s interest as part of their program. The story of Gerald Horne’s "Class Struggle in Hollywood" is the story of how this happened in Los Angeles.

As I read this book I will provide significant quotations. I am enjoying the book immensely, and I would highly recommend it as winter reading for all writers who are on strike, and all their supporters.

"The strife of the mid-1940s was also important for other reasons. At stake was nothing less than control over an industry that was essential in forging people’s consciousness. The titans of Hollywood had invested mightily in creating a "star system" that had captivated the imaginations of millions worldwide who followed the doings of actors – on and off the screen. Hollywood was surely a ‘dream factory.’ And these iconic actors lived lives that were the stuff of dreams as they instructed and mesmerized. But how would the multitudes respond to the sight of their favorite stars on picket lines, embroiled in a class struggle? How would the masses react when the Oz-like curtain of illusion was ripped away, revealing that the issues in Hollywood were not that different from those in Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other labor-management battlefronts? Yet there was at least one significant difference: class struggle in Hollywood could grab attention and provide lessons in ways unmatched by other labor-capital conflicts.

"Other factors help explain the ferocity of the onslaught on Hollywood labor [in the post-war years]. The screenwriters, which did include a complement of Communists, were indispensable to the production process. Though the moguls sought to show otherwise, making a decent movie without a competent screenplay based on a sound idea was tough. Even in the digital era of the twenty-first century, dispensing with writers – unlike other guilds and unions – will be difficult. Moreover, screenwriters, who were genuinely interested in intellectual exchange and foreign film were countered by moguls who were desperately interested in constructing firm protectionist walls to keep international cinema out of the U.S. market. When the screenwriters – who actively fought against tariff walls that kept foreign films from U.S. audiences – were denuded of Communist influence, it became easier for the moguls to bar foreign films while conquering markets abroad. This protectionism provided a comfortable cushion of profitability that proved critical to the industry in the post-World War II era in the face of a stiff challenge from television, independent film producers, and a successful antitrust lawsuit that disrupted the vertical integration of Hollywood. In fact, labor unrest in Hollywood erupted at an unpropitious moment for the moguls, confronted as they were by all manner of challenges – not least of which was anti-Semitism. Bulldozing CSU seemed all the more important in a context where nettlesome problems seemed to be proliferating and metastasizing."

At one point Horne comments: "By the time the unions went on strike in 1945… the studios were the ones exhibiting ‘class consciousness,’ standing shoulder-to-shoulder to confront a common foe, while the unions were busily knifing one another. The conflict in Hollywood illustrated an age-old lesson: class consciousness does exist in abundance in the United States; it is just painfully deficient among the working class."

Here I would like to point out that the owners of the multinational corporations are the most class-conscious of groups in history. They are constantly engaged in, often deadly, class struggle against those who challenge any bit of their power and dominance.

Jerry Monaco
24 December 2007
New York City

[Caveat: I am not a member of the WGA, nor do I speak for any of the officers or members of that union or any other union. I have been a member of other unions in the past and I am a supporter of a stronger union movement in the United States. J.M.]





This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.





28 December 2007
P.S. Ms. R. Kafrissen has a wonderful post on the mechanics of the blacklist at Rootless Cosmopolitan Mechanics of the Blacklist, Part 1. I highly recommend it.

Tags: corporations, csu, extra-legal violence, extra-legality, picket lines, police, post-war, republic of hypocrisy, rule of law, scabs, strike, strike breakers, strike tactics, unions, violence, wga, workers, writers

Who are the Producers? Part 1 - Social Reflections on the Writers' Strike

Who are the Producers? Part 1 - Social Reflections on the Writers' Strike	Dec. 22nd, 2007 @ 09:17 am

At one of the first rallies of writers’ strike Writers Guild of America, West, President Patric Verrone said, "If the producers gave us everything we wanted -- everything. And they then made a deal with the DGA and matched it, which is what they would do. And then they made a deal with the Screen Actors Guild and tripled it, which is typically the pattern. If they did that, if they gave us everything, on a company by company basis, they would be giving all of us less than each of their CEOs makes in a year. And in some cases a lot less."

The primary fact to grasp about this strike is that the WGA is a small union pitted against some of the most powerful multinational corporations in the world. General Electric owner of NBC, Time Warner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. owner of Fox, Viacom/CBS (largely owned by billionaire Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements), Disney and Sony -- these are the business entities that call themselves the "producers" in this strike. These multinationals have more power and money than most nations on earth and often act as if they are sovereign entities. Anybody who challenges their power, economically or politically, are on their enemies list and will be treated accordingly.

