Other labor leaders are coalescing around the writer’s strike because they know that a hig-profile action like this will have positive benefits for them, and might actually start a conversation about union representation in America.  If the adage of “If it’s not on TV, it didn’t happen” holds true, then “If it’s stopping TV, it’s REALLY happening” holds even truer.  Joss Whedon explains:

“The trappings of a union protest…” You see how that works? Since we aren’t real workers, this isn’t a real union issue. (We’re just a guild!) […] this IS a union issue, one that will affect not just artists but every member of a community that could find itself at the mercy of a machine that absolutely and unhesitatingly would dismantle every union, remove every benefit, turn every worker into a cowed wage-slave in the singular pursuit of profit. (There is a machine. Its program is ‘profit’. This is not a myth.) This is about a fair wage for our work. No different than any other union. The teamsters have recognized the importance of this strike, for which I’m deeply grateful. Hopefully the Times will too.

I love the cross-union solidarity that this strike has engendered.  It’s not just the Teamsters; Steve Carell single-handedly shut down The Office, for example.  And now Hillary Clinton has joined other Democratic Presidential hopefuls with a strong statement of support.

“I support the Writers Guild’s pursuit of a fair contract that pays them for their work in all mediums. I hope the producers and writers will return to the bargaining table to work out an equitable contract that keeps our entertainment industry strong and recognizes the contributions writers make to the success of the industry.”

No talks have been scheduled, as the studios appear to be preferring a “bleed them out” strategy, despite the WGA already conceding on expanding DVD residuals.  While I still feel that jurisdiction and expanding membership should be a strong part of any final deal, clearly the writers deserve a fair share of the profits they are instrumental in creating.

The Writers Guild of America took to the streets today, beginning what promises to be a long strike in one of the largest industries in California.  I couldn’t be more in support of the people who are the lifeblood of Hollywood, the creative personnel that are the engine of the last vibrant manufacturing industry in America.  Unfortunately, I’m getting the sense that their leadership is falling back on an old union strategy of securing benefits for their existing membership rather than allowing their membership to grow, and this will have disastrous consequences for the future of the labor movement.

Two and a half years ago, I wrote a post, It’s the Unions, Stupid, which documented my experience at a Writers Guild meeting dedicated to organizing reality and nonfiction television storytellers. 

Yes, a lot of reality television is slipshod, exploitative and dumbed-down. But people don’t understand that the rank-and-file who work in it are often being as exploited as the contestants. Reality is big because of its low costs, mainly because, unlike scripted shows, it is not unionized. This has become a bargaining chip for the networks in their dealings with the Writer’s Guild, Director’s Guild, and others: take our crappy contract, or we’ll just make more reality shows.

Reality show workers make less than their counterparts in scripted TV. They work largely on weekly salaries, usually for no overtime, yet during stressful parts of production 16-hour days and weekend work are all too typical. Their credits are so amorphous that they bear no relation to the actual job worked. If a reality show is sold to another network for use in reruns, none of the workers see any residual fees. They have no employer-paid health care or pensions, and as freelancers on short-term assignments, they have little or no job security. 1 out of every 3 TV and film industry professionals are out of work on any given day in Hollywood (just go to a coffee shop at 2:30 on a Wednesday for proof).

This probably sounds whiny to many, and actually, it should. Most of these people are well-paid for the work that they do. Of course, that’s mainly because of the power of collective bargaining. The sundry labor unions have forced Hollywood to share its profits with its employees, with very few exceptions. But while reality television workers do benefit from that to a degree, they are the crack in the dike that allows the networks to cash in.

Along with hundreds of others, I signed a card at that time, in May 2005, allowing the WGA to negotiate on my behalf.  These negotiations ran up against a brick wall.  There were a couple high-profile meetings and protests.  Nothing.  There were lawsuits against production companies who were making their employees work 18-hour days, falsifying time cards, changing start dates and delaying productions that cost the employees thousands of dollars.  They resulted in brief reconciliations that were eventually rolled back.  There was a high-profile strike last year by the writer-producers of America’s Next Top Model.  The editors, who were unionized through IATSE, didn’t honor the picket line, the season of shows were finished, and those writers were not brought back the following season.  There was talk of a “wage-and-hour” campaign, to sue the production companies for overtime pay.  It never materialized.

The light at the end of the tunnel was the coming negotiations on a new contract.  Many thought that organizing reality and nonfiction storytellers would be a key bargaining chip.  After all, in the event of a strike, the studios could simply ramp their nonunion shows into production and move forward with business as usual.  So to avert the same thing happening far into the future, it made sense for the WGA to take a stand now, expand their membership, and leave the studios with less wiggle room to make a schedule during subsequent threats to walk out.  Indeed, this is exactly what the studios are saying is their alternative now.

Prime-time schedules would appear relatively unchanged for a couple of months, since a handful of episodes have already been prepared. But if the strike drags on the 2008 schedule will be heavy on reality shows (not covered by the current contracts) and reruns […]

Though CW Entertainment Chief Dawn Ostroff says they’re prepared, with new reality series like Farmer Wants a Wife and Crowned waiting in the wings, she, too, sees no advantage to striking: “It’s just better for everyone if habits aren’t broken and if people that are getting into characters and shows are able to continue to do so.”

