Lessons Learned From the Writers Strike by Eric Katz

I found this posted by Eric Katz on Working Life. Eric kindly gave me permission to spread it around.

His post should be taken as food for thought. I think that there is much to be added to "the lessons to be learned from the writers strike" and I hope to write a longer piece with a similar title soon. We must realize that a "Hollywood" strike, because of the nature of the industry, is particular in some respects that cannot be replicated else where. I wish I could find Eva Longoria on a picket line for Teamsters or the UFW, but I am not sure she has ever even been asked! And if asked how many stars would show up? But still star-solidarity was not the main lesson of the writers' strike as far as building strike support and solidarity from outside the unions. It was the use of new media. In regard to this, we must realize that the CEOs and their underlings were taken by surprise by the way new media and creative picketing combined to build strike support and solidarity. They won't be taken by surprise a second time. And you better believe that the owners in other industries also took note and are trying to think up ways (legitimate and underhanded) to counter this new strike support tool we are using here. But there are still many lessons to be learned from this strike for other unions inside and outside the entertainment industry.

Jerry Monaco

Lessons Learned From the Writers Strike by Eric Katz
Thursday 14 of February, 2008

Now that the writers strike is finally over, it’s time for us to reflect on the 100 day strike. In my opinion, the writers were extremely successful and this was one of the most coordinated, targeted, and effective strikes in recent memories. Some may disagree but considering the powerful media conglomerates that opposed the writers. So lets go through the strike and talk about some of the reasons the strike was so successful and the lessons that can be learned by organized labor from the writers.


Cross posted at Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/2/14/122440/464/954/456706) and Open Left (http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3917).


Garner Public Support

One fascinating aspect of the writers strike was the general support from the public. You would think that average Americans would find little patience for the people that cut off their favorite shows. Yet the writers garnered public support throughout the process. A Pepperdine survey showed that 63% of those surveyed sided with the writers during the process (http://bschool.pepperdine.edu/research/writersstrike/findings/writerstrike.pdf). Similarly, a USA Today/Gallup poll found 60% of the public supported the writers (http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-12-18-strike-poll_N.htm). These numbers are nothing short of remarkable.

The writers were effective at marketing themselves and their campaign to the public. They used a variety of direct tools such as youtube to promote themselves in a comedic but targeted way. Their message resonated with the public and Americans were willing to give up new episodes of The Office and 24 in order to stand in solidarity with the writers. The WGA was destined to succeed with the public on their side, and such public support is crucial in any labor strike.

Utilize Celebrities Effectively

One of the high notes of the writers strike was the effect on the Golden Globe awards. To keep the entire membership of the Screen Actors Guild away from the red carpet sent a strong message to the producers, showing solidarity in Hollywood. Obviously the writers have a keen advantage in accessing celebrity support, as many famous actors were once writers. Still, showing off actor support to the public helped keep favorable opinion ratings of the writers strike.

It wasn’t just the support of celebrities but the way in which these actors articulately and ironically supported the writers. Tina Fey picketed outside of RockefellerCenter. Julia Louis-Dreyfus picketed in the shadow of a billboard for hew new CBS show (http://www.showbuzz.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/07/tv/main3464692.shtml). Steve Carrell stopped production on The Office and posted a note saying Michael Scott was sick and couldn’t work with a case of “enlarged testicles”. These actors targeted their support to send a strong message to both the producers and the public at large. Organized labor should take note of the way the writers used celebrity support and learn how to target celebrity endorsements into similar effective messages.

Keep Picketing Creative

It’s safe to say that the picket lines organized by the writers were some of the most creative seen in recent memory from a labor strike. Writers filmed youtube sketches during strikes. They organized theme days such as “Picket With the Stars”, “Bring Your Kids”, “Performers with Disabilities”, and a GLBT themed picket. Alicia Keyes and K.T. Tunstall performed at the lines. Celebrities and other supportive unions sent over food to picketers on mass, with Eva Longoria’s delivery of pizza attracted special attention. Picketers used signs like “They Wrong, We Write.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/business/media/26strike.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

Yet despite some of the silliness, the writers maintained a sense of professionalism and solidarity throughout the strike, leading to praise from many union leaders. The WGA found an effective way of incorporating creativity to keep the picket lines fresh and fun for their membership while also keeping the major goals in mind and staying targeted in their efforts. Obviously some of the creativity the writers used would make some blue collar union membership a little uncomfortable but labor can learn to bring some creativity to the picket lines. The writers kept themselves entertained during the strike and so they continued to come out day after day. Similar tactics could be important to keep union memberships dedicated and rejuvenated on the picket lines.

