 The WGA and the Attempt to Organize the Unorganized: Anti-union misconceptions
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Dec. 28th, 2007 @ 03:21 pm 
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Ron Galloway, a corporate apologist with a generally anti-union bent, has written a red baiting anti-WGA screed at Huffington Post (see Revolutionary Street Cred). Normally rabid anti-worker nonsense such as this is best ignored, but I think it provides a chance to clear up some misconceptions about the attempts of the WGA to organize the unorganized.
Galloway first says that "trying to co-opt reality and animation writers as part of their negotiations is a sub-optimal strategy by the WGA leadership." And later he says, "When the Longshoremen in Long Beach go on strike, do they try and pull in container manufacturers into the guild as part of the negotiation? No, they tend to the needs and concerns of their current members. Current. Members."
Apparently, Mr. Galloway in his continuous encomiums to WalMart, and similar corporate entities, has neglected to take into account the history of the union movement. Certainly, his reference to the longshore union shows little familiarity with the history of waterfront unions. It used to be standard practice for waterfront unions to strike in aid of organizing those who were not yet members of their union. The strike as a tactic in an organizing drive either to incorporate further members into the International Longshoremen Association (ILA) or to aid other unions in organization was not only commonplace but the main tactic for organizing the unorganized. All of those with even a cursory familiarity with the history of the West Coast waterfront unions would know this. In fact it should be general knowledge for anyone who even attempts to write on these topics. But people such as Galloway are so anti-Union that they don't let either facts or history get in their way when writing on the WGA strike. In fact, one would only have to take a couple of seconds to look at one of the typical educational resources such as the California History Online, which states in its section on the 1934 waterfront strike:
The ILA [International Longshoremen's Association] demanded improved wages and working conditions, coastwide bargaining rights, and the establishment of union-controlled hiring halls. The strike began in early May and continued through the summer.
Notice that the ILA demanded, coast wide bargaining rights. In other words, in their strike, they were bargaining for coast-wide jurisdiction over unorganized workers, many of whom weren't members of the ILA, or were members of other company unions. Many of these workers had waterfront related jobs but were not longshoremen, as defined by the waterfront companies, and thus were kept out of longshore unions by company definition. This company tactic should sound familiar to anyone who is following the writers' strike. The conglomerates who "own" the shows have simply redefined writing work as "editing" jobs or assisting jobs, in order to claim that people who write dialogue on animated programs are not writers. And if those writers try to join unions they, as often as not, are fired or laid-off.
In this strike there has been a lot of talk about how unprecedented it is for the WGA to ask for the right to represent writers in animation and reality shows, as part of their contract negotiations. There has been denunciations of the WGA leadership as ideological radicals and as focusing on non-economic "jurisdictional issues". The companies and their intellectual propagandists talk about Patric Verrone as if he were Harry Bridges (the radical leader of the 1934 ILA strike) or Walter Reuther, (the social democratic leader of the UAW).* If I were him I would consider this a high compliment, but in fact it is just the usual kind of scare tactics that companies use against unions. The strike demand for the right of representation of the unorganized is in fact a typical demand of all unions who are attempting to organize against union busting companies or companies that play one union off another union. The UAW used these kinds of organizing demands in the hey-day of their organizing of the Big Three; the Teamsters did it when organizing over-the-road independent drivers; and yes, the dockworkers did it when they were trying to organize. When-ever a union is actually organizing the unorganized, instead of simply (and selfishly) trying to create a monopoly for current members, some sort of job-action in favor of non-members is typically engaged in by that union. This does not mean that bargaining to represent some unorganized sector in an industry is an inflexible demand. In fact it is a matter of power and negotiation. And it does not have to be absolutely accepted or rejected. There is a lot of middle ground in such negotiating positions. It is a middle ground that the AMPTP moguls refuse to even explore. For instance one compromise would be for the bosses to agree simply to not oppose organizing drives. In other words, the bosses can withhold immediate recognition of specific unorganized bargaining units, but agree not to oppose any union (WGA or IATSE) in their attempts to organize a unit. Or the companies could agree on recognition of a union in principle but only accept a specific bargaining unit at the time of a simple signing of union cards, without delaying all union recognition until a NLRB administered vote occurs. But most of all they can agree that they will stop harassing union organizers in their attempts to organize.
So the attempt to organize animation and reality show writers is not an all-or-nothing negotiating position, except that the masters of the AMPTP absolutely refuse to negotiate.