In fact, the people who own and run these companies "produce" nothing. As part of the usual "propaganda of the name", the organization through which these large multinationals negotiate is called "the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers" (AMPTP). But the actual "producers" in the industry have issued a statement that the multinationals of the AMPTP don’t exactly represent them. (I will have more to say on the ideology of this nomenclature in a future post.) These so called "producers" who control the AMPTP, spend most of their time fighting with other executives, "restructuring" their companies, making big financial deals with other companies. These big deals often enough lead to unemployment, reduced wages, and degradation of the common weal, while increasing the "compensation" of the big dealers.

These "executives" do not contribute to the cultural life of humanity, not even to the extent of being decent "patrons."* They are not modern Medici. The owners and "managers" of these corporations do not want to sponsor creativity, but only insure that it is within their control. The "cultural" choices that these new robber-barons make when buying the media of cultural propagation (the public air-waves, the municipal monopolies of cable, the retail outlets, the publishing companies, the internet companies, etc.) show no concern for anything but increasing the wealth and power of people like themselves and of the institutional entities that they run. There is little to deter their pursuit of wealth and power, because the social system we have created is based on the perpetuation of immortal entities called corporations that must expand or die. The matters of basic human decency, or of telling the truth about the world we live in, or even the minimal desire to provide laughter, thought, and tears, through good entertainment, are all subservient to the need for wealth and power.

Let me make this clear, this is not a matter of simple greed. Of course, we live in a social system where greed is good. But the personal preferences of the rulers and owners of these corporate entities don’t really matter that much at the end of the day. They may hate George Bush and give to charity and think of themselves as good people. Yet, if they don’t expand their profits, control, and power, then their businesses will be strangled and they themselves will fall from the top… often enough now days with a golden parachute.

In other words, there are institutional imperatives that make these people assholes.

Just as it is a mistake to think that this strike is mainly about personal greed it is also a mistake to think that this strike is mainly about money. It is important to be clear, that for the average WGA member the strike is about a better way of life and a secure future, for themselves and their families. But that is not what primarily concerns the big bosses of the multinationals. Their perspective is larger and wider. It is about power. It is about control of the future. It is about maintaining their oligopoly over popular culture.

The WGA estimates that over the next three years the extra compensation that would result if all the WGA demands were accepted would be 150 million dollars. This is truly a small amount for these companies.

Let's look at the facts.

Jeffrey R Immelt, CEO/Chairman of the Board/Director at General Electric Company, the owners of NBC, in 2006 was compensated $17,863,452 in salary and $19,778,460 in stock options, for a total of more than 37 million in one year. Over the course of three years that would out to be more than 119 million dollars. This is more than enough to cover General Electrics share of compensation to 10,000 writers.

Peter Chernin, of News Corp. owner of Fox, $33,985,578 in salary and $28,457,069 in stock-options for a compensation of more than 62 million in one year. His boss at News Corp., Rupert Murdoch, $32,135,675 and unknown amount in stock options. Over the course of three years of a WGA contract their compensation together would amount to much more than 280 million dollars.

Sumner M Redstone, owner and former CEO of Viacom/CBS made $16,436,125 as CEO of Viacom and $12,164,115 as Chairman of the Board of CBS. It seems his stock options totaled $45,621,293. Over one year this is more than 74 million dollars and the over three years of a WGA contract more than 222 million dollars.

I will not bore you with any more of these figures.

The point here is not that these "producers" are being paid an obscene amount, or that they can more than afford to compensate writers, directors, actors and all the people "below the line" from grips to make-up. My point is not the same propaganda thrust as made by WGA Pres. Patric Verrone, but rather a strategic observation. The bosses' ability to easily compensate writers is an indication that they see the primary struggle of this strike as not a struggle over money but a struggle over power and control, both in the present and in the future. I hope to write another post specifically on the world view of the bosses of these corporations, but suffice it to say here that their perspective is not limited to Hollywood and New York but to the world as a whole.

In many ways the propaganda of the AMPTP is correct but distorted, as through a glass darkly. In their propaganda everything is reversed. They claim that the strike is about "ideology." They are correct. But it is not the WGA and Patric Verrone who are adhering to an unyielding ideology, but the media moguls. They believe that if they don’t take control of their creative workforce and of new media, now, they will lose an essential part of their monopoly of media "products", in the future. And with this decline in control over new media will come a loss of power, primarily political power here in the U.S. and in the rest of the world. They say this strike is about the "future" of the industry. They are correct. But the future they envision is one where most of our cultural "product" is "owned" by a few huge multinational corporations. They wish to treat our cultural creativity as if it were mere kitchen appliances, food processors, blenders, microwaves. The creators of the "product" they wish to treat as mere "hands," who are hired to assemble the pieces, and then are laid-off when not needed.