Overall the WGA did a great job with their strike and won a successful campaign against the producers. Yes, the writers didn’t win everything they wanted in their contract, but they won on 2 of their 3 major goals (jurisdiction and payment of new media but not animation and reality television revenue streams). Additionally the writers put themselves into a strong bargaining position for their next contract in three years. I hope others in organized labor will take note of these lessons and apply some of the successes of the writers strike to their own causes.
Read more posts by Eric Katz
Tags: writers strike, organized labor, Solidarity

A Message of Thanks to the Writers' on the Picket Line from One of Your Supporters

A Message of Thanks to the Writers' on the Picket Line from One of Your Supporters:	Feb. 13th, 2008 @ 12:47 pm

I am proud of the brothers and sisters at the WGA. You have done a good thing for the union movement. The level of solidarity of your unit is a lesson to us all. The use of new media to get your message out should be taken up as much as possible by all unions. The level of strike support by non-WGA members should bring hope to all of our union brothers and sisters.

A strike is never won completely. You can never know for sure when victory is yours. I have seen great contracts signed after a unified strike and the actual long term prospects that the strike gave access to lost by frittering away of unity. I have seen mediocre contracts signed in the midst of contentious union in-fighting with the result that the specific union and the union movement as a whole has come away stronger and ready for future struggle. A strike is not won or lost on the day the strike ends. It will be the future that will tell. If this fight leads to a Hollywood more united against the conglomerates, to a SAG and WGA in continuous collaboration, to greater connections with the union movement as a whole, and to a spread of the lessons of this strike to other unions in Southern California and across the country, then the victory will not be just in the here and now for this contract but a permanent victory that will grow.

So this is what I have to say: Start organizing now for SAG, for the Teamsters, for other Hollywood unions and for your future contract. Don't forget the lessons you learned in this fight. You are writers, you should write those lessons down. Create a collective history so others can see.

I have a few hopes for the future, the future of the writers' at the WGA, of the website United Hollywood, and the future of the Hollywood union movement. I will list the obvious along with the not so obvious. I hope at later times to write two longer posts on "the measure of victory" and "the lessons for other unions of the WGA strike."

1) Most immediately you need to support SAG and the Teamsters in their upcoming contract negotiations. Do not fall asleep on this, especially in regard to the Teamsters.

2) You need to find a way to unite all Hollywood unions in one bargaining coalition. (I do not yet hope that there will be a single industrial wide union but that should be an aim of the most conscious union members.)

3) Is there any possibility that some tech savvy writers might volunteer to help other unions in need? Damn it! there have been a few organizing drives that I have been involved with, and one major strike here in NYC, that your kind of righteous propaganda, use of youtube, picket line interviews, web log-rolling could have helped us to get the news out to the public that we are not "greedy" truck drivers or transit workers, but just brothers and sisters making a living. (Also star power would help.)

4) I would like to know more about rank and file connections between Hollywood unions and other unions in Southern California.

5) I would like to hear some respectful but clear eyed discussion of IATSE and how to incorporate IATSE into a "United Hollywood" movement.

Going forward will prove the success of this strike. Don't let victory slip through your fingers by relaxing. As Verrone said, you must build on your unprecedented unity. Organize the unorganized! Join with other unions.

The strike captains I read on the internet, heard in interviews, and the ones I met on the picket line in New York were the backbone of this strike. Don't let anyone tell you that this strike wasn't yours because you made it yours. In my 30 years of involvement in the union movement I have rarely met a more motivated group of strike and line captains. They made it a pleasure for me to show up at the picket line in cold, rain, and sleet. I want to thank them.

I want to thank your leadership and your rank and file for giving the union movement a win that can be built upon.

Jerry Monaco

Tags: labor movement, picket lines, responsibility, solidarity, strike, strike tactics, strikes, tv, unions, wga, workers, writers, writers' strike, writing

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

Working Class Traditions and Faith: Solidarity or Despair

Working Class Traditions and Faith: Solidarity or Despair	Jan. 24th, 2008 @ 01:56 pm

New York is a union town. Or at least it used to be.


During the transport workers' strike in December 2005 the most common type of response I heard from those who opposed the strike was, "They have health care benefits and a decent salary. I work hard at my job. I work sixty hours a week and they call me a temp and I don't have health care benefits. Why shouldn't they pay more for their health care? Why should the transit workers get more when I won't get more?"


The response could have been: "Maybe if I had a union I'd get good benefits and a half-decent salary also. I'm glad they got some of theirs; I wish I could get some of mine."


Both responses share a similar ignorance about the world. Both responses reveal an unawareness of history and how difficult it is to fight for one's self, for and with other people. The reality is that it is always easier to lose than to win and when you win you never win as much as was given in blood, sweat, and thought. It is not easy to win a good union and a strong union that will fight for all and still hear the voice of the individual. It is hard work, and both responses are ignorant of this work and the risks involved.


