The Corporate Media Tries Out a New Narrative for the Writers' Strike

This is Part 3 of a Series of Posts specifically on The New York Times and the Writers' Strike:
Part 2: The New York Times and the Writers' Strike: Part 2 - General Reflections
Part 1: How Weird is The New York Times?: NYT Assigns Former Producer to Cover the WGA

Here is the new narrative line in a nutshell

HOLLYWOOD UNDER THREAT!

RADICALS IN SAG ARE PUSHING WRITERS TO CONTINUE A POINTLESS STRIKE

Radical Writers at a Web Site called "UNITED HOLLYWOOD" are Disrupting Quiet Negotiations


Radical writers and SAG told to sit down and keep quiet

Here are my Brechtian rewrites of the headlines for these non events:

The Los Angeles Times and Variety Develop a New Narrative on the Writers' Stike In Which They Warn Us That the Real Radicals are SAG and the Hot-Heads at United Hollywood

Michael Cieply, at The New York Times follows the lead of the New Narrative and gets it all wrong:

Cieply Fullfills Role as Ventriloquist Dummy for the Hollywood Deal-makers, Signals Change of Propaganda Line

Michael Cipley's article for The New York Times 31 January 2008, is "Recent Moves by Guild Leaders Rattle Writers' Talks".From the headline to the final paragraph Cieply proves himself adept at voicing the point of view of the studio executives and their bosses, the CEOs. He is also adept in propagating a new narrative for those who oppose the writers and the WGA.

Michael Cieply, is The Times reporter on the Hollywood business beat and a former producer for Sony. He is also the main Times reporter of the current struggle between the writers in the Writers Guild of America and the media conglomerates controlled by the likes Rupert Murdoch, General Electric, Sony, Viacom, etc. The New York Times, as I have noted previously, does not acknowledges the conflict of interest of assigning a reporter to cover a strike who was once an executive for one of the companies involved in the strike; nor does The Times do its readers the courtesy of informing us of this conflict of interest. Blame The Times not Cieply. Cieply is simply doing his job as a "business journalist." Like practically all business journalists he is articulating what the business executives say for other business interests.

Cieply's article of the 31st of January is another step in his endeavor of articulating the "larger business interests" involved in the writers' strke. In this article he has indicated the new propaganda narrative that the moguls and the corporate media are likely to follow as long as "closed door negotiations" continue.

The previous "narrative" set down by The New York Times and other papers has been the following: The WGA is led by "ideological" hot-heads and people who are "not professional." Patric Verrone and his "lieutenant," David Young (according to the original narrative) are singled out for their "outsider" status, and their inability to comprehend the subtleties of deal-making.

The old narrative then turns away from the leadership and focuses on "cracks" in the union. Without any evidence Cieply and the other reporters of the corporate press tell us that there is a great divide in the WGA. The officially designated (but mostly unnamed) "moderates" who are not in the leadership are more powerful than the "radicals" such as Verrone and Young. It must be understood that in the anti-union rhetoric of the corporate press the idea of a "moderate" is meant to designate anyone who is willing to make the deal that the bosses want; and the idea of an "ideological" radical is meant to designate anyone who is for a strong union movement. According to the old narrative, the moderate dissidents will triumph in the end but only if the WGA leadership is ignored. Therefore, only when a deal with the responsible and more "collegial" Director's Guild is a made will the moderates in the WGA have room to force their union into "serious" negotiations. In this narrative the dissident "moderates" will put pressure on the leadership to take the DGA deal.

Unfortunately, writers haven't been following the conglomerates' narrative. In spite of all the searching and scrutinizing for signs of disunity among the writers, the membership of the WGA has remained remarkably unified. The WGA is a democratic organization, so there are bound to be plenty of disagreements. But my experiences on the picket-line, and in email contacts with writers, have been evidence of unusual unity among a union three months into a strike. Further after seeing everything that the corporate media has failed to produce as far as evidence for this disunity among the writers, I have to conclude that the "disunity" campaign is a myth. Since this conclusion seems to be general the narrative must change.

And the narrative does change.

I have suffered through every single one of Michael Cieply's articles in The Times in the past three months and have read them carefully. Cieply has been one of the main proponents of the old narrative.

Now the propaganda line has changed. The switch has happened, as if on cue, in the whole corporate press. But nowhere is there a more tortured attempt to hide the ball than in Michael Cieply's New York Times.

What is the new narrative coming from The Times, Variety, The Los Angeles Times, and The Hollywood Reporter?

According to the new narrative it is the SAG leaders who are the ideological hot-heads and who are spoiling the party. Also there aresome people within the WGA who are being painted as the radicals and who are trying to scuttle the super-secret peace talks between select CEOs and the WGA leaders. The unexamined implication in all of these articles is that the deal with the DGA is in the best interests of "Hollywood" and the negotiatons must conclude quickly with the acceptance of the DGA deal.

