Labor Rights - Tumblr Posts
"The Writers Guild has reached a tentative agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to end its strike after nearly five months. The parties finalized the framework of the deal Sunday when they were able to untangle their stalemate over AI and writing room staffing levels.
“We have reached a tentative agreement on a new 2023 MBA, which is to say an agreement in principle on all deal points, subject to drafting final contract language,” the guild told members this evening in a release, which came just after sunset and the start of the Yom Kippur holiday that many had seen deadline to wrap up deal after five days of long negotiations...
Despite today’s welcome news, it still will take a few days for the strike to be officially over as the WGA West and WGA East proceed with their ratification process. During the WGA’s last strike in 2007-08, a tentative agreement was reached on the 96th day and it wasn’t over until the 100th...
All attention will now turn to ratifying the WGA deal and getting SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP back to the bargaining table to work out a deal to end the actors’ strike, which has now been going on for 70 days.
Details of the WGA’s tentative agreement haven’t been released yet but will be revealed by the guild in advance of the membership ratification votes. Pay raises and streaming residuals have been key issues for the guild, along with AI and writers room staffing levels."
-via Deadline, September 24, 2023
Shrek supports unions and worker rights. This is why he is the true knight in shining armor.
#Happy Labor Day to Shrek I guess
Stock up on podcasts, movies you meant to watch, shows you missed; be ready and okay to not have new content for awhile, the strikes will delay your shows, movies you’re hoping for and more - I don’t want complaints aimed at anyone but the companies and execs that aren’t paying their artists!!
I like when people say things like “respect blue collar workers!” and then the same people turn around and completely dismiss the years of training it takes to be able to do that type of work safely and effectively.
“Telling people not to do their own electrical work because it’s dangerous is classist bc not everyone can afford an electrician” “I can’t believe that plumber charged me so much money for less than an hour of work, what a scam!” “In the post-capitalist utopia everyone will just take turns doing all types of blue-collar work, instead of years-long apprenticeships we’ll just give them a course in high school or something” “Building and safety codes are just pointless bureaucracy meant to stop the average citizen from being able to build their own structures” “I would love to be a farmer and just hang out tending to plants all day”
These are all things I have seen on this website by self-proclaimed worker’s rights advocates and I hope I don’t have to explain how incredibly insulting and dismissive it is when it’s not outright dangerous. There’s a LOT that needs to be fixed about our current labor system but “pretending like training and safety protocols aren’t important” and “pretending that those jobs are actually really easy and any layperson can do them” are uh. Not good solutions.
IWW Leader William D “Big Bill” Haywood Uncredited and Undated Photograph
“The mine owners did not find the gold, they did not mine the gold, they did not mill the gold, but by some weird alchemy all the gold belonged to them!“ William D Haywood, “The Autobiography of Big Bill Haywood” (published posthumously) 1929
Studio Sour Grapes
83 years ago, 20th Century Studios (now 20th Century Fox) released the masterpiece, Grapes Of Wrath, based upon the best selling novel by *John Steinbeck. Here is a reminder that the struggle for labor, for content creators, for artists, for writers, for all of us to be seen and valued as human has been a long one. Outright slavery was replaced with other institutions and legal methods designed to marginalize and control specific groups and socioeconomic classes and further divide labor based on race, gender, etc. Those in the arts who tried to call attention to this never ending struggle were (and in some cases still are) labeled with slurs, blacklists, and so on.
The point I am trying to make is that while highlighting the experiences of a downtrodden group of people resulted in some absolutely fantastic written, filmed, acted, and directed artistic endeavors, those endeavors resulted from the hardship and plight of ordinary people and their situation was the result of the greed and antipathy of the 'corporate' owners. Across a multitude of industries and types of labor, the many have been at the mercy of the few. It's easy to vilify the highest paid celebrities and writers in order to sow division and obfuscate the reality for most workers in America, whether within the art industry itself or any other form of labor.
The producers and owners have tried to say that the grapes are sour, that the writers don't make good wine, that the actors have plenty of money to pay for healthcare (not true), and so on.
Don't believe them: feed them the grapes of wrath. Feed them the truth.
*Without getting into the weeds regarding the controversy surrounding Steinbeck's novel & the novel by Sanora Babb's Whose Names Are Unknown (do look it up on wiki; fascinating story), it serves as a tale and backdrop for some of the current topics being discussed right now with respect to appropriation, equal pay, gender, as well as the name, image, and likeness.
Please sir, I want some more...
