Tuesday, January 15, 2008

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Orlando

The IATSE’s quarterly General Executive Board meetings are an excellent way to catch up with doings in the world of labor. Day 2 played out as follows:

  • Here’s a big surprise: The Bush administration is doing everything in its power to make it as difficult as possible for labor unions to survive and organize. The National Labor Relations Board, set up during FDR’s New Deal to help unions, now serves to hinder it. Their latest set of regs were written by big business with that very goal in mind.

  • The IATSE and AFTRA have been meeting to coordinate organizing and contract negotiations.

  • Movie piracy has cost the entertainment business billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and millions of health and pension contribution hours. The Bush administration has been indifferent to defending intellectual property rights.

I wonder what the Bush administration would do if Wal-Mart or Goldman-Sachs had six billion dollars stolen from them, rather than from us.

-- Steven Soderbergh

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just curious:

Did you ever hear what happened with the Animation Union (local 843) in Orlando after Disney shut down in Orlando ?

Is it officially disbanded ?

Steve Hulett said...

It pretty much died a quick death, since it was tied to Disney Animation Florida.

When the closed the studio, 843 closed with it.

Anonymous said...

Hmmmmm... someone should tell IATSE . The Disney FL studio closed in early 2004 , but IATSE web page still lists Local 843:

Local 843 Animation Guild Orlando, FL

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