In the new narrative the lines about WGA leaders, Patric Verrone and David Young has also changed. Now there are two kinds of leaders in the WGA and the question is where does Verrone stand. Some of these leaders the "executives" can deal with and the others may rattle the cages in the zoo. In this narrative it might just be possible to make a deal with Verrone and Young, but only if they learn how to play the game. The implication is that "the executives" and "Hollywood" are not quite sure about these two. But maybe the collective minds of "the executives" and "Hollywood" might be proven wrong about the initial condemnatory judgments they made about Verrone and Young. The question that is posed by the new narrative in these articles is essentially, "Has the WGA leadership learned its lesson or not? If they have learned their lesson can they 'control' their union and tell the 'radicals' to shut up?" Or to quote Cieply:

"Production companies representatives… said the comments [by those who don't want to accept the DGA deal] had added the difficulty of making a deal with a guild torn by conflicting demands."

In other words, union democracy is bad. Why isn't Verrone controlling his recalcitrant members?

The new propaganda line that the media is picking up has the following story to tell: There are radicals in the Writers' union; some of those radicals sit on the board but are not currently at the negotiating table. There are also moderates in the writers' union who want to make a deal. The moderates are being respectful and are shutting up and not making noise. According to the new narrative, that is what good people in a union do; they shut up and don't make noise for their position. But bad people like these radicals are not shutting up and if they don't shut up they will scuttle a good deal for "Hollywood". Patric Verrone, in this narrative, is balancing in between the unnamed "moderates" and the hot heads. According to Cieply the hot-heads are at a "Web site called United Hollywood." Will Patric do the right thing for "Hollywood" or will he follow the hot-heads?

(A digression on word use: The newspapers and the Moguls now use the word "Hollywood" with similar meaningless connotations to the way the neo-cons use the phrase "the national interest." In fact where ever the proper noun "Hollywood" is used to designate "the interests of the industry" try substituting the phrase "the national interest" and you will see with what intent the word "Hollywood" is used in these cases. Always be suspicious of very amorphous "key words" that are meant to designate "the general interest" of a group or a nation. Such key words are usually terms of art used to designate "the particular interest" of a preferred group. In this case the amorphous term "Hollywood" is being used to equate the corporate interests of the entertainment industry with the general interests of everyone in the industry.)

Tomorrow I will look at Michael Cieply's article piece by piece. (I cannot do it today because I am late for a WGA benefit in the City.) I think a detail look at this article is proper because it will give the careful reader tools for reading anti-union articles in newspapers, such as The New York Times in the future.

But for now let me say that my first message is that Cieply has been an unusually lousy reporter when it comes to his articles on the writers' strike. I am not blaming him for how lousy a reporter he is in this case. He simply does not have the tools to cover a union action. He only knows what the business executives say and how they act and talk. In all the articles of his that I have read that were written previous to the writers' strike, he has been adept in articulating the Hollywood deal-maker's point of view to other business executives. It is his special talent and he has no other. I think he is too much of a burnt-case to learn anything about the union movement. And as a former Sony executive he probably has imbibed the same anti-union attitudes and misconceptions as most of his fellow corporate executives.

So when I complain of Cieply's bad writing and lousy reporting it is because I think that in this case they are not mere slips; that the lousy writing signifies. The bad reporting is a function of Cieply's bias and is therefore meaningful. I have read close to 60 of Cieply's articles in the last few weeks. He is not a bad writer when his writing meets his expertise.If he is a bad writer in his articles on the WGA, SAG and the writers' strike it is because he doesn't understand unions and he doesn't care to understand the workers point of view and The New York Times does not care to understand the workers point of view.

More tomorrow.

Jerry Monaco
31 January 2008
New York City






This
work by
Jerry Monaco is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: cieply, ideology, media analysis, new york times, nyt & wga, propaganda, strikes, wga, writers' strike

The New York Times and the Writers' Strike: Part 2 - General Reflection

The New York Times and the Writers' Strike: Part 2 - General Reflections	Jan. 22nd, 2008 @ 04:12 pm

The New York Times, Unions and the WGA: Part Two
Part One of this post How Weird is The New York Times?: NYT Assigns Former Producer to Cover the WGA

In one respect the writers' strike is unusual for The New York Times; "the paper of record" has been printing frequent, if not substantive, articles on the strike and the strike leaders. If this were any other strike by a union of comparative size we would have been privileged to receive three or four reports on the course and consequences of the strike, no more. But this is a Hollywood and New York Strike, effecting the very industry that The New York Times is close to, so we are cursed with a surplus of riches. Instead of three or four generally pro-industry articles from The Times we get a dozen and more.