When I hear the phrase "starving artist," I know exactly which word of the two I would like to make obsolete and it is not the writer, the painter, the actor, the costumer, the set designer, or any of the other workers and artists who labor to give us the material with which we can experience the range of human experience.
I want more of the original that comes from the human being with a beating heart and not an electrical plug; from eyes or ears that have seen, heard, and lived not from a metal and plastic box filled with phrases jumbled together all higglety-pigglety.
Technology has brought the world wonderful advancements but never lose sight of the human beings who arise each day to live, love, and labor together on this planet we call home.
Note the rejection requesting certain protections for minors. Surprised? Shouldn't be. Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and Arkansas recently passed laws that rolled back child labor regulations and that includes dangerous industries such as meat packing, construction, etc.
Employing minors (and the dismissal of concerns regarding their employment) who often lack the experience and maturity to speak up about safety concerns, harassment, or wage theft is a trend in many industries and needs to stop.
Groot Is Not Amused
Here's someone who knows a little about pruning.
Pruning those trees in July...
and the Ents being unable to find Entwives because they were lost. One is a fictional story with so many truths about humanity. But the reality is tragic as well. Shame on the studio for cruelty against people and trees.
Chuck Dickens Has His Day In The Sun
It was the best of times...
It was the worst of times...
And somewhere on a sun-scorched L.A. sidewalk, I really hope there is a card carrying guild writer who is not suffering from heat stroke and manages to consider a modern day tale of two cities movies set amidst the strife and sorrow of modern day life and the class struggles and the gender struggles, and the race struggles that continue to exist. Wherein Chuck Dickens, producer, stepping outside in the scorching sun; runs across his old pal Carton. Carton, (whose nickname derives from his current state of homelessness), can barely recall what life was like before and during the year of the strike when the answers seemed so obvious and yet "it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness." While Dickens buys him lunch and they chat, and Carton thinks of one on his own: it was the age of conspicuous cruelty.
Is the tale I just constructed obscenely obvious (as to its origin) and didactic in its manner? Yep. But that's because I'm not the talent; the writers are. The artists are. Not the machines, but the humans. The ones who come up with the stories that make us laugh and cry and rage and wonder and most importantly: think, consider, imagine the possibilities.
I cannot imagine life without the tapestry of human experiences that continue to be woven as we speak. Pay the humans who help us discover perspectives, who help provide services and goods that improve our lives, and whose labor and efforts have value beyond numbers and machines. The choice to have done the better thing is sometimes made too late and the Age of Regret begins.
Cosmo's Moonstruck (Strike)
I simply cannot picture AI ever coming up with the delightful original screenplay (written by John Patrick Shanley) for the film Moonstruck (1987). Perhaps those in the AMPTP can heed Loretta Castorini's words and change the way they do things. What the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA are asking is not unreasonable. But then again, Loretta inherited her wisdom from her mother and Rose Castorini was a smart cookie...
Cosmo Castorini: I have no money.
Rose Castorini: You're as rich as Roosevelt. You're just cheap, Cosmo.
Hear that studio executives?
I hope the AMPTP won't wait until the moon is full and bright to make up. Even in darkness, the path forward is quite clear: compensation and safe treatment assist creativity and productivity and everyone benefits.
To those that say well, the studios could use AI and then have a writer polish it up:
Where Hugo, I Go...
Rewatched for the umpteenth time, the lovely film, Hugo (2011). If you haven't seen it, nor read the book by Brian Selznick upon which it is based, please consider a look and a read.
We rewatch films for a variety of reasons, just as we often do for books. Always something new and different to see, to hear, to learn, to experience.
But that wasn't why I put this film on the blog. With the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, now more than ever, the Martin Scorsese directed piece seems relevant. Here we have the young orphan, Hugo Cabret, living in the train station and maintaining the clocks; the timepieces that make the trains, and presumably society, run on time. Those horological machines are human made and what time represents in the lives of humans is a constant tick tock, tick tock. With every beat of our heart, every breath taken, time passes.
Hugo senses this, as does his young friend, Isabelle. At one point in the film, Isabelle questions the future and what her purpose in life is to be. Hugo thinks for a moment and remarks:
"I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too."
And during their conversation, Hugo also states:
"Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it's the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it's like you're broken."
Turning that scene over in my mind and thinking about the plot (w/o spoiling too much, it is a wonderful homage to humans and art and film and history and human connections) and the ongoing strikes...but...
How is it that we humans have so readily turned the machines into the masters and the humans who created them into the extra parts?
This marvelous film would be nothing without the humans who dreamed and created and built and moved and loved it into being along with the original work upon which it was based. The humans aren't broken, the system is. The studios/corporations must recognize the labor that gives purpose to our lives and place the technology in the place wherein it serves the greater good before time runs out.