The fact is that the companies, in the case of the current situation in the "entertainment" industry, have engaged in firing people who try to join the WGA. In the present political situation this is the typical union busting stance of most companies... and it happens to be an unfair labor practice. But because our labor laws have become toothless over the last quarter century, it is much easier for companies to break the law than it is to accept union members among their employees. It has become increasingly clear that the only way most unions can organize is through the strike and picket-line weapon.
This situation is not unique to the WGA. In fact the Hollywood unions are far behind in realizing that they have three choices: 1) give up organizing altogether and become restrictive craft unions, with a small elite membership, that tries to maintain a monopoly of the labor force in a small sector of an industry; 2) become a company oriented union that offers the bosses sweetheart deals in exchange for a closed shop and non-opposition to increased membership in limited areas; 3) an all-out organizing drive with publicity, picket lines, job-actions, demonstrations, and if necessary strikes, along the model of "Justice for Janitors" and some other unions. When Mr. Galloway is not acting as an anti-union apologist for WalMart or Wall Street, he is in favor of the first two kinds of unions -- unions that represent narrow interests and never encroach on the hallowed rights of management decision making, unions that only care for a few members, and don't look beyond their own little grievances. The WGA leadership has shown time and time again that they care about union organizing, even beyond their own industry. Verrone and the WGA leadership have been strong in their support of other unions, even when those unions have opposed them.
In reality there are really only two choices for the WGA. Either they fold up shop or they try representing the interests of people whose only possibility of countering the tremendous power of multinational corporations is collective action. Patric Verrone and the WGA leadership have chosen the latter path. Far from being a "sub-optimal strategy" the attempt to organize the unorganized is the only principled strategy that a good union can take. They may or may not have the power (including combined support of other unions in solidarity) to succeed, but at least they are trying to fight.
* Notice they never compare Patric Verrone to Caesar Chavez or the WGA to the United Farm Workers, even though their basic outlook qua-union is not dissimilar. There is a vast difference between the mostly college educated WGA and the mostly immigrant UFW but the basic idea of putting pressure on bosses to organize the unorganize is similar. So why not make the comparison. Because basically it would provide too much sympathy to the WGA. It would make people think that this is actually an small union fighting leviathan corporations.
Jerry Monaco
28 December 2007
New York City
[Caveat: I am not a member of the WGA, nor do I speak for any of the officers or members of that union or any other union. I have been a member of other unions in the past and I am a supporter of a stronger union movement in the United States. J.M.]
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons License.
Jerry Monaco
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| From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) monacojerry |
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| Date: |
December 29th, 2007 11:33 am (UTC) |
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From Ron Galloway
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I received the following:
"from Ron Galloway
from stohley
Hi, it's Ron Galloway from the HuffPo. Thanks for not being too mean. 2 quick points. If you'll google me, you'll see Wal-Mart hates me because I very publicly pwned them for wage caps. And I've worked with ILAs and IBEWs down South for about 20 years with their Taft Hartley plans and personal investments. They act professionally. But these WGA guys have mismanaged this in my opinion, especially David Young, although Alec Baldwin blames Verrone. Anyway, I threw out the Longshoremen in my piece off the top of my head. I did not know the history. I concede your point. BTW one out of every 10 containers coming into Long Beach from China goes straight to Wal-Mart. I'm not sure I'm an apologist, but I do favor the folks that put capital at risk. The folks at the HuffPo let me write there because they told me I "stir the pot." Guess I did. Now it's back to the 5-DVD box set of Blade Runner. It's kept me up all night. Regards and happy new year. Ron"
Unions were started in order to protect people working hazardous jobs. In the present environment unions are obsolete and do more to hamper creativity than to support it.
If a writer is good, then the company will pay them more because otherwise they will go elsewhere. Maybe write a book or something. If a writer is bad, they will join a union and try to force an employer to pay them something they could never earn on their own.
Look at the state of television and movies: It all sucks! The unions have some blame in that. It's not just the producers. Get rid of the unions, allow the whole mess to sink, and then someone somewhere will get a good idea and it will make money...and they will either get paid well for it or they will go somewhere else (like the boys from Southpark maybe?).
Corporations are not evil. If it were not for corporations, none of you would have jobs, health care, the internet, or really much of anything at all. So blow it out your ass.