The only way to change this situation is for ordinary people, people who actually do the work of creating and producing, to get together and try to counter the power of the multinational corporations. That in part is what this strike has come to be about. The WGA was forced to strike as a matter of simple fairness and compensation. This strike amounts to a lock-out by the media moguls. For them it is not a matter of money, the nickels and dimes that they carry in their pocket – the true matter of this strike for the multinationals is control of culture. In order to maintain that control they have decided to take the hit of a strike. They think they can afford it. But we, the rest of us, must support the WGA in every way possible. We must make sure that the multinationals come to see that they can't afford this strike. We must find ways to make them feel the pain of the loss of profits and power. In future posts I hope to speak of the strategy and tactics of this strike and the dilemmas of a small union opposing the Leviathan of multinationals.

Jerry Monaco
22 December 2007
New York City

[Caveat: I am not a member of the WGA, nor do I speak for any of the officers or members. I have been a member of other unions in the past and I am a supporter of a stronger union movement in the United States. J.M.]





This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.






* As a matter of fairness I must mention that the CEO of Sony is one, Howard Stringer, who started his career as a writer at CBS. Sony is a Japanese corporation. The star-culture of the great CEO personality cult has not yet hit Japan. Thus of all the CEOs on the list of union busters, Stringer is the only one who actually ever got his hands inky and the one who is compensated the least.

music: Saturday's Child

Tags: ceos, civil society, corporations, patric verrone, picket lines, republic of hypocrisy, salaries, strike tactics, wga, writers

In defense of parodies and theme pickets: WGA Strike Against Multinational Corporations

In defense of parodies and theme pickets: WGA Strike Against Multinational Corporations	Dec. 20th, 2007 @ 12:27 pm

The AMPTP is very upset. They walked away from the table and since that time all they have been doing is complaining that the writers and their union have been organizing picket lines and complaining that "their" writers have been writing parodies. Beyond that they refuse to negotiate. instead they write things like the following.

Then, someone from the WGA offices happily distributed the link to a hijacked parody website that even many rank-and-file WGA members felt was over-the-top. All of this is happening right along with the WGA's continuing series of concerts, rallies, mock exorcisms, pencil-drops and Star Trek-themed gatherings.

Amidst this alternating mix of personal attacks and picket line frivolity, we must not forget that this WGA strike is beginning to cause serious economic damage to many people in the entertainment business
See Deadline Hollywood, "AMPTP Hot and Bothered"

Why is the AMPTP upset by this "frivolity"? Because the CEOs and Moguls who look at their labor force as people who should take orders and be silent, are shocked that their workers are standing up for themselves. Why do they make fun of Star Trek themed picket lines? Because the bosses don't want any kind of picket lines and they certainly don't want picket lines supported by large groups of people. Why do they complain about parody websites? Because those of us who are not members of the WGA read them, and they make us laugh, and like all good satire they reveal to us a lot of the truth.

So it was a surprise to me that a weblog of a writer I occasionally read Jim Cirile at Coverage, Ink/Writers on the Storm, complained about these tactics. I read him because as a poet I am interested in the problems of creativity and how they intersect with business.

There is a feeling from people like Jim C, people who are not used to looking at their employers as bosses, that such tactics are impolitic. What I would like to show in this post and subsequent posts is that these tactics are unique extension of necessary union tactics. These tactics should be admired and imitated by other unions.

In fact I think that other unions should make a deal with the WGA that future strikes by other workers will have the aid of these writers and satirists!

I like Jim C. so I felt a needed to respond to the post. I quote my response in whole below. I was a bit heated but he told me thanks for the post, so I suppose he was not too staggered.

I quote the post in whole and then my response, with a few syntactical corrections.

WGA Management Officially on Crack


Monday Dec. 10 -- In a staggering display of poor judgment, the Writers Guild of America, currently neck-deep in a strike effort against the AMPTP (film producers), either deliberately or inadvertently sent an official WGA communique to the entire WGA West membership plugging a spoof site ridiculing the AMPTP. The site, www.amptp.com, lampoons the AMPTP's poor judgment and is entertaining satire to be sure. But at a time when thousands of people are out of work heading into the holidays, most of whom will never see any benefit from any WGA deal, only lost income, the industry is getting more and more nervous, and key industry figures like Thomas Short, president of Hollywood union IATSE, are publicly criticizing guild management for incompetence on the front page of The Hollywood Reporter, in my opinion the Guild should have exercised some sensitivity here. To be sure, this comes across as a childish move--certainly not the deft and professional negotiations many of us were hoping for.