I could contemplate this film and its themes for a long time, it is a real gem to view and think about in the context of the past, the present, and the future. Hats off to all involved.
Capturing Dreams
If the studios persist with their endeavors to disregard humans in favor of machines and the pursuit of profit for the few and paucity for the rest, get used to *The Sound Of Silence, for the synergy will be lost and we'll be alone...with our machines.
An earlier post of mine talked about the lovely film, Hugo, directed by Martin Scorsese and its relevance in relation to the ongoing WGA & SAG-AFTRA strikes and continuing in that vein, here's an additional thought or two:
A scene from the film has Isabelle, (pictured above-played by the actress Chloe Grace Moretz) reading to lead Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) an excerpt from a book, The Invention of Dreams.
"The filmmaker Georges Méliès was one of the first to realize that - films had the power - to capture dreams."
While Georges Méliès was a real person; if I recall correctly, the book title was created by author, Brian Selznick, who wrote the original novel from which the movie screenplay was adapted. Apparently there is now a group for writers that takes its name from that fictitious book included in both the novel and the film.
The word synergy is likely overused as a buzzword these days, but it seems apt here. Selznick's writing, Scorcese's direction, actors acting, filmgoers, the writing group mentioned above, and it expands ever outward. The numbers of people involved in this creative output are tied together in so many ways and so many dreams, some of which are yet to be realized. Film technology has changed since the 1930s setting of the story, without a doubt-- but machines cannot be allowed to replace the dreamers, the storytellers, the actors, the humans who labor to capture these dreams.
*The Sound Of Silence (1964, written by Paul Simon; performed by Simon & Garfunkel; Columbia).
Crisis: a perspective
The news that AMPTP has hired The Levinson Group isn't exactly a surprise. The PR agency is, after all, a top firm in crisis management, as many articles related. However, it is telling that what the AMPTP considers a crisis is their image and not workers being unable to pay their rents, mortgages, or qualify for health insurance among other things.
You want to know what makes for a good image? Being a good listener. Being compassionate. Seeing humans as humans and treating them that way. Recognizing that labor needs safe working conditions and fair wages. Cooperation comes before corporation in the dictionary and together, the artists and technicians working with studios have created magic for fans of their works. If a PR agency tries to convince the public that the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA members are the ones being uncooperative in their asks, I would suggest they consider that the public's perspective of what constitutes a crisis is a lot closer to what the strikers are facing than that for which the executives are hiring a spin doctor to heal.
He actually did promise a roller coster (and free frozen yogurt stands) to his workforce by the end of 2017. He was hoping to prevent unionization. I wish I was making that up.
as a treat for the defunctland guy we should all try to convince elon musk that he would be so so so good at designing roller coasters
Overlapping Concerns: BMA Union Protest Coincides with ‘Guarding the Art’ Exhibition
March 24, 2022 | Bmore Art | Words: Brandon Soderberg, Maximillian Alvarez
Union organizers accuse BMA Director Chris Bedford of privately stalling election while publicly championing security guards through a new exhibition.
While Baltimore artists, influencers, and reporters shuffled into the Baltimore Museum of Art for a preview of Guarding The Art, an upcoming exhibition that the BMA’s very own security guards curated in collaboration with curatorial staff, workers stood on the steps of the museum demanding their union be recognized.
On Tuesday, March 22, a group of seven workers who are part of the ongoing effort to unionize the Baltimore Museum of Art held signs with slogans such as “1 Voice, 1 Union” and “No More Delays”; one sign had “Guarding the Art” changed to “Guarding the Guards.” They were demanding that the BMA’s director, Christopher Bedford, sign the union’s election agreement. Bedford, the union stressed, has had two months to sign the agreement, which is needed in order to allow a union election organized by the city.
Demonstrating outside of the museum was Security Officer Ben Bjork, one of the 17 members of security who helped curate the 25-piece exhibit. One of the pieces Bjork chose for Guarding The Art was “50 Dozen,” a sculpture by Jeremy Alden made up of 600 pencils glued together to form a chair.
“It’s an exhibit with the goal of highlighting how important security guards are to the institution of the BMA. That they do more than just guard the art, they understand it and appreciate it, and are very valuable to the museum,” Bjork said. But what is even more important to Bjork than the chance to contribute to an exhibition is the opportunity to have more of a say over how the BMA treats its present and future workers.