And here is the crossroads of these two ways of thinking. Ignorance cannot be the only reason for a person to articulate the first response rather than the second. There is something deeper in the current cultural conjuncture that makes the first response common, even among working people.


The followers of Marx would claim that the above two responses show the level of class consciousness. I do not want to deny the essential truth of this even on an elementary level but I think that a traditional Marxist analysis can only take me halfway into my essay on the reasons for the above two responses. When I was in Norway many years ago I heard doctors and lawyers insist that they were part of the broad working class. For sure, these doctors and lawyers were socialists but it was not an unusual response among the professional classes in Norway to look at themselves as workers and think of themselves as involved in the same struggles as factory workers. Here in the United States everybody from Donald Trump to the unemployed who live in the worse slums claim that they are "middle class." These are simple matters of cultural identification yet they are significant because they articulate in the form of broad-brush self-labeling a level of cultural awareness. Working class traditions and middle class traditions are not the same. The tradition of working class solidarity, the sense that "we are all in this together and must stick together against the bosses" is much different from the tradition of middle class striving and individuality. I do not mean to idealize either tradition. Working class solidarity often enough turns into a suspicion of individuality and into forced conformity. On the other side, middle class striving and individuality often enough turns into social-climbing and selfishness. I do not believe that solidarity and individuality are mutually exclusive but there is a certain tension between the two. But what I am saying is that there is something deep in our culture, beyond even class consciousness, that brings people to identify with values of social striving and individuality, over and against solidarity and cooperation, and this is part of the reason why people will prefer to self-identify as middle class rather than working class.


The lack of solidarity with fellow workers only partially covers the reason why so many people prefer the first kind of ignorance as opposed to the second kind of ignorance. It should be obvious that I prefer the second kind of ignorance to the first. I believe the second response allows for the possibility of learning about others; it fosters curiosity into ways of thinking and doing of other grooups that the first kind of response blocks from view. I want to emphasize here that this is a matter of "mere belief," a secular faith, that is rational but cannot be proved. In short the second response shows a generosity of the heart, a lack of narrowness and meanness when regarding ones' fellow humans that the first response does not show.


And this "generosity of the heart" is also a matter of "faith."


In my leftist and atheist way I come in this essay to an insight made by radical religions. The opposite of faith is despair, and neither of these responses are opposed to rationality or are necessarily irrational.


I think a deep individualism of despair is part of the social consciousness of our time. I believe that examples of this despair are everywhere. It can be seen in the lack of generosity of the heart in most fundamentalist "faiths." I think it can be shown that "fundamentalist" religions of all kind are not reactions of the "faithful" but reactions of the despairing. They are social expressions of despair. This is the opposite of the faithful and solidaristic reaction of many religions during the rise of Protestantism, for example. Fundamentalist religions are the inside-out expression of resentment and individualism, a collective focus on narrow salvation and a deep belief in the end of the world.


I only use fundamentalist religion as one outward expression of social despair, because these religions are not the problem I wish to focus upon. I think that the generation of despair is an ignored factor of why solidarity is not a value among us. Many people have stopped believing that their actions can make things better. They don't believe that they can cooperate with others in ways that can improve the lives of all. They believe that the world will get worse and individual lives will get worse so that the only way to improve one's own life is by holding on against others. This despair is not new or unique in history. But I think that one reason it is so strong is that there is a material basis for it in everyday reality. It is despair fostered by social conditions, this is true, but environmental conditions and the possibility that humans are destroying themselves on a global scale also fosters such despair. There is not only a lack of revolutionary optimism -- the belief that society will improve with the radical transformation of the whole -- but also a lack of simple capitalist optimism -- the belief that the economy will bring prosperity and that this will mean that individual lives will improve. I think that this despair is fundamentally a lack of faith in collective betterment and in the possibility of working with others. If I am correct then this means that despair is independent of individual psychology. A person can be personally optimistic about his or her life and still exhibit this fundamental lack of faith.


New York was once a union town. When workers were on strike, anywhere, there was a knee jerk reaction among working class New Yorkers that the strikers should stick it to the bosses because if the strikers lives improved there was a better possibility that every one's life would improve. The reaction was local and personal.