To be clear, Coverage Ink supports the issues the WGA is going for here. But boneheaded moves like this can't possibly help the Guild or the strikers. Goof sites are fine, and I've written a few myself. But when they're officially sanctioned by one side, it makes the sanctioner look like a complete jack-ass. Brilliant tactical maneuver, WGA.

UPDATE 12/11: WGA President Patric Verrone responds thusly:

Jim,

Thanks for writing. So you know, this web site was done without Guild knowledge or input but, when we saw it, we thought members would be interested. We remain committed to resolving this contract as soon as humanly possible. Remember, the AMPTP walked away from the table on Friday, not us. We are ready and willing to bargain at a moment's notice.

Seriously.

Best,
Patric

***********

So this confirms that no less than WGA President Patric Verrone signed off on this mail. God help us all. I defer to the first post below from "anonymous" as to a few more reasons why this WGA mailing was a serious shot in the foot. --JC

*******************
My Response a bit more extended than at Jim C.'s weblog was the following:

I don't get it. The fact is that this parody was right-on. It is what we who are only fans of writers and creators expect of you, a good parody that is also true.

Listen, I am not a member of WGA, but I am a former union organizer and once a member of the USWA and at one time, as a taxi driver, a member of the Teamsters. I am a veteran of many strikes and pickets. The publicity that the writers have been producing for this strike has been fantastic. The fan supported picket lines have been amazing. The reason why the bosses are so upset about it is because they did not expect that so many people would support "elitist" writers. The bosses thought that they would win the propaganda war. And why not? They own the media. They have the money. They can hire the big P.R firms. So it is a shock to them that they are not winning the propaganda war hands down. They look at themselves as the masters of the universe. Who are these writers to stand-up to us? Who are these writers to be better at propaganda than the big media moguls?

No matter who is striking, the bosses always use the same kind of propaganda, over and over again. "We are in this together... The strike is the fault of the greedy union leaders who are only interested in their own power.... The 'real' rank and file workers are on our side... They, the rank and file, want to work with us, the bosses... We are all on the same side, but the union leaders are divisive and ideological... We have the best interest of all of 'our' workers and the industry as a whole at heart." It is always the same line.

When the your bosses complain about how upset they are about the tactics and the "antics" of your union it is because your union is getting under their skin.

Let me say, by law, by corporate by-laws, the big corporations are not allowed to have their worker's interests at heart. The so-called "non-owner stakeholders" of a corporation, the workers and the surrounding community, are supposed to be subservient to the stated goal of the corporate-entity of making money for the owners. By the corporate by-laws only profit matters and if that means screwing the workers then that is that. The CEOs are greedy because that is their job-description. It is not their fault. It has nothing to do with personalities. It is simply the system and the institutions they work for. If they tell you that they are not greedy, that they are concerned with the workers in their industry, then they are only doing so for public relations purposes. And the only thing that will change that is some kind of counter power. Unions and their ability to act collectively and to rally the public to their side offer one possibility for what John Kenneth Galbraith called a counter-veiling power.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the WGA alone is neither big enough nor powerful enough to be a counter-veiling power, alone. They need help from many others. But to slag on the union for doing something successfully, something that we non-writers that support you admire greatly, is not seeing the reality of the situation.

*****

I will write more on this subject later.

If anyone wishes to copy any part of this post, or even plagiarize it as their own and post somewhere else, please feel free.

Jerry Monaco

Tags: corporations, parodies, picket lines, republic of hypocrisy, response, strike, strike tactics, unions, weblogs, wga, workers, writers

Support the WGA

Support the WGA	Dec. 15th, 2007 @ 10:03 pm

When the strike began I was away in Rome, Italy. When I came home I was sick and unable to leave my apartment. These are all excuses or explanations. I should be out supporting this strike because it is important. I don't think even the strikers themselves know how important this strike is to the United States in general and the union movement specifically. I will write more about the importance of this strike later.



But for now let me say that finally, on Thursday 14 December 2007, I participated in the picket line at Viacom.



I will write about that later and also about the significance of the strike.

In the meantime a good place to get information is

music: _ OTR Now Live! OTR - MOST Listened to Old Time Radio OTR on LIVE365! Old Time Radio Free NoLog-

Tags: picket lines, strike, tv, unions, wga, workers, writers