Community spirit on Par's picket line

With full-scale WGA picketing at Los Angeles studio lots back this week, guild members are presenting an upbeat and cheerful attitude on the lines following a three-week break for the holidays.

"I am feeling a revived sense of optimism," noted Gail Lerner at Paramount's Windsor gate at midday Wednesday. About 30 WGA and SAG members were on the line.

"I had felt kind of discouraged over the holidays because of being distant from the discussion," Lerner explained. "It's nice to be back connecting with other writers out here."

Lerner also noted that the recent interim WGA deals signed by United Artists and David Letterman's Worldwide Pants had provided a positive boost to those on the line. And she was completely in support of the guild's position that the Golden Globes would be picketed as long as the event was being televised by NBC.

"It's right for us to picket them," Lerner added. "It was NBC's call." 

Comments

[Rodney Bauer]

‘Moving Forward’ and ‘Change’, How Words Effect Our Thoughts And Actions

I was going to call this ‘Democracy and Unions’ but it turns out that title only implies a portion of what I wanted to address overall. It is necessary, however, to get into that subject for a minute as a sort of prelude. So, sorry for this boring historical type stuff but here’s some background on democracy and unions. I’m using excerpts from a ‘Presidential Address’ entitled ‘Democracy and Industrial Relations’, by Paula B. Voos,
Rutgers University, to The Industrial Relations Research Association. The Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA), founded in 1947 as the Industrial Relations Research Association (IRRA), is an organization for professionals in industrial relations and human resources. The organization uses the slogan "Shaping the Workplace of the Future."
Excerpts Started
My central thesis is that labor unions make a crucial contribution to political democracy. Labor unions play a vital role in making the United States and other nations more democratic than they otherwise would be. My fear is that today America is drifting in a less and less democratic direction in part because of the current weakness of the American labor movement. Unions are essential vehicles of democracy in contemporary societies and when they are weak democracy suffers.
Democracy may be doing well in the world, but it is not doing so well in the United States. There has been a marked decline in voting in the United States, a key form of democratic participation. Today only a little more than half of the eligible voters go to the polls in Presidential elections--and in local races perhaps a quarter of eligible voters often decide who is mayor or whether a bond proposal has passed. Income is correlated with voting, and also with other forms of political participation--from attending a school board meeting to asking others to vote for a candidate. Not surprisingly, income is also highly correlated with making political donations, and political donations have become a more and more important form of political participation in the United States. One consequence of current low voting participation rates in the United States is an electorate that has a higher than average income, and a different set of economic interests and concerns, from the population as a whole--reinforcing a conservative tilt to current electoral politics. All this matters. It has serious consequences for economic policy, for social safety nets and public services, and for the laws that govern the workplace, including labor law itself. Why? Because when citizens do not vote, politicians do not need to address their concerns.
The open expression of the distinct interests of employees through independent labor organizations is an important foundation of a plural, democratic society. It is precisely for this reason that the United States promoted legislation in both Germany and Japan after World War II that provided a legal foundation for an independent labor movement in those countries as part of the post-war democratization process.
What is notable about the public policies advocated by American unions is how often they reflect the interests of a broad swath of Americans. In fact, the economic and public policies that benefit union members typically coincide with the policies that benefit wide sections of society. These are public policies that promote full employment, rising wage and living standards, social insurance for those who cannot work, access to good quality health insurance, excellent public education, safe streets and workplaces, full equality for all citizens, and so forth. A current example would be the considerable effort unions have made to protect overtime pay.
Effective voice requires power. In contemporary market-based societies, working people are largely a dominated group. Only by empowering themselves through united, common activity in a labor organization can working people effect change--either in the workplace or in the society as a whole. Power is not given by the powerful--it must be created by the initially powerless through a successful challenge to existing situations of subordination. And once power is created through collective action, employees will use it to express their own needs and interests, including their own economic interests.
Excerpts Ended
To Summarize the above: 1) Unions are good for democracy. 2) Hardly anyone votes except rich people. 3) Nobody gives up their power, you have to make yourself powerful without their help.

Now for an aside that has nothing to do with anything: Q. What came first, the chicken or the egg? A. Depends on your call time. Q. Why did the chicken cross the road? A. Company move ! (thanks to Gerry Lowry)

Who did I vote for during the last presidential election? NOBODY! Why? Because I worked a gazillion hours that day and even though I was off work before the polling place closed I was too tired to go straight there and vote. Oddly enough I didn’t CARE ! Why? Because there was nobody on the election ballot that I wanted to be president (and nobody on the ballot for other offices I wanted in office either). I’m not sure why that is but I suspect it has something to do with a democratic president pushing through NAFTA and using his intern as a humidor, and all the democrats thinking this guy is like the most cool and popular democrat of them all. What could the rest be like?

But we may be ‘Moving Forward’ or ready for ‘Change’. ‘Moving Forward’ happened to be in a sentence used by the newly elected democratic congress, which went something like this: “We hate you President Bush, because you went to war with Iraq for phoney reasons and with no plan to ‘Move Forward’. The implication was that nobody knew what to do after actually winning the war. Everyone just sat there and said, “Now what?”, after the fact.
The very next day (a brilliant political stroke) everyone in the Bush administration was using the words “moving forward” while addressing anyone who would listen about what their plans really were. Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and all the interns were saying things like, “When I wonder what I’m going to have for dinner, moving forward, I’m thinking chicken!” People used to say “in the future” instead. It makes me think of the movie title “Back to the Moving Forward”. At any rate, since the republicans embraced, like a bear hug, ‘moving forward’ it took the sting out of the congressional attack. Unbelievable but true.
I am worried that the new mantra, “Change”, is going to be used as wantonly. By everyone. For everything. Instead of saying, “Let’s try to do this differently”, we would say, “Let’s change”. And my cause for worry isn’t about what words mean, but what our focus is on. A friend recently told me Obama isn’t just saying “Change”, but is talking about getting the electorate (normal human beings) involved in the political process, represented by their leaders (him) and giving everyone a ‘chicken in every pot’, which would be good for us because chickens are the backbone of the film business. If it wasn’t for chickens no movies could be made at all, anywhere in the world !
To summarize the above: 1) I didn’t vote because I was tired and didn’t know of a candidate worth voting for. 2) words mean a lot but focus is even more important. Especially to an AC.

And a reminder: 1) Unions are good for democracy. 2) Hardly anyone votes except rich people. 3) Nobody gives up their power, you have to make yourself powerful without their help.

So, what I’m thinking here is that it’s time for a beer. No, really, I’m thinking that if unions are good especially for me, and happens to be good for democracy, and our power as a union is magnified by its membership numbers, cohesive message to our employers, and the solidarity we inherently share with others in the same business (same employers), then maybe it’s time for a change moving forward. Complicated or not, let’s not cross picket lines, and take the power we deserve, and then call a rich friend to drive us to the voting booth because I have no money for gas.

Rod Bauer, IATSE 52