This strike is unusual for The Times in another way; it has a regular reporter assigned to the strike beat. Michael Cieply is the reporter's name and he is an old hand at his job, who did a stint as a producer for Sony, which is of course one of the companies that is opposing the WGA. As noted earlier it treads close to an ethical line to assign a reporter to cover a strike who was once worked as a "producer" for one of the companies being struck. But more on Mr. Cieply later. I want to emphasize that this note is not about Michael Cieply or any other single reporter. He is only important here to the extent that he is the usual New York Times filter through which flows "all the news that is fit to print." He would not be in the position he has obtained if he were not able to articulate the usual anti-union world-view of the business leaders.

The coverage by The Times of the writers' strike has followed the usual pattern of corporate media coverage of union politics. The major media rarely covers strikes or the labor movement without marginalizing the union leaders involved, and trying its best to isolate the strikers from the rest of society. The New York Times treats unions and their leaders with the same template that they treat third world countries and their leaders. Union leaders are presented as either incompetent, unrealistic, or criminals. These leaders may be radical or moderate or pragmatic depending on whether they are helping the business classes or pursuing an independent course. Strikers are made to fall into at least one of three categories. They are either; (1) too uneducated or limited in their view to realize their own best interests and therefore marching toward mirages when they strike; or (2) coddled and lazy workers looking to extend their undeserved privileges; or (3) violent thugs who only have themselves to blame when respectable society cracks down on them.

The New York Times is our preeminent liberal newspaper and they will not be caught out advocating iron-fisted union busting; such a stance wold alienate their liberal middle class readership. So given the above three categories the next move of Times strike coverage is to find inside the union the true voice of the rank and file. They will find or invent a clique of union members who represent the mature leaders and pragmatic union leaders, or the union leaders who are realistic about the need to rationalize an industry and throw off dead weight, or the union leaders who are responsible and law abiding.

Reduced to its essentials the coverage of strikes by The New York Times is not much different than the kind of coverage we receive from the Murdoch owned New York Post. If either deigns to cover a strike we mostly see the strike from the point of view of "the innocent bystander" (consumers, non-striking workers who have lost their jobs, the investor), the business leader, or the union dissident. The main difference between The Times and The Post is that The Times tries to articulate the views of that section of the business class that wants "labor peace" for the long run and the Post just says what it is for, straight out with-out grace notes or business facts. The Post will simply call strikers clowns, rats, or thugs where the Times will condescend in the kind of Times-speak it usually reserves when covering a Third World country and the "underclass." Thus there is a sense in Times' strike coverage that strikers are somehow like children -- they are out of their depth in the real world; they are crying over their loss of the warm spot; or they are acting out of misplace nostalgia for a time of union militancy and socialist dreams. Besides all that, strikers, unlike respectable businessmen, argue among themselves and are mired in dissension. Occasionally, the mask of middle-class liberalism drops and strikers are told to get in line or get crushed.

In the above the reader will find the usual contours of newspaper coverage of unions and strikes. So it must be understood that when I dissect the Times' treatment of the writers' strike I am not claiming that the WGA leadership or the writers on strike are being treated worse than other groups in the labor movement. They are being treated about the same. Any quirks in treatment mostly have to do with accidental circumstances and the fact that we are, after all, dealing with an industry of celebrities.

The latest examples of anti-union reporting of the writers' strike follow a familiar pattern with a few twists. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter are the major papers to look at when considering the WGA strike. (As usual The Wall Street Journal is an exception that would have to be dealt with on its own. Its coverage has been bluntly and honestly anti-union but without the usual cliché assumptions.) All of them have taken the exact same line from the beginning of the strike. Stated simply their line is as follows: The leadership of the WGA is unrealistic. The WGA leaders are amateurs who have lost touch with reality. The WGA leaders have a personal "ideological agenda", that can only hurt the industry.*

What all of these newspapers harp on again and again is dissent within the WGA. They look for it everywhere and in every article. When one prominent writer decided to scab on the strike he was given full, and repeated coverage. (One would think that he was not an individual but an army.) There are rumors that "A-list" screenwriters have broken ranks with the WGA, but none are named and none have come forward. In short, all four newspapers have invented a dissident faction of the WGA that is ready to break into the open and bring the current leadership down..

Thus you get headlines such as the following:

Writers’ Strike Tests the Mettle of 2 Outsiders By MICHAEL CIEPLY (Published January 19, 2008, The New York Times)

In Writers Strike, Signs of Internal Discontent Over Tactics By MICHAEL CIEPLY, (January 11, 2008, The New York Times)

Directors' Deal Could Split Striking Writers By Carl DiOrio (A Reuters piece, Published January 17, 2008, in The New York Times but also picked up by The Hollywood Reporter, The Washington Post, ABC.net, and a number of other newspapers. With the aid of google I looked around a bit and of the Reuters stories on the WGA picked up by other news venues this is the most popular.)