“A lot of times, it feels like security is working at a different institution than some of the curators or higher-up people,” said Bjork, who has been with the museum for almost four years. “The union campaign has allowed me to actually work with people from other departments in a way that I didn’t necessarily even get to do in the Guarding The Art show because we’re actually organizing—like, collaborating together.”
The Baltimore Museum of Art workers’ demands include “job security, fair and livable wages, staff advancement for all,” as well as more involvement in decision making, more administrative accountability, and “manageable workloads that sustain safe working conditions and a healthy lifestyle.” They also want their union to be a wall-to-wall union that includes all of the museum’s workers, including security.
“It’s really important for us to have a wall-to-wall organizing unit, because that would allow there not to be a divide between different departments,” Bjork said. “One thing that we found is that we all had a lot of the same issues or problems at the museum, because a lot of the issues here are systemic, like at any big institution.”
Security Officer Micah Murphy, who joined the BMA after the union drive began but quickly signed a card, stressed the importance of security being part of the union.
“We want all the employees—all the eligible employees—to be in one bargaining unit,” Murphy said. “I mean, to me, it would be absurd to have a union without the security guards. We’re the largest department, from what I understand, and we are not the most privileged department—let me put it that way.”
Tuesday’s demonstration occurred at the same time as the press preview of Guarding The Art, an exhibition that has already received a great deal of positive national press due to its unique, worker-focused concept and message recognizing the creative contributions of museum staff members that are typically not appreciated.
“For the first time in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s history, the people who protect the art have selected the art,” a BMA press release announced. “The exhibition highlights the unique perspectives of the officers and their reflections on the featured objects are drawn from their many hours in the galleries, their interactions with visitors, and their personal stories and interests.”
Guarding The Art is the latest in a series of grand gestures by the BMA since Christopher Bedford became the director. When he arrived in 2016, he appeared intent on shaking things up and capturing the social justice zeitgeist of the moment—from the Black Lives Matter movement to #MeToo and into the George Floyd Uprising.
He was clearly on a very public mission. The museum showed significantly more exhibitions each year, putting greater demands on the staff, while also keeping the museum in the news, broadcasting an agitated sort of ambition. Black and brown artists were more frequently the focus of exhibitions and, in general, appeared on the museum’s walls more often; there were more nods to communities outside of the museum’s moneyed members—all positive changes broadcast publicly, but not an internal or systemic change.
While many have applauded the director’s initiatives, others have questioned Bedford’s sincerity, viewing this directorship as a resume-builder on the way to a “bigger, better” museum. (When he was originally hired, he said he would stay five years.) In 2020, the BMA announced it would only acquire art made by women so it could “rectify centuries of imbalance”—an impossibility in a collection of nearly 100,000 historic works created mostly by men—which garnered widespread national acclaim in dozens of articles. However, it turned out that in 2020, the museum collected 65 works by 49 female-identifying artists.
Also in 2020, Bedford attempted to sell (or “deaccession”) three pieces of art by white male artists (Andy Warhol, Clyfford Still, and Brice Marden) from the museum collection during temporary, COVID-related changes to normally tight regulations around the practice designated by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) designed to keep struggling museums from closing or laying off staff. Instead, the BMA announced a plan to generate $65 million for “care of the collection,” new acquisitions, diversity and equity programming, and an increase in staff salaries. When some donors threatened to pull their money and past presidents of the AAMD issued a letter requesting the museum cancel the deaccessioning, the paintings were pulled off the market on the day of the sale. The museum still was able to raise security staff salaries that year from $13.50 to $15 an hour after fundraising specifically for that purpose, leaving many asking why the museum’s ability to provide raises had been so closely tied to talking points about the deaccessioning.
When the BMA Union’s organizing committee went public in September 2021, its statement seemed to challenge Bedford and the BMA’s progressive bonafides: “We are proud to carry out our mission of serving the Baltimore public and providing ‘artistic excellence and social equity’ in all facets of our work. To that end, we are channeling this passion and energy to form a union, which will help build a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable institution and change the long-standing cultural canon of privilege at our museum.”
Complicating things is the fact that Bedford is on his way out of the BMA. Last month, he announced he had accepted a new job at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). His last day as BMA director is June 3, 2022. SFMOMA, workers stressed, is already unionized. For some BMA workers, Bedford could recognize their union and finally walk the walk on all the “equity” and “diversity” talk he deployed to define his reign at the BMA.
Earlier this month, the BMA posted a message on its website about the unionization effort, saying that the museum would not agree to an election overseen by the city because of the power they claimed this gives a third-party arbitrator. Namely, this kind of arbitration would enable the wall-to-wall union to exist and has been a common practice in Baltimore City. The BMA suggested instead that the workers’ union election should go through the National Labor Relations Board instead—a nonstarter for the workers because the NLRB’s rules don’t allow a wall-to-wall union that would include the security guards.