When Mike Quill, one of the founders of the Transit Workers Union, was served with an order that found the 1966 Transit Worker strike illegal his response was, "The judge can drop dead in his black robes." Many fellow New Yorkers accepted the inconvenience of the 1966 transit workers' strike and admired the audacity of Mike Quill. This was partially because most of these workers had memories as deeply rooted in tradition as Quill. Quill remembered the "illegal" strikes in Ireland during the struggle for independence. Probably the single most important action leading to Irish independence was the illegal sympathy strike action by the transport workers union in Ireland in the period of 1919-1921. The railroad workers refused to carry arms or troops, thus depriving the British of a safe way of bringing troops to bear on rebellions through out Ireland. The demonstrable strength of unions to improve lives, to act together for political and social ends, was obvious to Mike Quill and most of his fellow workers. It was obvious because, even when specific historical details were not known, this kind of solidarity was a living tradition. It was also obvious to many New Yorkers of every background that solidarity was preferable to despair and that those were the two choices, because many had memories similar to Mike Quill's in their own experiences in life.


Such memories either become living traditions that are practiced or else they disappear. Once such traditions disappear then they are felt as a hole, as something lacking, as a longing, and often the response to this "hole" is helplessness and despair.


We have reached a state that even on the left such traditions of simple solidarity are not obvious. It is this observation about the left that inspired these thoughts in the first place.


I have written a lot about the writers' strike in my journal. In doing so my original intention was to try to explain to some of my fellow leftists why this strike was of some importance. I assumed that leftists would hope for the best for the WGA strike, but might not see that this was a crucial strike for the labor movement. I assumed that most leftists would not know the history of the writers' union or the importance to Southern California of the Hollywood unions in general. I assumed that they would not know the broader issues of this strike that made it different from any strike in Hollywood for the last 60 years. I did not expect them to reject the writers because they are supposedly well-off and "middle class." I did not expect reactions from leftists along the lines of "I hate television so I really don't give a damn about this strike." Such reactions are more than ignorant when expressed from a supposed leftist. They show a certain amount of despair along similar lines of the first reaction above. This reaction is also the most common reaction I find posted in the readers' comments sections on the websites of papers such as The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. The sense of such comments is: "The issues that these workers care about are nothing to me, can be nothing to me, since I don't get anything out of them myself." I simply did not expect some leftists, even if they are a small minority of our tribe, to echo the corporate controlled media on the writers' strike. Basically, this is the same kind of solipsistic despair that I expect from non-leftists.

Recently I watched the Ken Loach and Paul Laverty film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, a film that I highly recommend to all. It fascinated me greatly so I listened to the commentary given by Ken Loach and an historian. At one point Loach said (I can only paraphrase) that it is extraordinary how much hope, faith, and belief in others that people can bring to a cause, even under extreme circumstances. He continued, by saying that it is in the interest of rulers to hide from people the very fact of their collective power, and especially the power of workers when they stick together for the future benefit of all. His example was the very same transport workers strike in Ireland that Mike Quill experienced as a teenager. The lesson for me was that history, memories, and traditions are the living integument of faith and hope. One cannot live with them alone. These traditions are not locked in one's brain. The kind of faith in collective action and the possibility (never the certainty) of change for the better comes, at some point in one's life, from doing, and can come from nowhere else. The rulers and owners of our society are the ultimate enemy. But to some great extent it is the politics of despair that we confront everyday when we ask people to rebel. In a phrase he borrowed from Erich Fromm, Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "Why I Oppose the War In Vietnam" speech in 1967, called for "a revolution of hope." He did not leave the notion of this revolution unspecified and abstract. He spelled out how hope and solidarity must go hand together and must be built and lived and remembered.

At the end of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Tom Joad says,

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too.

This is an echo of Eugene Debs' statement to the court upon being convicted and sent to jail for opposing World War I.

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

The faith in others and the hope for the future it takes to believe such statements is not merely a matter of what the "religionists" call "grace." It is a matter of daily work and lived experience.


Jerry Monaco
24 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: capitalism, cinema, despair, eugene debs, faith, history, hope, ideology, ken loach, mlk, organizing, propaganda, responsibility, socialism, solidarity, strikes, unions, wga, writers, writers' strike

Jurisdiction Over Animation & Reality and the Question of Victory or Defeat

Jurisdiction Over Animation & Reality and the Question of Victory or Defeat	Jan. 24th, 2008 @ 12:01 pm

In his latest post @ Working Life Jonathan Tasini wrote something that I completely agree with.

As I wrote the other day in looking at the deal reached with the Directors Guild of America, the question of future jurisdiction is crucial. I understand why the Guild has agreed to drop the demand that the contract cover reality and animation--there is pressure to make a deal. But I also understand, and agree wholeheartedly with the Guild leadership, why the Guild stuck with this proposal for so long. The more work that stays non-union, the worse the long-term prospects are for Guild members in five, ten, twenty years. It is self-evident to me, and I assume most people who have been around labor for long enough, that if you don't keep your jurisdiction at a high level, then, you will obviously get hurt at the bargaining table.