What is the real news of this strike? It is the unusual unity so far of the writers. I have rarely seen a strike where the workers turn up at the picket line in high numbers three months after the strike has begun. Picket lines often dwindle to 5 or 10 people this long into a strike. At the most recent picket line I went to at Viacom near Times Square in New York City I heard lively political debate and economic analysis. I heard debate over strategy and there was high level of consciousness of what this strike is about. And there were more than 200 people on the picket line.

What is The New York Times and Cieply's explanation for all of this? Perhaps it is the "Woodstock atmosphere" on the picket lines.

In the 1980s, when I was part of the Central American solidarity movement the Times would dismiss every large protest as "reminiscent of the sixties." The idea was that "those people" who are concerned with the lives of people in distant lands were motivated by nostalgia and we should ignore them. Cieply uses similar rhetoric in his analysis of the WGA strikers. He uses (sometimes weird) variations of oft' repeated anti-union clichés. Some of these cliches I noted in a previous post where I stated, "If ... picket lines are old fashion sorts of affairs that people won't cross, they blame unions for being thugs. If picket lines largely act as a moral reminder that people should stick together for the good of all who work, then the picketers are called cry-babies or people who are not serious." In this Cieply simply echoes the propaganda of the AMPTP. Early on the conglomerate mouthpieces complained of the "alternating mix of personal attacks and picket line frivolity" referring to "the WGA's continuing series of concerts, rallies, mock exorcisms, pencil-drops and Star Trek-themed gatherings."

Such complaints are clichés that seasoned union veterans have come to expect from The New York Times -- strikers are petulant children, or misguided idealists, or ideologically motivated reds, or thuggish criminals.


* Footnote: The ideological agenda of the WGA leaders is never defined precisely, but the phrase is used to refer to the goal of the WGA leadership to organize the unorganized and to maintain union solidarity. If this is "an ideological agenda" then the whole idea of having a union, and believing in worker solidarity and collective action has to be considered "an ideological agenda." The phrase "ideological agenda," which The New York Times has repeated uncritically is a code phrase for "these guys are "reds". One should expect old fashion red-bating every now and then. But in this case it hides something far more sinister. The idea that "organizing the unorganized" among Hollywood writers is itself an ideological agenda should signal to all unions that the conglomerates no longer intend to let unions expand within the movie and media industries. If other Hollywood unions listen carefully they would hear a union busting agenda from the multinational corporations now running things in Hollywood.

Jerry Monaco
22 January 2008
New York City






This
work by
Jerry Monaco is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

amptp, anti-union, capitalism, ceos, cliches, dga, hypocrisy, ideology, media analysis, new york times, patric verrone, picket lines, strike breakers, strike tactics, strikes, wga, writers, writers' strike

On the AMPTP Offer to Begin Informal Talks

On the AMPTP Offer to Begin Informal Talks	Jan. 17th, 2008 @ 07:29 pm

As many of you will already have heard the DGA and the AMPTP have come to a preliminary agreement. I post below the "joint statement" of the AMPTP majors who run the show.

The AMPTP offer informal negotiations. The offer presents a bit of a double bind.

It is my belief that in most cases such discussions "should" be formal. The notion behind informal talks is that the "old boys" can sit together and come to an agreement like insiders of the same club. The "old boy" club is the unstated "ideal" of such informal talks. But this "ideal" is not the only strategy behind such negotiation tactics:

1) It is a way to put the majors into a position that they are bargaining only over the things that they consider "real", i.e. what is in the DGA agreement. Informal talks along these lines are meant to exclude issues that are somehow "out of bounds" or "abnormal". In this case I would these issues would include union solidarity clauses and organizing the unorganized. But it may also include such issues as the 17 day grace period for streaming on line. (Seventeen days is a long time. As a fan I know that it is only during this space that I would think of looking at something on line. I would bet that practically all of the revenue comes during this period. But the WGA writers must read the fine print themselves.)

2) It is a way to make it so that if the AMPTP breaks off talks in the future (if it comes to that) they won't have to do it publicly. The conglomerate negotiators won't be seen walking away from the table by everybody if they want to leave the WGA behind. The biggest propaganda blow to the AMPTP was that they walked away. Informal talks are meant to guard against a repeat of this embarrassing possibility. If the AMPTP finds it in their interest Informal talks can just wind down without formal talks ever starting. Then the conglomerates can put their hands up and shrug, "Oh, this is not our fault. "

3) Another problem with informal talks are the accompanying media blackout. When there is a media blackout this usually means that the union is no longer able to get its word out. The bosses are always able to get their word out -- they have the newspapers to do so. Unions always have to rely on their own means of communication. In this case a media blackout will put more of a burden on strike captains to get the WGA line to the strikers themselves.