A letter to the BMA’s board from the workers questioned the BMA’s concerns about third-party arbitration. “The City is offering to take responsibility for conducting a fair and just union election process. We trust them to facilitate the election even if that means using an accredited third-party arbitrator who specializes in conducting union elections,” the letter read. “To deny us a fair union election process that would allow us to be represented as one unit and one union, guards and non-guards alike, due to a misunderstanding and distrust of standard union election procedures is egregious and offensive.”
When reached for comment, the BMA provided an email written by Bedford that reiterates the museum’s stances on third-party arbitration and instead, suggested instead going through the NLRB (which will not include security guards), but also stated that the third-party arbitrator option is not completely off the table: “Given that we are open to a single union at the BMA and to trying to find a path forward that would allow for this possibility, we will meet again with legal counsel to explore further the third-party arbitrator route,” the email said, referencing a March 22 board meeting where Michael Huber, the Chief of Staff from the Mayor’s Office, expressed the city’s desire to discuss the options for a non-NLRB-run secret ballot election.
One union member, who requested anonymity, said Bedford seems to be trying to run out the clock instead of making a decision. “Bedford’s using distraction. So whether he wants the union or not, he’s saying, ‘Oh, it’s the board.’ And then he’s like, ‘Oh, it’s the city,’” the worker said. “And he leaves in June. So, we can also just see his own delaying tactics.”
As BmoreArt reported last year, BMA “workers find it hard to reconcile the fact that their director is paid an annual salary of more than $400,000 (according to the latest tax filings) while hourly workers’ pay just recently went up to $15 an hour. From fiscal year 2019 to fiscal year 2020, Bedford’s salary increased from $403,936 to $438,297—the difference is more than what one (full-time, $15 an hour) security guard makes annually.”
Low wages and poor worker conditions have long been an issue at the BMA and at most museums across the country. Some readers may recall back in 2016 when a local news segment at the BMA was briefly interrupted by Ian, a BMA security officer. When Ian appeared on camera and was asked what he did at the museum, he said, “I work 40 hours a week and I live below the poverty line. And I advocate for living wages and workers’ rights.”
In September 2021, the BMA union campaign went public but it had been in the works since summer 2020. The pandemic made the need for a union even more apparent, Bjork explained.
“We were really grateful—or at least I was—that when the museum closed down, they kept security on the payroll. They didn’t lay us off or anything, which I was really grateful for—to have a job throughout the pandemic,” Bjork said. “But then when [the BMA] reopened, it was really clear that all of the decisions that were made at the museum were not made by people who had to come into work anymore; they were all made by people who worked from home. And a lot of times, they were really slow to shut the museum down or to respond to COVID-19 on the day-to-day.”
Capacity restrictions and other responses to COVID-19 by the museum were, Bjork explained, “impossible to enforce as a security guard” yet fell on the guards to enforce. The logistics and planning for reducing capacity did not involve security guards’ input.
“The divide between the leadership and the actual workers who had to come in? It’s really stark. And that’s definitely how this organizing started,” he said. “With the timing of the Guarding The Art show, it just reminds me, again, how excluded from the conversation we are still.”
Security officer Murphy stressed that the union benefits the BMA too.
“I think because of that pandemic, and ‘the great resignation’ and everything, they should be concerned about staff retention,” Murphy said. “And the union would be one way to improve that. Certainly from the museum’s perspective, it makes sense to have a union I think because they want to keep staff on, right?”
Bjork said that some of the security officers who worked on Guarding The Art (which was two years in the making) have since left the BMA: “A third of the guards who are part of Guarding The Art don’t work at the museum anymore.”
The significance of Guarding The Art is not lost on Bjork, but organizing with your fellow workers beats co-curating with the institution that won’t recognize your union.
“I’m proud of the show and I’m proud of the work that a lot of my colleagues did in it and I think it’s pretty cool that we finally got to have a creative impact on the museum,” Bjork said. “But I also think that the only way that our job would meaningfully improve is if we were able to organize and if Bedford wants to show how important we are to the institution, that’s the only real way that he can do it: By allowing us to go forward with unionization.”
This story was originally published by The Real News Network on March 24, 2022, and is published in partnership with BmoreArt.
https://bmoreart.com/2022/03/overlapping-concerns-bma-union-protest-coincides-with-guarding-the-art-exhibition.html