Screen Writers Strike. Does it affect you?

[choirsoftheeye]

@sqrl -
1. I admit, I was mostly approaching this from my abstract takes on Unions, contracts, etc. and applying it to what details I knew about it, with some sporadic research. I tend to be fairly well informed, but this was clearly not one of those situations. I still haven't had time to do a lot of research, sadly - I just got back around to checking this thread.

2. However I will respond to a couple points. First of all, if writers are a dime a dozen, why can't the studios just give the finger to the entire union? This was the point I was trying to make before - if these writers are so invaluable, why doesn't the MPAA (or whatever front they're negotiating with) say "we're blacklisting you, you're fired, end of story, we're never hiring you again"? They have that power, and that would, in one blow, demolish both the guild and its powers. The answer is obvious - they don't think these writers are replaceable.

3. I didn't mean to accuse of being immoral - I meant to accuse you of being amoral. Amoral may have negative connotations to you, but I think it's standard for people who focus on the ways in which capitalism works rather than the global issues with capitalism. Your analogy with apples in inherently flawed, and doesn't refute my point, because you'd have to involve wages in some way - if the people selling the apples for 35 cents pay their workers almost nothing, then the workers have a right to tell them that they won't work for them. Which is, of course, an amoral response. A moral response would involve how much of the profit should go where, but you, for better or for worse, don't seem that interested in discussing that point.





Regardless of points about whether or not non-WGA members can work in this situation, the vote in favor of this was a landslide: "The new-media issue has united the 12,000-member union, whose membership recently authorized a strike with 90 percent of the vote."
http://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/columnists/aaron_barnhart/story/348222.html

That means that 9/10 of all writers in hollywood, think the situation was unfair. I'd say that, regardless of the guild's power, that greatly undermines the argument that, in this particular case, they're abusing it. It's a pretty clear statement that these writers, who, as a group, the industry doesn't think can be replaced, as a group, think that they're not getting their fair share. And thus as a group, they're doing a fair strike.

I've also now done a bit of searching on the WGA's blacklisting, and most of the results had to do with McCarthyism, and the actual studios blacklisting people, not the WGA, who just agreed that, in general, it could be done. I've found no other evidence that they can prevent people from working directly.

This article provides, I think, a more coherent reason as to why scabs won't work in this situation:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117975545.html?categoryid=2821&cs=1

Which points less to a big-bad-soul-eating-union and more to human nature.

So I guess point 1. is no longer entirely accurate :).