All of this being said, it is difficult to refuse any kind of talks even if they are informal. I am only writing this so that people can understand the strategy behind this kind of proposal.

The WGA leadership will know this, and many union brothers and sisters who have engaged in negotiations will know these tactics.

JOINT STATEMENT

The agreement between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Directors Guild of America establishes an important precedent: Our industry’s creative talent will now participate financially in every emerging area of new media. The agreement demonstrates beyond any doubt that our industry’s producers are willing and able to work with the creators of entertainment content to establish fair and flexible rules for this fast-changing marketplace.

We hope that this agreement with DGA will signal the beginning of the end of this extremely difficult period for our industry. Today, we invite the Writers Guild of America to engage with us in a series of informal discussions similar to the productive process that led us to a deal with the DGA to determine whether there is a reasonable basis for returning to formal bargaining. We look forward to these discussions, and to the day when our entire industry gets back to work.

Peter Chernin, Chairman and CEO, the Fox Group
Brad Grey, Chairman & CEO, Paramount Pictures Corp.
Robert A. Iger, President & CEO, The Walt Disney Company
Michael Lynton, Chairman & CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Barry M. Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros.
Leslie Moonves, President & CEO, CBS Corp.
Harry Sloan, Chairman & CEO, MGM
Jeff Zucker, President & CEO, NBC Universal

So please look at this joint statement for what it is.

Tags: amptp, corporations, negotiations, patric verrone, producers, strategy, unions, wga, writers, writers' strike

The Social Economy of a Hollywood Strike, Part 2: What is at Stake!

The Social Economy of a Hollywood Strike, Part 2: What is at Stake!	Jan. 9th, 2008 @ 07:10 am

[Note: Part 1 is Auteurs and Managers: Class Struggle, Blacklists, Business Models, and Film Theory - :The following post grew from responses to contributions at the must read weblog United Hollywood. Alfredo Barrios's "The Strike Is a Lawyers' Game: How to Play to Win" is an explanation of the current negotiation situation between the WGA and AMPTP. BTL Guy's "Modest Proposal: Truce?" was a thoughtful proposal to get people back to work immediately and still let the WGA negotiate its own contract. The limits of "the lawyers' perspective" on the writers' strike (or any strike) and BTL Guy's union negotiation perspective inspired me to write a broad explanation for the "irrational intransigence" of the majors in the AMPTP. In order to understand what is going on in this strike it is necessary to realize that for the corporations there is more at stake than the economics of the entertainment industry or compensation of unionized workers. Personal Note: I am not a member of the WGA. I am not employed in the entertainment industry. I am pro-union and my politics should be obvious to anyone who reads my posts. Jerry Monaco]

The Social Economy of a Hollywood Strike, Part 2: What is at Stake!
What is at Stake for the WGA, for Hollywood, for the Labor Movement, for the Corporations, and for the Rest of Us in the WGA Strke or the Importance of the Writers' Strike:

The importance of the writers' strike to the multinational corporations can be summed up in a few sentences: The corporations that dominate the entertainment industry are fighting a battle for control of labor and creative products. In this battle they are the vanguard of a fight in which many other corporations also have a stake. All corporations in the so-called "post-industrial" economy look at the battle of the "The Hollywood Industry" as their battle. What makes this fight crucial for the owners and managers, is that what is on the line is not only the corporate interests of Viacom and Sony, but, to a large extent, Microsoft and Monsanto.

The implications of the WGA-AMPTP strike for the union movement in the United States deserves a longer explanation. It must take into account the changing economy in Hollywood and through-out the U.S. The significance of the writers' strike goes far beyond the workers in the entertainment industry. Sometimes I think the writers on strike and the workers in the industry do not themselves know the importance of this battle to the labor movement as a whole and to all creative people in our society. Unfortunately, my brothers and sisters in the union movement have also not recognized the full implications of this strike for the future of our movement.

First, of course, the writer's strike is important to the union movement in Southern California. It should be obvious to all people who know the history of the labor movement that the Southern California union movement often follows in the wake of the successes or failures of the Hollywood unions. This has been the case since the 1930s. At first, this was so, because the organization of the Hollywood unions was the big break for the union movement in an area of the country that was open shop, anti-union, and a locus for brutal union busting by the metropolitan authorities. Later, Hollywood workers' organizations were often a model for union success or for union failure in other industries. But one of the biggest reasons that Hollywood union success can spur on success in the Southern California region is because the Hollywood labor force includes among their members representatives from all important crafts in the economy as a whole -- carpenters, electricians, painters, designers and skilled workers of all sorts. Thus, for example, if painters organized a union with-in the studios in the 1930s this organization often spread to other painters in Southern California outside of the studios. If carpenters get a raise in the Hollywood unions this puts pressure on employers of carpenters through-out the region to raise wages.

