29
votes
Hollywood CEOs and industry insiders seek Federal mediation to help avert SAG-AFTRA strike
Link information
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- Authors
- Gene Maddaus,Cynthia Littleton
- Published
- Jul 11 2023
- Word count
- 416 words
In what way is the entertainment industry important to the federal government? The ports and rails I understand, but a delayed Disney movie is not halting society.
The only intervention the federal government should be doing is splitting up media conglomerates.
It's 3.2% of the GDP. Of course it's important to the federal government.
Mediation doesn't equal intervention. It doesn't curtail anyone's rights. It doesn't impose any deadlines. It doesn't force a decision on to either side.
Basically, the government decides that a dispute is significant enough that there's a national interest in resolving it. They send someone with labour experience to sit at the table. And modern federal mediators are often widely praised by both sides as helping them come together.
Think of Top Gun and how many military resources were used, when that's the case the feds have final say on how the us military is portrayed in the movie.
Hollywood is kind of a propaganda arm of the government to an extent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93entertainment_complex
They are propoganda to many governments, not just the US though. I would be shocked if something like this will be interrupted by the government
I don't think it's worth comparing other countries to the US, there's no way other countries exercise any amount of control compared to the US (military specifically) does. Most places are vying for movies to film there, tax breaks are plentiful in non US countries.
https://rodriqueslaw.com/blog/countries-best-film-incentives/
US states obviously offer tax incentives but they don't have much say if any when compared to the overall federal government either.
https://www.wrapbook.com/blog/film-industry-tax-incentives
I don't think this will be interrupted by the feds either, but that is not relevant to my point.
The media industry has political influence, however, so they may be able to push the government into helping them. I agree that a lot of the standard union-busting lines won't help here.
I agree that antitrust is totally necessary for the industry.
I don't, no person should be forced to work... it's sickening that the rails fucked over their workers and the gov stepped in. Doing so just opened up the floodgates for bullshit like this...you got Hollywood now asking for the same thing... Starbucks next?
While Biden did avert an initial strike, he and Bernie Sanders have been working with the unions and the major railways to negotiate a better contract, which has at this point been agreed to by both sides.
Sanders didn't do anything, and neither did Biden. It was mostly public pressure, and even then, it's only for non-operational workers. If a driver is sick, they still have to show up...so no Biden and the gov didn't do anything but force the Unions to back down. Articles like this are just there to try and save face for the gov/Biden, for the horrible way the railworkers have been treated
It's not everything, and it's not everyone, but to say they did nothing is an outright lie.
I don't think it's wrong to call this "effectively nothing"
Where is the line between "effectively nothing" and "something"? People who had no sick time have some now. It's not enough, but how much would be enough for it to be a win?
You know what that part of texted you copied says:
"Biden got a ton of pushback for telling the railroad workers that they couldn't strike. So he told some of his cabinet members to call the railroads and say that wasn't nice to not let workers actually not be treated like property".
Look. You said that they were useless and didn't do anything, and then I showed that they did anything, and you downplayed that. Let's not do this? We can talk about whether what they did made up for the flashy strikebreaking that happened first, or the role of the US government in interfering in negotiations between workers and capital, but this entirely negative attitude where you just move the goalposts isn't something I'm interested in engaging with.
I didn't move the goal posts, I pointed out that they stopped the strike and that they didn't do anything to actually fix the issue, which still is occuring. This isn't reddit, you don't get magical points for backing the blue team. They did something shitty and it's ok to be pissed at them.
You said:
But then MimicSquad responded with what they did do, and you brought up separate points. That seems like moving the goal posts. You can reasonably say they didn't do enough, but to say they did nothing, when they did stuff, is wrong and worthy of being corrected.
It's uncharitable to apply this motive to MimicSquad and comes across as an ad-hominem. It's not quite, but close, to calling MimicSquad a karma-chasing hivemind redditor.
To lay my biases on the table, I think Biden and Sander's lack of support is a disgrace and should be called out. I strongly side with the rail workers and think important infrastructure jobs should be well funded.
If Biden steps in here after what he did to the railway workers, democrats can expect to lose organized labor for good.
And where would organised labour go in a two party country?
My hope is that they would continue to strike regardless of either government party intervention. My bigger hope is that more unions join them in solidarity until the things they demand are coded into law for all workers, no matter their industry or union/not union... do a little socialism.
Where would i like them to go? Where will they go?
I would guess that the already tenuous grasp the democrats have on "organized labor" will deteriorate even further. Some of those people will not vote, some will vote republican, some third party, and some will vote democrat. This is the typical democrat strategy of fucking over their supposed base while relying on the "at least we're not the other guys" argument. Obviously i would like democratic party to be actually progressive (and not do things like fucking the rail workers) but I don't realistically see that happening.
I know I am pretty resentful and disgusted by the dems because of shit like this.
Oh you and I agree, I just don't see Dems losing organized labour for good precisely because as you said they've been relying only on we're marginally less bad than reps.
I wonder how much social disruption it will take for a third party to emerge. Or if it's too late for America
As long as we have first past the post voting, there won't be a third party for long, since whichever party's voter base is being divided will fail to win any elections until they reconsolidate. It'll just eat one of the existing parties and then we'll have two again.
Hence the wondering. Like, if both party leaders stand on a stage and say yes we are the exact same person neural linked together and we're going to [commit atrocity] live on stage together and our policies are only exactly about abusing the population in favour of ourselves only.
Would that get voters choosing the third party?
Or, like I was wondering, is it too late and we'd have to scrap the entire country and start over before it can be done?
I think so. Some people would keep voting for the party rather than the candidates, but no one I talk to has any loyalty to the party beyond what they can do.
Personally, i have been voting third party (green) since Obama drone striked that 16 year old American. I have no faith that electoral politics will save the world from imperialism and capitalism.
Imho, this proposal is a big reach and is a sign that execs know their goose is cooked if they don’t find a way to restructure how everyone gets paid and what they get paid. And it’s a hopeless effort to think the federal government is going step in because there is no public safety or national security interest in preventing a labor strike in Hollywood. Besides, regardless of what any of us think about the fact of unions, given that they exist and how the terms they’ve all been working under are no longer relevant because of how much the business has changed in the last decade (streaming but no residuals, no set pilot season, mini-writing rooms versus a writing staff, shorter seasons, the breakdown of the start as a writer become a show runner pipeline, etc.), and the result is that everyone is just exhausted. The execs are going to have to compromise more than they’d like.
SAG has agreed to mediation
They've also responded to the original article:
Here's the non AMP link for that link.