As a comment on this I want to talk about "victory." The end of most strike battles are muddy. It is never clear immediately who has won and who has lost. Only time can tell on some issues and especially on issues of organizing the unorganized. If the WGA comes out of this strike invigorated and believing that they have had an effect on their industry then it can become the spur for a transforming experience for the WGA and, perhaps, even for other Hollywood Unions.

I have tried to make this point in one of my posts at my journal:

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 its 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 [Screenwriters Guild], among all of the creative unions, which was most supportive of below the line militancy, and paid the heaviest price for its 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.

What has not been recognized as an important consequence of the WGA strike is that for the first time since 1948 members of major unions in Hollywood have been talking about the need for an industry wide union. This has not happened since the union upsurge in the immediate post-war years in Hollywood, and at that time members of the old Scriptwriters Guild were leading the way. The fact that I have heard many writers say things similar to what David Latt said at United Hollywood:

What's needed now is clear-headed, strategic thinking. We've always known that we are one Guild among many and that, unlike other American corporations, the Hollywood congloms get to speak with one voice, using their superior resources to obstruct our objectives. Structurally, that puts us at an incredible disadvantage. What if all the Hollywood unions were, like the United Auto Workers, negotiating with one voice, picking off the studios, one at a time? What kind of deal would we have then?

No matter what the specific details of the deal the WGA agrees to at the conclusion of this strike, If the need for stronger and united unions is recognized by thinking union supporters in SAG, and can make some headway with other unions in the industry. then the long term victory of Hollywood workers will be traced back to this strike and to the current perspective of the WGA leadership, from Patric Verrone to the strike captains at United Hollywood.

The reason I say this in a forum for non-WGA readers, is that it is not generally recognized how unclear the aftermath of a strike can look. There has been a lot of energy produced by fans of the writers in support of the WGA. I do not wish for that energy to be dissipated in a misplaced sense of defeat. The writers will not win the organization of animation and reality writers as a result of this strike, and I, like Tasini, believe that this was a righteous goal. But as an observer I am not yet willing to admit there has been a lack of a victory even on this issue. If this strike raises the consciousness of other workers in the entertainment industry it could have effects far beyond this strike and in fact far beyond Hollywood.

Jerry Monaco
24 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: capitalism, corporations, defeat, economics, ideology, industrial unionism, jurisdiction, organization, politics, strikes, victory, wga, workers, writers, writers' strike

How Weird is The New York Times?: NYT Assigns Former Producer to Cover the WGA

How Weird is The New York Times?: NYT Assigns Former Producer to Cover the WGA	Jan. 20th, 2008 @ 05:14 pm

Since the run up to the strike I've been hoping that one of the writers from the WGA would do a thorough analysis of the coverage of the strike by the major newspapers and the industry press. The corporate media has done a good job of propagating the cause of their sister corporations. But in the last few weeks the articles in The New York Times have become more and more pro-management and, frankly, quite weird.

I quote the latest bit of strike "analysis" from The New York Times:

Dennis Palumbo, a screenwriter-turned-psychologist whose practice includes a number of Hollywood writers, said guild members - many of whom have come to regard the companies as negative parental figures - appear to see Mr. Verrone and Mr. Young as friendlier alternatives. "Which parent do you go with, the big, bad parent that you know, or someone who's presenting himself as an Alan Alda parent?" Mr. Palumbo said.

All of this in an article called Writers' Strike Tests the Mettle of 2 Outsiders by MICHAEL CIEPLY (published: January 19,
2008.)

I am sure that Patric Verrone and David Young will gladly accept the compliment that they are in the image of nice Alan Alda... Instead of... what? Which character actors can be cast in the part of evil corporate daddy... Crazy Joe Pesci in Good Fellas? Dennis Hopper in Land of the Dead?

But in truth this is another anti-union cliche. What can't be imagined by the august New York Times is that it is possible for people to fight for themselves and for the future of their industry. What can't be imagined by The New York Times is that strikers are not children, but people who have thought seriously about what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Michael Cieply is The New York Times reporter who wrote the above words. I doubt he ever reported on a labor dispute from the union side. Cieply is a business reporter and he knows Hollywood business practices well. He should since he worked as a producer for Sony Corp. The fact that Michael Cipley was once a producer for Sony is the first piece of information that any reader of Cieply's coverage of the writers' strike should be aware of. This fact should be presented as a caveat before every story he writes about the WGA, Hollywood union leaders, Patric Verrone, and David Young, etc.