What is not largely recognized, at least by those outside the industry (and unfortunately by many IATSE members), is that the writers' union has always been a wedge union in Hollywood. It was a target of the studio bosses in Hollywood's classical period, it was a major target of blacklisting in the '50s, and it has often been the union that the corporate bosses first took aim at when intending to undercut "below the line" unions. In the immediate post-war years below the line unions showed the potential to form an industry wide union. It was the SWG, among all of the creative unions, which was most supportive of below the line militancy, and paid the heaviest price for their support. In the vision of those days the IA progressives and the SWG were united in a perspective for an industrial union that would include the creative workers, from writers to painters. In this fight against an industrial wide union the bosses considered the SWG a major threat to the moguls' creative control. The leadership of the SWG was the most militant supporters of the striking carpenters and painters at the heart of the struggle.

It is important to know why the bosses have targeted the writers' union in the past, and are doing so now. Writers are at the heart of the central contradiction of the Hollywood system. Creative work is necessarily a free-flowing process that does not follow the rigid rules of business management. At the same time business management insists upon standardization and labor discipline. The prime motive of the business managers is profit and control. The prime motive of writers is often enough to create something that compels them. Writers, whose skills are not bounded by the specialties of screenwriting and television writing, are at the same time necessary to all forms of story-making of the movie and television industries. This often makes writers the weakest link in the business manager's plans. It is my contention that all members of the entertainment industry suffer from this same conflict between craft and creativity, on the one hand, and the effort of the owners and managers to impose labor discipline, on the other hand. For the managers and the owners of the Hollywood industries, the writers are at the heart of this conflict, and thus the writers' union has often been the main target of the Hollywood bosses.

The current situation in Hollywood has more than regional importance. It is important nationally, and, because of the companies involved, internationally. Unfortunately, the labor movement across the U.S. has not discovered the importance of this strike to their interests. To put it simply, many of the peculiarities of the "Hollywood" economic structure have become standard for the U.S. economy.

One example is the economic stratification of the star-system. Star-system economics often looks like a three-tier system -- the great stars at the top, followed by a lot of people hanging on to employment at the bottom, and below them the economically disenfranchised trying to grab on to the first rung of the ladder. This system of economics was basically modeled in the U.S. by Hollywood and transferred, from there, to the corporate sector. The real stars in today's economic system are the CEOs. All the rest who may think of themselves as stars, are mere celebrities, who, as far as the CEOs are concerned, are fit for Hollywood Squares, and can be traded like properties.

Another example of Hollywood peculiarities becoming the national economic standard relates to the problem of what is amusingly called "intellectual property." The very term "intellectual property" has to be questioned because rights to ownership of these intangibles are a result of a socially granted monopoly for a supposedly limited number of years. Intellectual property is "property" in the same way that corporations are "producers" of movies; in both cases what we are dealing with are legal fictions that are taken for reality. The fact is that Hollywood has led the charge for the constant expansion and lengthening of the idea of intellectual property. There are some aspects of the current WGA strike that can be called the "Sonny Bono Lockout." Because of Sonny Bono and Mickey Mouse, corporations now own the copyright to a work for 95 years. If a corporation "creates" a work "for hire" today the corporation will hold the copyright until 2113. Consider that there is not a human being on this earth that can predict which works created today will be valuable tomorrow or 25 years from now and certainly not 75 years from now. Further, no corporate prognosticator can predict what types of media will be the modes of transmission in 25 or 50- years. Again writers' who traditionally expected to own the copyright to their work are at the heart of this struggle. The wish of the current corporate moguls is to treat today's cohort of writers in the same way that the old blues artists were treated -- buy a bunch songs today for $20 and hope that tomorrow they will be worth something. In the meantime the "owners" take all the credit leaving nothing for the artist.

The important point is that in the emerging "intellectual property" regime this is the fate of all creators of work, whether they are computer programmers, comic book artists, or workers in the Hollywood industry. If the major corporations in the AMPTP are intransigent it is because they realize what they are fighting for, i.e. "properties" that will be their exclusive monopoly for almost a century. The fight over new media is not the fight over new media alone, it is in fact a fight for control and ownership of all new "properties." It is a fight that every single corporation involved in making "intellectual property" "for hire" has an interest in winning. The owners and bosses of these corporations believe that the creative work of others is their property alone, and any limits imposed on the fee simple of ownership is a "socialistic" encroachment on their property rights. This last point cannot be emphasized too much; the Hollywood model of the division between "creativity" and "ownership" has become the model for all sectors of the economy dominated by corporations.