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| From: | monacojerry |
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| Date: |
January 2nd, 2008 10:25 am (UTC) |
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Re: Unions part 1
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It is not worth much to reply to crudities. A person who ends a comment by saying "blow it out your ass", is neither willing to listen, nor wishes to be listened to. So if I wished to actually engage in a discussion with such a person I would first have to convince him or her that actual give and take, listening and hearing, is preferable to flinging crude insults or cliches.
But as is often the case with people who are crude they also prefer to remain ignorant of the things they speak. For instance in the final paragraph the writer says "If it were not for corporations, none of you would have jobs, health care, the internet, or really much of anything at all." He says such things without thought.
So let's take the most obvious ignorance first.
The writer obviously has no idea how what we call “capitalism” works in this country. The internet was not created by corporations. The internet was created by the Pentagon and existed for years as a states supported electronic infrastructure run by the Pentagon and shared by Universities. When I first began to use the internet in the 1980s it was still run by the Pentagon. It is only after many years of creating the infrastructure of the internet that it was privatized and turned over to profit making corporations. Even now many of the most creative infrastructure solutions on the internet have been developed by people not working for profit but on open source software, media, etc.
Further the writer seems ignorant of the fact that the computer technology that we use to access the internet was also all invented with huge government subsidies and in most cases was created whole by the government. This includes everything from basic theory to the first hardware and software. The very mathematical theories that allow for bits of information to be passed from one computer to the next was government paid-for research in World War II era labs. It was our tax-dollars that created this new technology, and it was individual men and women who were engaged in interesting intellectual; projects that did the work. The great corporations only gathered the profit after profits were possible. The writer would do himself some good by if he rectified his ignorance on these matters.
As for health care: Until very recently most for-profit corporations wanted nothing to do with health care. Most health care institutions were run by not for profit entities or by the government. It was only when the government made it profitable for insurance companies to garner relatively risk free profit from health care in the late 1960s and early 1970s that corporations began to enter health care. As far as pharmeceutical companies are concerned, drug research is highly subsidized by our tax dollars and protected by the federal government.
Jerry Monaco
It also seems from the vulgar writer's point of view that corporations own our work. The work we do for hire is "their" work. Apparently corporate business entities are so good to us that they provide us with jobs, and we should be grateful to them for allowing them to make profits off of our work! There is no thought in the writer's world view, that these corporations are effective monopolies, bigger than most states and nations.
This view of how we should be grateful to corporations goes hand and hand with the writer's ignorance of what the WGA strike is about. The fact is that the corporations own the copyrights of what the writers create. They got this ownership because we are one of the industrialized nations that allow corporations to effectively steal copyright ownership from the creators of work. The bargaining power of such huge business entities is such that a lone person has no chance to bargain equally when the person is bargaining alone. The need for unions is the need to balance the huge power of huge corporation-states like General Electric, who run our lives without our consent. If the Writers Guild of America were strong enough they could actually rectify a great injustice and win the copyrights back for the people who create work. Perhaps someday a strong union movement will rectify this injustice. There are plenty of creative people who have had great ideas and created great works, that big businesses capitalize on while the creators themselves make little or nothing on their ideas and works. Why? Because in relation to a huge business entity a single individual has very little bargaining power. Unions exist to give the individual a minimal amount of bargaining power by maintaining simple solidarity with others in a situation similar to yours. Businesses have their lawyers, accountants and economists, and hundreds of other representatives to look after their interests. Working people need to work together in order to help themselves against the vast array of hired guns that businesses use to reduce the compensation they pay for workers.
As for union's in general: It is working people who risk life and limb, who invest their time and days in work. Investors and manufactures all have their "unions" they are called corporations and often they are called state and city governments, which are more or less bought and sold by business interests. What the writer seems to be for are unions for the rich, unions for investors, but no unions for people who actually work. Working people in all societies only make gains if they stick together and this includes bargaining together. This is true not only of our corporate dominated society but of all complex societies for the past 10,000 years.
Jerry Monaco
P.S. I am perfectly willing to engage in a discussion with almost anyone, even with people who seem to hate working people and love coporations. But this converstation must be premised on basic civility. I have replied to edwardkarl's vulgar and unthinking post, by calling it vulgar and unthinking. I am willing to reply to posts that show a lack of knoweldge but I am not willing to reply to posts that contain vulgarities. All such posts will be deleted after a first warning.
The first premise of this journal beyond on all others is that people should listen to each other. This does not mean that the responses and the posts cannot be hard hitting. But they also must be responsive.
Jerry
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