Cipley started his career as a business journalist for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times. Hollywood was his beat. The moguls were his meat. He has always been adept at articulating the thoughts of the deal-makers to themselves. He has practiced this expertise throughout the writers' strike. The NYT poached Cieply from the LAT in 2004 and moved him to the Big Apple. Apparently he could not adjust to the Byzantine bureaucracy of the Big Ship, nor could he comfort himself with the less sunny pleasures of the Big Apple, so he moved out of the New York Times' editors' desk and back to reporting in Los Angeles. This occurred in January 2007, and was probably part of The New York Times' long range preparation for the possibility of a writers' strike. Since he moved back to L.A. Cieply has specialized in profile pieces on studio execs and the usual fair of insider analysis-lite of Hollywood business trends. He knows the strange business customs of the Hollywood deal-makers, that is for sure. But he has never shown any knowledge of the long and sometimes tangled history of the Hollywood labor movement. He has also never displayed any knowledge of the history of unions or the labor movement in general.

I have a question for the Times. Why don't they assign ex-union organizers or ex-union leaders to cover unions and strikes? The answer to this question is simple: If they did the bosses would complain of bias and threaten to withdraw advertising dollars. Assigning an ex-producer from Sony as point man for the coverage of a labor dispute where producers from Sony are among the main contestants on the bosses side treads the line of good ethical practice.

I am working on a much longer analysis of The New York Times' dreadful and condescending coverage of the WGA and the writers' strike and will post the rest soon. The above is just a taste of what is to come.

Jerry Monaco

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

Jonathan Tasini has a good analysis of the DGA contract

Jonathan Tasini has a good analysis of the DGA contract	Jan. 18th, 2008 @ 04:21 pm

Jonathan Tasini has a good analysis of the DGA contract and surrounding issues at his weblog Working Life.
"What To Make of The Directors Guild Deal?"
http://www.workinglife.org/blogs/view_post.php?content_id=7668

An excerpt:

"Before looking at some of the specifics, in my humble opinion, whatever the deal is, it has to be absolutely clear to the DGA--even if they may not want to admit it because the DGA historically sees itself as the elite among the Hollywood unions--that the strike by the Writers Guild of America strengthened the DGA's hand. Big Media has been rattled by the strike and, obviously, wanted to reach a deal with the DGA to try to, then, bring some closure to the WGA walk-out."

Tasini is a former union organizer and negotiator. He also ran for Senate in New York State.

Jerry Monaco


This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.

Tags: corporations, dga, media, media analysis, strike, tasini, wga, writers' strike

Anti-Union Cliches: A clearly written example of self-contradiction

Anti-Union Cliches: A clearly written example of self-contradiction	Jan. 18th, 2008 @ 03:42 pm

I usually don't reply to posts such as the one below. But the writer at The Word Wrangler in his weblog entry, Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike, states his position so clearly that it is easy to see through the usual cliches. There is the usual cliche that somehow joining a union is a way to get around "personal responsibility". There is the cliche that we live in a competitive market, on a level playing field and all you have to do is go out and create your own business to compete with the corporations.

On the other hand there is the usual fatalistic notion that people shouldn't cooperate to change their situation. The corporations set the rules and all you can do is follow their rules or go out and create similar rules that others follow. The Word Wrangler writes in his post , "For those that think they’re getting screwed by the corporations - which they probably are - go off on your own. Start your own company. Make your own future instead of crying about your present." Basically, this reduces to the following choice, "Screw or get screwed," either get exploited or do some exploiting yourself. There is no perspective that the basic situation might be changed, or at least made better for those who come after. ( Another possibility of course is that you will hope that your business will be somehow "different." Many have tried, through cooperatives, share-alike business organizations, etc. These forms are good, but unfortunately in our society very unstable.)

There is also the usual silliness, and yes it is silliness, that people that are out on strike, fighting for themselves and others are somehow "cry babies." Having known people who have gotten beaten up by company goons while on picket-lines, I find it kind of childish that a person compares a picket line "to a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants." Union haters are mired in self-contradiction, in this respect. If the 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. The conglomerates have said this about the current WGA picketers over and over again. The anti-union types will often go back and forth between these two complaints depending on the strike and the type of picket line.

I use the above phrase "anti-union type" gingerly, but I don't want to be too mean to The Word Wrangler because it seems to me that he doesn't see that his cliches are such and are in many ways self-contradictory. He writes clearly, and not like a hardened intellectual who can hide the contradictions in his thought. For this precise reason his expressions are useful.

So after this post I reply at length: (Note: I left a shorter and non-proofread version of my reply at The Word Wrangler. Word Wrangler replied very politely.

Why I Don’t Support the Writer’s Strike
Posted in January 18th, 2008
by The Word Wrangler in Rant

I’ve been avoiding talking about the writer’s strike for a couple of reasons. The first one being that I don’t support strikes, nor do I support unions. The second one is that I believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives. If you think you’re getting a raw deal at your job, then change jobs. Change careers if you want. But don’t stand around with a sign on a picket line, which is the adult equivalent of a child holding his breath until he gets what he wants.