Major coporations are scrutinizing this strike carefully and there is a high level of support for the intransigence of the AMPTP majors amng the corporate classes. Such support is not merely symbolic but a realization that the fight of the AMPTP multinationals is the fight of all corporations. The level of importance of this strike are parallel on both sides of the picket line. The AMPTP majors are fighting a battle that is important to all corporate owners and the WGA is fighting a battle that is important to all Hollywood unions, a battle that should be important to the whole of the labor movement. The difference is that the bosses of the multinational corporations seem to know what is at stake for them while the union movement has not realized the full importance of this strike.

Alfredo Barrios correctly tries to answer the question "why are the studios acting so insanely? Our demands are reasonable. Don't they understand that they have a lot to lose? Surely, it's the hardliners [at the WGA] who are holding things up, right?"

But the answer to this question, is not only a matter of negotiation strategy or even of simple economics, but rather of the overall interests of the corporations represented in this dispute. Legally, incorporated businesses are not supposed to consider the interests of the owners of corporations in general. Legally, they are only supposed to focus on the interest of their stockholders to the exclusion of all other stake-holders, such as employees or communities, etc. But legal obligations and practical policies often do not coincide. This is one reason why looking at a strike strictly from the point of view of legal negotiations severely limits both the importance of the strike to everyone involved and the strategy and tactics needed to win. In order to understand why these specific corporations are acting seemingly against their immediate economic interests it is necessary to understand what is at stake from their point of view.

Given the above discussion of the crucial division between the creators of "intellectual property" and the owners of that property it is necessary to bring up an impolite criticism of the Hollywood unions, and especially of the "creative unions." The very divide between "creative unions" and "below the line" unions is artificial. Most of the workers in Hollywood are "creative" in one way or another and deserve to be considered so. They also deserve "creative" ownership of the collective work of movies and television shows, etc. This notion of creative ownership needs to go beyond the simple funneling of residuals into the health and pension funds of below the line workers. Such a battle for the expansion of creative ownership to "below the line" workers cannot be won with this strike but all of the "creative" unions should take up this fight. As a practical matter it is necessary to unite all Hollywood unions in order to deal with the massive multinational corporations who own the entertainment industry. The rank and file of IATSE and other below the line unions must be won over to the fights of the creative unions, and vice-versa, or else any gains in this battle will always be under threat. Ultimately, the aim should be to create an industry wide union containing everyone from the great stars to the maintenance workers. The so-called "creative" unions must take some of the first steps to spread the idea that creative ownership is shared by all who work on a movie or show.

I come to the conclusion about the artificiality of the divide between creative and below the line workers after studying the history of set designers and their attempts to unionize in the old Congress of Studio Unions. When the set designers were most powerful in their union -- roughly during the period of World War II -- they asserted real creative influence over the movies they were involved in and could be considered one part of a "collective of authors." (I have written about these subjects at length at my weblog. In short the "auteur theory" is mostly a description of the result of an historical struggle which acknowledged the "managerial" cult of the director-as-unit-foreman instead of investigating how collective authorship could be credited to all creative workers.) In other words, if copyright exists in creative works produced by the entertainment industry, then all workers should share in the continuing benefits of those copyrights during the whole life and in all the uses of that copyright.

But all of that is only a perspective for the future.

So let us be clear, the fight here is not merely about compensation it is about control. Recently, while reading about the history of Hollywood unions I came across the following quote, about why the moguls have always been adamantly opposed to any union for writers.

The blood-letting between studio management and the SWG, which endured for nine years, showed where the real conflict in Hollywood lay, not over money, but over the control of moviemaking. The producers willingly paid gargantuan salaries to the best actors, directors, and screenwriters, but steadfastly resisted any encroachment on creative decision-making. (The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-60, Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund)

The (non)negotiating strategy of Counter and Company, is not merely a result of a lawyer's "over-promising" to his clients; it is also a result of twenty years of change in The Industry.

One aspect of that change is the integration of all entertainment industries into the multinational corporate system. This is where the anomalies of Hollywood business practices have come into conflict with corporate standards. In other areas Hollywood has acted as a model of how to obtain control of the products of creative workers. But in the area of how deals are made Hollywood is a model of anarchy, at least from the point of view of the multinational CEO.

