Actor and screen writer strikes

Bob, I read your post and understand what you are saying. From my experience that is highly unusual circumstances. Not typical of the Nonunion Plants I visited.

I will briefly share my experience at an Automotive Plant under Toyota. I been retired for a few years and things may have changed.
People who disobeyed the work rules went before a Peer Review Panel. The Panel was comprised of their own Peers some from their immediate Department and some from the other Departments. An HR Management Person would chair the panel. The employee would then face their Peers and tell them their side of the situation. Then their Supervisor or fellow worker or HR Representative would address the Peer Panel to state the rules broken etc. After the review the Peer Panel would make a recommendation to Management/HR on what discipline if any the employee should face.

As far as Benefits and Work Procedures there were working Groups containing Hourly and Management Personal who would work together and recommend changes/upgrades for these items.

A good company can actually involve/empower their employees both hourly and salaried to solve problems, set policy, define work culture etc as a cooperative body working together.

A bad company that doesn't respect its people will not be successful as they could be long term and is setting themselves up for constant employee turnover, employee issues, excessive absenteeism, eventual unionization and a host of other undesirable situations and behaviors.

 

I was asking a genuine question.

But never mind. If you don't want to share opinions and think about things, don't.

 

I get that unions can be problematic in the US. Everywhere, indeed, there have been occasional problems with unions led by unscrupulous leaders seeking corrupt financial gain or political power, but this seems anecdotally to be far more common in the US. Whether it is a more serious problem in the US or whether there's just been more successful demonisation of unions I don't know.

As I said in the comment that made @John321 inexplicably furious, it's great when good employers employ staff under decent working conditions, with decent pay. But unions are there to protect workers in situations where the employers might not be so good.

Your unions are far weaker than those in Britain and Australia, and in most of Europe. And that's why you have the employment norms you have, and we have the employment norms we do.

In most developed countries other than the US (and Japan, obvs), we have 20-30 days of paid vacation leave per year. By law in the UK, you're entitled to 5.6 weeks' paid leave per year, although that includes public holidays, so that brings it down to about 20 normal working days of paid leave. In the US, you have no statutory paid leave, and the average American worker gets 11 days.

The rest of us get paid sick leave on top of this; in the US, this can come out of your paid vacation leave.

In the UK, women get 39 weeks' paid maternity leave. Some US states offer some maternity leave.

In most of the developed world, we have strict rules around hiring and firing, and unpaid overtime, and much more. You don't. We have a decent minimum wage. Our restaurant servers get paid full wages; they don't rely on tips.

My house in Broken Hill is across the road from where the movement for the 40-hour working week started.

We have all these things - our freedom to travel, our living wages, our easy maternity system - because unions looked out for our interests. It's why we have better-paid, healthier workforces, and why you have more-profitable large corporations. I suppose it is a question of priorities.

 

There's a strike?

-haven't noticed.
It's like televised cycle racing or golf.
If they played last year's show who would REALLY notice?

@SNL
How many times did they make it into the news cycle back when they were 'good?'
Would 10 random unedited episodes from the 70's still be 'funny' in 2023 - or even ALLOWED?

As probably one of the very few workers in this forum, in a (labor) union shop I say:

-meh.

 

Can't rule out a good employer being proactive to keep a union out.

 

+1.

Preventing the predation of one's employees by labor unions is part of what makes good employees good.

Seventy years ago, labour unions were more interested in the laborers than building their own empires and bank accounts.

 

I like what you did there......It wasn't a stretch for me.

 

Bounced off me.

 

Everyone but Netflix has revenues but no profit.

There is an excellent video about how Netflix incompetent model for content got adopted full hog by everyone despite knowing it would never work.

 

Ironic in that Netflix ending password sharing has led to 6 million new paying subscribers in the last 3 months... Lol

Netflix gains more new subscribers than expected following password-sharing crackdown | Netflix | The Guardian

 

"There's a strike?
-haven't noticed."

