• According to Dan Walters, all his serious economist friends are telling him there's no recession yet, theoreticaly speaking. He might want to read his own paper, about how the Employment Development Department can't keep up with the demand for unemployment benefits and everyone calling in is getting a busy signal. Tip to those who apparently aren't feeling a recession: use the EDD website.
• In a reversal to the Bush Administration, a judge has ruled that George Bush cannot exempt the Navy from environmental laws regarding the use of sonar within 12 miles of the California coast. Not that Bush followed the ruling of the judiciary the first time, but...
• There are still high hopes for an end to the WGA strike, and meetings in Los Angeles and New York have been scheduled for the weekend (ostensibly to present the contract), but caution lies ahead, as more foreign imports and reality television are likely to wind up on schedules, and less pilots are likely to be shot. Of course, this was my point all along, and why I underscored the need to grow the union for the benefit of everyone involved and give everything on television the opportunity to unionize. But jurisdiction for reality and animation was dropped in the most recent round of talks, and there will be consequences to that.
• Our friends at the SEIU are going to start a $75 million dollar, year-long, national campaign in support of universal health care. I have to think that this is a positive by-product of the coalition built in California around the ultimately unsuccessful effort on health care reform. If so, then there was nothing unsuccessful about it. It's very exciting to see a full media and ground effort to draw the policy distinctions on health care between the parties, and to advocate for a system that makes sense for working families.
Use this as a repository for everything but the election.
The Writers Guild of America has retained veteran Democratic political consultants Bill Carrick and Kam Kuwata to provide assistance on the strategic and PR fronts of the 8-week-old strike.
"We both have friends in the WGA," Kuwata told Daily Variety. "And we have landed a lot of times on the sides that are pro-labor."
The duo came aboard earlier this month at the guild's behest in the wake of the Dec. 7 collapse of negotiations between the WGA and the AMPTP, which insisted that the guild remove half a dozen proposals from the table as a condition of continuing to bargain. The WGA refused, and no new talks have been scheduled, while the Directors Guild of America is widely expected to set a start date for negotiations on its contract within the next week.
Kuwata said he and Carrick will work for the WGA for as long as needed.
Carrick ran the Angelides campaign and Kuwata has worked a lot with DiFi in the past. But at least that they understand that Democrats stand with workers, unlike Chris Lehane. I'd rather reject that corporate money and be on the side of those who just want their fair share.
Things are moving on a variety of fronts in the WGA strike. While the AMPTP stalls and makes baseless charges, the Guild is trying some novel approaches. Not only have they filed an unfair labor practices charge against the AMPTP for walking away from a good-faith negotiation, they are challenging the very idea of bargaining with a cartel like the AMPTP itself.
Confronted with a logjam in its contract talks with the studios, the Writers Guild of America is trying a new tack: Divide and conquer.
We learned yesterday that Chris Lehane used to do damage control for the corporation trying to limit PR fallout from massive health and safety violations while building the eastern span of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. He's currently plying his trade as a paid shill for studios and networks who have the simple goal of busting the Hollywood labor movement.
The AP calls the new contract proposal from the studios to the WGA a sweetened offer. The United Hollywood blog says otherwise.
That big, amazing proposal that the companies hinted to Nikki Finke was coming? Well, it came.
Turns out their exciting, groundbreaking proposal is... a residual rollback. And not just any rollback, one of the biggest in the history of the Guild. Then, stunningly, the companies have the balls to say their plan gives us more compensation. Well, I'm sorry, but If you take away a dollar and give me a nickel, the nickel ain't a raise. Somewhere, Nick Counter's first-grade math teacher is embarrassed [...]
When an hourlong episode of television is streamed on the Internet, writers would get a flat $250 payment for one year of reuse. That's $250 as opposed to, for example, $20,000 per episode when it's reused on network television. They proposed nothing new on downloads, it's still the DVD formula for those (ie. two-thirds of a penny for an iTunes download). For theatrical movies, they're offering exactly $0.00 on streaming. Oh, and they want to be able to define any content they like as "promotional" -- for which they would pay zero dollars. Even if they stream an entire film or tv episode, and even if they sell ads on it, they can call that promotional and pay us nothing.
Looks to me like the AMPTP responded to the positive public opinion generated by the writers by trying to get public opinion on their side over their "generous offer," and subsequently call the writers "whiners" or something when they refuse to accept it. With the information out now, that's not likely to happen.
Though there's been a news blackout from the bargaining table, many in the entertainment community are cheered by Nikki Finke's report that a deal is imminent in the 4 week-old writer's strike. Her source makes sense, saying that the agents have brokered this; they have a stake in both writer profits and studio profits, not to mention getting production back in gear again.