Consider the following: What happened to Las Vegas in the 1980s also happened to the entertainment industry in the same time period. The pre-1930s way to finance movies was to go to a bank to structure loans. The banks financed a bet on the future year of movie releases. Studios made movies in the same way that farmers grew crops. In the 1930s, when banking money dried up, the casino owners view of financing took over and much of the liquid financing came from "underground" investments from essentially tax-avoidance and money washing operations. (A little known aspect of depression era studio financing is how much of it came from the underground economy, especially bootleggers and gamblers.) But in the same ways that multinational corporations bought out the gangsters in Las Vegas, the multinationals bought out the deal-makers in Hollywood. The big executives at the multinationals might have understood the old studio-system business model, because essentially the studio system was a "Fordism" model, where the factory was based in Los Angeles and the business operations in New York. But to the CEO of General Electric the current Hollywood "deal making model" must look as if he were putting a number of free-wheeling middle managers in charge of mergers and acquisitions of 250 million dollar factory units. Further more these factory units are run by mad men and women - creative types and bohemian wannabes. And the crowning absurdity is that each factory unit is as temporary as a nightclub pick-up band, gathering employees and equipment and sets for eight months or five years and then breaking them down again. It must look to these new bosses as if a traveling three-ring circus has been hired by General Motors to assemble their cars on a year-to-year basis. It just doesn't make sense to them. In the long run their intention is to find a way to rationalize the political economy of deal making. And in this attempt at rationalization the Hollywood unions stand directly in the way.

So another aspect of the intransigence of the bosses in this fight is a long-term institutional conflict between the corporate owner-financiers and the way creative teams are assembled to do anything in the entertainment industry. In many aspects the formation of creative teams for the making of high-priced collective entertainment has not changed since Shakespeare's day. Making a movie or putting on a show is a matter of picking up an ensemble, from here and there, mostly through social networking. The project of this ensemble is based on the more or less intangible "narrative" of a creative individual or a team, often a writer or writers. None of this is "rational" from the point of view of the corporate bottom line.

In the old entertainment industry the "investors," the money-men, were always "external" to those who ended up "owning" the movies. One result of the finalization of corporate dominance in the '80s and '90s has been that the owners and the investors in the entertainment industry are now a part of the same business conglomerates. (In Roald Coase's terms investment functions have been "internalized.") This internalization of investment has brought out in fine relief the divide between the owners and the collective creators of entertainment.

Much of the history of Hollywood can be written as a tug-of-war between the creators and owners of the works of entertainment. But when the investors were external to the companies to the companies who owned the movie studios, and the companies presented themselves to the investors as borrowers for the next year's crop of movies, the investors did not have to concern themselves with the "irrationality" of creativity. "That is just the way they do things in those industries," the investors could say. The owners, and deal-makers, could themselves take a patronizing attitude to the creative types they gathered under the tent. But now that the owners, investors, and often enough, the sponsors, are all a part of the same interconnected companies, this kind of irrationality is unacceptable. And again, the great roadblock to rationalizing this system is the old craft and trade unions.

Barrios states correctly: "CEOs hate uncertainty. They run their businesses based on long-range plans that are based on long-range assumptions." But he fails to see all of the long range plans of the big conglomerates. The moguls are not only willing to inflict economic pain on the workers in their industry, especially the below the line workers, but they believe that this pain is necessary to enforce labor discipline. General Electric, Sony, Viacom, Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, have a perspective that goes far beyond this strike. Their perspective is that they wish to do to the WGA what Reagan did to PATCO, because the WGA must be held up as an example to all unions. Their perspective is that if they let the writers win here they will be opening the door to similar victories beyond the entertainment industry. Their perspective is that they can afford to lose a few billion dollars in order to stop the writers from earning a few pennies because more than short-term profits in this small industry are at stake. Their perspective is that they must enforce their new "rights" to all forms of intellectual "property" and that to give into workers here would be to allow a trespass on these new forms of "property". Their perspective is not limited to the entertainment industry; it is not only national it is also international. They believe that if they let creative artists and workers have a piece of the action here, then workers in other sectors of the economy, and in other places in the world, will also be looking for their share of these new forms of "property" that they have invented. Barrios fails to see that among the long range goals of the current CEOs in charge of the multinationals is maintaining control of the creative process itself. From the point of view of people such as Murdoch or Iger, the creative types inside the old "entrenched" unions are like the skilled workers who resisted industrialization. If the economic process is to be rationalized the creative types must be brought in line. For the Murdochs of the world, the long-term battle is to find a way to force these meddlesome unions to give up on any idea that people may actually own the works they create. The CEOs look at themselves as the masters of the universe, and the WGA especially threatens that mastery.

[In my next post, I will attempt to show a perspective that can win this strike. It is important to be optimistic in our everyday actions but also to be realistic about the strength between the parties in conflict. I will sketch out how the above perspective of what is at stake leads to more than negotiating strategy for winning this strike.]

Jerry Monaco
9 January 2008
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.

Tags: auteur theory, capitalism, cinema, creativity, csu, democracy, dga, elitism, ideology, intellectual property, intellectuals, organizing, patric verrone, picket lines, strike tactics, strikes, television, wga, workers, writers, writers' strike

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
Commons License

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

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