Anne Wayman from the Golden Pencil posted a link to a piece on the Writer’s Resource Center giving three reasons to support the strike.

So I’m giving my reasons why I don’t support the strike.

The rules are set by the corporations - If I went to work at Marvel Comics as a writer or artist, I know going in that the company is pretty much going to own whatever it is I create. If I create the next Superman - and Marvel makes millions of dollars in TV, toys, movies and comic books - chances are I’m still going to be compensated based on our original agreement with Marvel coming out on top. And Marvel certainly isn’t going to give me the rights to the character that’s earning them that much scratch. I know this going in. If I don’t want to play by those rules, I can choose not to.

It’s their game so don’t whine about it when you come out on the bottom of a deal.

Personal responsibility - I admit that I lean pretty far to the conservative side of the political spectrum. My father is a no-nonsense guy and an extremely hard worker. He always preached about controlling your own destiny instead of it controlling you. Make choices - both good and bad - and live with the consequences. And if you’re in a situation you don’t like, pull yourself up out of it and move on.

I realize we live in a society that doesn’t like to hear that. We don’t want to work hard for what we want. We think we’re entitled to everything and when we don’t get it, we whine. We think the companies we work for owe us all. Well, I got news for y’all, it ain’t like that.

For those that think they’re getting screwed by the corporations - which they probably are - go off on your own. Start your own company. Make your own future instead of crying about your present.

The marketplace has changed drastically over the past decade. There are more opportunities than ever for creative people to get noticed, make money AND keep the rights to their material than ever before.

Instead of trying to change someone else’s rules, why not just go and make up your own?

Word Wrangler,

We have so little common ground between us, that a discussion between us would probably be difficult. But because you state your view so clearly it is also easy to see the alternatives that you leave out.

You say that there are a couple of reasons you don't support the WGA strike: "The first one being that I don’t support strikes, nor do I support unions. The second one is that I believe that people should take responsibility for their own lives."

You state this right out without giving reasons. You also seem to connect "personal responsibility" and being anti-union. Later you say that corporations set the rules. So let me ask you the following questions.

1) What is a corporation but a state-sanctioned and legally protected union of investors and owners? Why do you support the kind of union of owners that is a corporation, but not a union of employees? The business institution we call a corporation was not created whole cloth and neither is it a "natural phenomena" that has always been with us. In your post you in effect assume that both of these situations are true, both that corporations suddenly appeared as arbitrary institutions and that they are natural phenomena that no one can change. The rules are the rules. But corporations were created through heavy state intervention and enabled by laws created by lawyers and judges. Why should you support laws and state-intervention to enable corporations but be opposed to people getting together in unions? My suspicion is that you believe in corporations and not unions because the business institutions are the dominant form in our country and as John Dewey said, business is simply the political air we breath.

So this is the first contradiction that I find in your post: You are in favor of unions of owners and investors, corporations that are the height of the lack of personal responsibility because this lack of personal responsibility is encoded in the law under the guise of "limited liability." But you are opposed to cooperation between employees in collective bargaining.

2) If people cooperate with each other to get things done, do you consider this something that is counter to "personal responsibility"? Why shouldn't employees cooperate to bargain with their employer? Why shouldn't employees try to improve the work situation that they are in? Why is cooperating with others to improve your situation, or the situation of your industry, somehow an abnegation of personal responsibility? I don't really understand how personal responsibility and cooperation with others contradict each other. In fact, I consider the idea that "personal responsibility" and self-help through cooperation with others are mutually exclusive another example of how you fall into self-contradiction.

3) You state "the rules are set by corporations", as if this is something we should just accept. (Are you always advocating the same kind of acceptance? A slave says: "The rules are set by slave owners. Accept it.") What rules are you talking about in this case?

Well, in the next breath you speak of copyright rules. You point out correctly that the people who created Superman for Marvel DC comics were little compensated for their creativity. The Marvel DC company made millions and the creators made very little. Then you say that writers can choose not to cooperate with the company or go do something else. In the case of the actual creators of Superman and others of that generation [from what my friends tell me of their lives] this was not exactly much of a choice. They could have been accuntants, lawyers and doctors instead but they chose to be creative. In their case, and in many cases, doing something else usually means simply giving up on their own creative ideas.

Maybe in giving up on working with a corporation that can help to distribute your creations you will have other ideas, or maybe you will just put all ideas in a drawer. I have known many poets, some of the with money and jobs and some of them living catch as catch can. But I have rarely met a poet with business sense. The same is true of many artists. Why should we construct a scoiety where the only people who have decent lives ar those that run their own businesses? Are these the only choices you wish to offer? Why isn't participating in a union also a choice?