However, in the wake of this impending deal we should not forget about the forgotten writer's strike of 2006. I've been saying from the beginning that the strategy of the WGA, to get as much as they can for current members instead of growing the membership, is fatally flawed, and will result in a constriction of revenue for writers as less and less spots on the TV schedule will require them. Daniel Blau came forward last week with the inside story:
Other labor leaders are coalescing around the writer's strike because they know that a hig-profile action like this will have positive benefits for them, and might actually start a conversation about union representation in America. If the adage of "If it's not on TV, it didn't happen" holds true, then "If it's stopping TV, it's REALLY happening" holds even truer. Joss Whedon explains:
"The trappings of a union protest…" You see how that works? Since we aren't real workers, this isn't a real union issue. (We're just a guild!) [...] this IS a union issue, one that will affect not just artists but every member of a community that could find itself at the mercy of a machine that absolutely and unhesitatingly would dismantle every union, remove every benefit, turn every worker into a cowed wage-slave in the singular pursuit of profit. (There is a machine. Its program is 'profit'. This is not a myth.) This is about a fair wage for our work. No different than any other union. The teamsters have recognized the importance of this strike, for which I'm deeply grateful. Hopefully the Times will too.
"I support the Writers Guild's pursuit of a fair contract that pays them for their work in all mediums. I hope the producers and writers will return to the bargaining table to work out an equitable contract that keeps our entertainment industry strong and recognizes the contributions writers make to the success of the industry."
No talks have been scheduled, as the studios appear to be preferring a "bleed them out" strategy, despite the WGA already conceding on expanding DVD residuals. While I still feel that jurisdiction and expanding membership should be a strong part of any final deal, clearly the writers deserve a fair share of the profits they are instrumental in creating.
The Writers Guild of America took to the streets today, beginning what promises to be a long strike in one of the largest industries in California. I couldn't be more in support of the people who are the lifeblood of Hollywood, the creative personnel that are the engine of the last vibrant manufacturing industry in America. Unfortunately, I'm getting the sense that their leadership is falling back on an old union strategy of securing benefits for their existing membership rather than allowing their membership to grow, and this will have disastrous consequences for the future of the labor movement.
I like to say that I work in the last big manufacturing industry left in America - entertainment production. That manufacturing may be grinding to a halt soon.
With the clock running out on the contract between Hollywood's writers and producers Wednesday, negotiators made little progress toward a new deal, and both sides prepared for a strike that could begin as early as Friday.
Representatives of the two unions - the Writers Guild of America East and the Writers Guild of America West - met with bargainers for the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers Wednesday morning after a federal mediator helped jump-start the stalled talks.
But the two sides broke off talks Wednesday night, allowing the contract to expire at midnight. Writers had presented freshly drawn proposals that left their principal demands intact, according to a guild leader, and producers made no immediate move to accommodate them.
There really has been no progress throughout the talks. Writers want a greater share of DVD residuals (they didn't see that revenue stream coming during the last contract), a deal on new media payments like digital downloads, and an expansion of collective bargaining to cover reality and nonfiction shows.
This could have a ripple effect throughout the industry, with productions shutting down. They've front-loaded a lot of their programming and endeavored to shoot as much as possible in anticipation of the strike. It's pretty clear that's what's going to happen. Next year, the Director's Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild have contracts that end in June, which would really cripple the industry. It appears that the studios would rather placate them and play hardball with the writers, as contract talks with directors are already ongoing.
There is unfortunately no cross-union partnership in Hollywood, in fact there's quite a bit of animosity between some of them. We are probably looking at a protracted walkout, without the other unions coming to their aid. And in a city where one out of every three employees in the industry are out of work on any given day, it's hard to incentivize mass action and non-union solidarity. You can be easily replaced.
Continuing my "sky is falling" rhetoric when it comes to the California economy, we now have over a million unemployed citizens, and even the positive job news is fleeting.
Despite a boost from the Hollywood job machine, the state unemployment rate ticked up in September, when more than 1 million Californians were looking for work, the first time that benchmark had been breached in nearly three years.
Jobs were added to the economy during the month but nearly half were in Los Angeles in the entertainment sector, according to figures released by the government Friday. Producers have been racing to get movies and television shows in the can in anticipation of a writers strike.
And Hollywood probably won't deliver a happy ending. Strike or no, when the shows and movies are finished, many of those jobs will evaporate.
And it looks more like strike than no, as the WGA overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike, by a 90%-10% margin. That could happen as soon as Halloween. Most studios aren't signing writers to any future deals right now, in anticipation of a strike. And the contracts of the Screen Actors Guild and the Director's Guild are up next summer.
Besides meaning a lot of crappy reality shows coming to a TV screen near you, this means a great deal of production personnel out of work. And that just adds to the strain on the economy right now.
Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University, said it was important to note that payroll job growth had slowed to 1.1% in September from 1.6% in January and that beyond construction and financial services, the professional business services sector jettisoned jobs in September.
"Every indication is the weakness is becoming more broad-based," he said. "Retailers are getting nervous about consumer spending, and clearly they are not adding to the employment base. The job machine is getting tired."