This thread exists because everyone else HAS noticed. Might I summarize? Content creators are disadvantaged as distribution pathways have diversified. Content sellers are profiting bigly or if not, will be bought out by the next big profit model looking kinda good.

Content creators will continue work stoppage until they are convinced of receiving a fair pie slice for five ish years. Until then, content making place (Hollywood mostly) is running on fumes.

All those not noticing can enjoy fumes. I guess.

 

meh.

Content creators were making big bank until there got to be a LOT of them, and people discovered the art of binge watching and 'load and go' content consumption.
When there's just three fruit stands, you get to charge $1 for just any apple because there's no 'nanners about.
On a street where there's 150 fruit stands selling 50 kinds of fruit???
Apples ain't worth a buck any more.

Gravity isn't a 'law' or a 'theory'.
It's a universal constant. (ish....)

The LAW of supply and demand still works nearly the same way .
THAT's why a bunch of teamsters just got away with butt-raping Big Brown.

SO....
If there were suddenly TWENTY or even TEN companies offering worldwide delivery options????
Then perhaps people might continue to enjoy the miracle of worldwide, accurate, RAPID global shipping, on the cheap.

Paging Mr Robot.....
Robbie the Robot!!!

Your opportunity is waiting at the courtesy counter.........

 

Big guys get paid even if they have to mortgage the pipes but…

in general nobody makes money over expenses, the pie was designed in an unsustainable and unworkable manner.
unless you want content creators to pay to work.

 

not bad work, if you can get it:

bernie-sanders-fran-drescher-actors-strike-sag-1235538911

 

"Content creators were making big bank until there got to be a LOT of them"

This presumes that WGA members' compensation has been publicly disclosed through time, and that WGA membership numbers have been publicly disclosed through time. Perhaps those have been? Or we can continue to speculate freely.

Anyway, WGA strike continues and whiffs are heard that SAG union could join the strike. AMPTP on other side might negotiate 'better'. if Screen Actor's Guild joins. New content delivery would decrease.

" the pie was designed in an unsustainable and unworkable manner. unless you want content creators to pay to work."

The pie was not designed - it just developed with server farms (those hardware vendors are making big bank). Pay to work sounds like a non starter.

I imagine this will crack when someone in AMPTP quietly develops an off ramp that make them seem less evil. Or something.

==
I add little value to this discussion by saying that a few examples of these writers' art strike (!) me as superb, with most being just page filling. Just wanted to say it. AI could probably do the mundane page filling. But how then could superb work be monetized?

 

Yep... DIY content creators had a golden era on Youtube for a while where daily videos getting millions of views were making hundreds of people a 1/4 million dollars a month in ad revenue because their daily vlogs had more viewers than the most popular TV show have. But then Youtube got greedy and ruined most of them, though there's still plenty of people still making bank

The Golden era is still alive and well however over at Only Fans. I couldn't imagine spending money on that, but I know women youtubers that are barely showing nudity to subscribers for $1/4 million a month. One especially impoverished women who used to be a friend of a Youtuber I watched was at times pulling in as much as $10 million a month in Only Fans after her online gaming contract with Microsoft expired, because all those gamer guys knew who she was and as she said, "Guys are so stupid, why would they pay so much money just to see my boobs?"

Meanwhile TV shows and movies have tapped into online revenue from their shows as well and that revenue wasn't in the contracts with the unions, which is part of the reason for the strike. What brought the screen actors into the strike is that its becoming clear that movie companies are now planning to scan you as a young aspiring actor and then use AI to create you acting in all kinds of movies and you never get paid for those movies because the contract forced you to sign that away.

And probably most important is DIY content is so much more diverse and unique compared to major studio productions that have to follow a strict formula which might appeal to the majority of braindead zombies who live in front of their TV screen, but that's not what the rest of us are interested in. We want real life stuff.

 

But they'll have exposure.

The last big writers strike was over the market shift to home video sales, and that not being reflected in the current contract.