Why not expand your choices through trying to cooperate with others in changing the rules to a system that would be better for workers and creators? Corporations changed the rules because they cooperated with investors and hired lawyers and twisted the arms of judges and bought politicians to get the copyright laws that favor them and not the creators. One reason why writers need a union is so they can get together and higher people who are expert in bargaining and twisting arms of judges and lobbying to get copyright laws favorable to individuals. There was nothing inevitable about the copyright rules we have now. Why shouldn't they be changed by us all in favor of the creator. I look at this as a minimal reform.

Still, it is not quite true to say that these rules were set by corporations. The rules for copyright were set, not by corporations, but by Congress as enabled by the U.S. constitution. These rules of copyright are a state-granted monopoly for a limited amount of time (supposedly "limited", but not if Disney keeps getting its way) giving the creator use and disposal of the creative work. There is nothing natural or inevitable about these rules and what is certain is that the founders of our country only envisioned patents and copyrights being owned by individual people and not by corporations. The idea that fictional people (corporations) could own fictional property (copyright and patents) is a very recent phenomena in history. It is a recent phenomena that we allowed to happen because we have neglected the public domain and allowed corporations and states to run rough-shod over (in this case) individual rights. The reason this phenomena came about in the first place was through acts of judicial activism, i.e. supreme court decisions argued by corporate lawyers in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. The situation where most writers don't control their own copyrights was only codified in law by congress in the 1970s. And it was only through lobbying by corporations to pass new copyright laws that we are in the current mess we are in.

So once again back to unions. If creators of songs, stories, movies, and comic books had as much bargaining power as corporations in the early part of the 20th century the situation would have been different. In other words, back then the best way to protect individual rights would have been through forming a union or some sort of cooperative organization to save individual control of copyright. Later in the century if individuals had as much political influence over congress as rent-seeking businesses, "for hire" ownership of copyright would never have come about.

Personally, I think that it is the epitome of personal responsibility to risk some of one's own personal comfort to form collective organizations to cooperate to make better rules in this part of the world

Jerry Monaco

P.S. Word Wrangler's reply:

The Word Wrangler said,
in January 18th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

Thanks for the comment Jerry. First, let me start out by stating that I don’t have the level of education regarding copyrights and their history that you do, so I really can’t address that issue.

One question you asked was: “Why is cooperating with others to improve your situation or the situation of your industry somehow an abnegation of personal responsibility?”

The answer is: It isn’t.

I’ll go back to my Marvel Comics example. Back in the 90s, when comics were hot, there were a few very talented creators who worked either for Marvel or DC. These creators became sick of the ‘work for hire’ business practices at the big corporations and - rather than forming a union, striking or picketing - they went off and formed their own company Image Comics.

Image’s business model was based on the notion that creators could publish under the Image umbrella, but still retain all rights to their characters and maintain independent studios.

That’s a good example of people cooperating to change the way business works. Image became so successful that Marvel and DC started treating their talent better because they didn’t want them going off on their own.

Instead of trying to hold a company hostage in order to get what they wanted, they went out and got what they wanted on their own. They changed the rules by making their own rules.

The world is changing in such a way that offers global opportunities for creators. I think we’re moving towards a time where creative types won’t need unions or corporations to find success. And I think that’s in everyone’s best interest.

My reply to this was to say was that a cooperative model for creative writers and a union of employees are not mutually exclusive. (You can read my full comment at The Word Wrangler's site.)

Postscript: Because of the WGA strike I have read comments by Brian K. Vaughan who believes that the comic book industry would be much better if the comic book creators had a decent union.

This brings up another subject -- the issue of industry customs and standards. The reason that companies that make movies and comic books in general control the copyrights of the creative workers is a matter of industry custom and standards.

Consider the following:

In the industries that were created before modern copyright existed the creators have substantial control of their copyrights. In many of the industries created in the 20th Century creators lost control of their copyrights. This was mainly because of economic "power", and the rise of vast networks of distribution. Historically, if a creator did not have access to the networks of distribution, which were usually held as oligopolies by three or four companies, then the creator lost control of the uses and reuses of his creation.

The division between creative workers and ownership was especially true in industries where several creators worked on one product. More often than not the company would try to maintain a high-level of competition between creators and category of creators. Thus in the movie business editors were set against directors, set designers against the wardrobe designer, wardrobe designers against make-up artists, writers against directors and unit producers, and directors were set against every one. It was precisely such situations that unions were meant to resolve. Unfortunately, because of manipulation by the bosses and defeats on the line the unions often exacerbated this situation. All of this is part of a longer story....

Jerry Monaco

Tags: anti-union, blogs, cliches, corporations, ideology, organizing, picket lines, propaganda, strike tactics, strikes, unions, wga, word wrangler, writers, writers' strike