I always enjoy Craig Mazin's blog The Artful Writer. (And enjoyed the comments section back when he had it.) Today's post about unions, negotiations and following written rules has some good things in it, also an item that makes my neck hairs stand at attention:
... In a stunning display of awful timing, miserable management and overall incompetence, not-soon-enough-to-be-retired WGAE Executive Director Mona Mangan has somehow managed to enrage her own employees so much…they’re now threatening to go on strike.
Apparently, Mona negotiated a contract with her staff’s union. They ratified the deal, but then Mona apparently decided to change some of the terms of the agreement after it was ratified, which is sort of like the seller trying to hike the price of an eBay item after the auction closes ...
Because she is apparently reneging, and because her staff’s union is rightly refusing to sign a new, lesser deal than the one she already agreed to, Mona decided to delay paying her staff their Christmas bonuses.
The word that comes to mind is “Jesus!” ...
This little dust up, of course, has hit the media here and there, but not in a BIG way. But it kind of doesn't throw a good light on the House of Labor, and sort of plays into the hands of the AMPTP.
Some years ago, a studio exec chortled to me: "Yeah, labor unions. Scream and yell about worker rights. But they usually treat their own staffs like shit."
I always cringe when it turns out to be true.
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1 comments:
I know the California Teacher's Union has had a fair amount of controversy over that, as have UNITE-HERE, SEIU, and alot of the others top-down, non-worker organizing unions. At the other end of the spectrum is some unions such as the ILA and the Teamsters, whose leadership and staff cash huge paychecks while whittling away their own members livelihoods. The only ones which seem to avoid either end are the ones that rely mostly off of workers fulfilling staff functions.
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