I’m not at the bargaining table, so I can only go by the many reports I’ve seen, but it appears to me that the WGA is holding the line on DVD and Internet residuals.  Now, those are important issues that must be part of an overall agreement.  But the difference between those benefits discussions and expanding membership to other programming mirrors the central debate within the labor community; should they get as much for the dwindling numbers of union members they have, or should the focus be on expanding membership?  This is the schism that caused the SEIU and other unions to leave the AFL-CIO and form the Change To Win coalition.  Andy Stern and the other new-labor leaders firmly believe that the old paradigm is failing America, where union membership has declined to a great degree over the past 50 years.  If you give management a lifeline, a way to get their work done without having to deal with a union, they’re going to take it.  There are significantly less situation comedies in production than there were ten years ago.  There are less dramas, too, at least at the network level.

I hear the criticism that reality shows are cheap and tawdry and a major factor in the decline of Western civilization.  To a large extent I agree with it.  But if you hate reality shows, the number one thing you should hope for is that they become organized.  Ratings are only a small part of the story of reality’s success; with the exception of American Idol, that growth has leveled off.  It’s the enormous difference in production costs that has led to the burgeoning of the genre, and that’s entirely attributable to the fact that they’re nonunion.  The chain of TV and entertainment can only be as strong as its weakest link.  And I believe that, by foregrounding the monetary issues and not fighting to expand the membership, the WGA is undergoing the wrong strategy for the future, one that will ensure that their members have less opportunities to practice their craft.

United Hollywood is giving constant updates, as well as the LA Times’ Hollywood Writers blog.  I will support the strike in any way possible.  But I wish that the leadership would understand the need for a new-labor strategy, to increase the fortunes of the middle class and ensure that nobody is left behind.

(not totally local, but I mentioned the Empower Change Summit yesterday, so I thought I’d update)

So I spent Saturday on the campus of UCLA, at the American Democracy Institute’s “Empower Change Summit,” a gathering of aorund 3,000 young people, to interact and discuss the ways in which they can be a force for social change.  The ADI describes itself as a nonpartisan organization built on shared values (though they are, to be honest, typically progressive), dedicated to being a leadership gateway, inspiring people to create change on their own in a bid to make democracy more relevant to people’s lives.  The desire for a new model of political engagement, one that exists both within and without the electoral sphere, which foregrounds values and principles and encourages public citizenship and the change we can make in our daily lives, is noble.  But it was unfortunately turned briefly into a world-class spin session during the closing speech by former President Bill Clinton.

John Hart, the CEO of the American Democracy Institute and a former official in the Clinton Administration, has put together several of these summits around the country.  They feature speakers and small-group “workshops” where peer leaders discuss the opportunities for involvement on a variety of subjects.  One of the workshops I attended concerned voter empowerment, where ADI members unveiled “I Vote, You Vote,” a social networking tool for voter registration and engagement that essentially brings peer-to-peer mobilization to the online sphere.  Considering that 54% of all voters in the youth demo, according to one poll, actually went out to vote because they were asked by a friend or family member, this is an exciting effort.  I was happy to see thousands of young people giving up their Saturday, united by their willingness to make a difference in new and innovative ways.

Obviously, the relationship between Hart and the Clintons (Hillary was the founding honorary chair of ADI) gives him the opportunity to add a real draw to the event.  So Bill Clinton’s closing address was heavily anticipated by those who files into Royce Hall.  The last time I saw Clinton speak was at a campaign event in Ann Arbor in 1992, so I shared this anticipation.

There’s a rough transcript here.  First of all, Clinton is an exceedingly brilliant man.  Without notes, he delivered a statistic-heavy speech about the challenges facing America and the world and how the next generation can help solve them.  It was a speech focused on big change, about the need to deal with persistent, enduring national and global inequality; to reverse unsustainable energy patterns and resource depletion; and to understand the fact that citizens are now more interconnected than any of us can manage, yet also prone to identity conflicts.  These are some of the topics that the Clinton Global Initiative seeks to counteract, through managing and “operationalizing” charitable giving into effective projects, like delivering AIDS drugs to the developing world, or green building and retrofitting projects in urban environments (there was a LOT about clean energy in the speech).  But he was adamant that citizen action and nongovernmental organizations cannot supplant the need for effective government.  He cited the example of Denmark, “governed by a conservative coalition,” who grew their economy by 50% with no additional energy use, and a reduction in greenhouse gases, while also having the lowest inequality in the developed world, because their focus on green jobs became an economic engine.  He discussed Ron Suskind’s book The One Percent Doctrine and the famous blind quote about “the reality-based community,” saying as a rejoinder “I spent my childhood in an alcoholic home, trying to get into the reality-based world, and I like it here.”  So it was a speech that was open about the challenges we face, but passionate about how we can leverage the energy and engagement of the next generation to meet them.  That requires being a good global citizen, by participating both in the political sphere and through civil society.

I give that much detail about the whole of the speech so you can understand how completely out of left field this next segment came, as I quote the rough transcript:

And one last thing: we’re working toward a presidential campaign.  But what you need to do is make sure the election is not taken from you by triviality.  I watched the debate for 2 hours.  And I didn’t mind Hillary being asked the immigration question, I minded that none of the other candidates were asked about it and had 30 seconds to respond.  And if we turn immigration into a 30-second sound bite, the politics of fear and division will win.  We have 12 million people here undocumented and most of them are working.  Nobody wants to discriminate against people who have come here legally, but you can’t throw out all those people either.  This is a mind-boggling problem.  And don’t you let them turn it into a 10-second soundbite.  And no president gives drivers licenses.  The states do that.  But that soundbite allows people to fulminate.  It’s a serious issue.  And climate change is a serious issue.  But I didn’t learn anything about climate change, education, healthcare, the most urgent domestic problem that most families face, about wage stagnation, about how our young people can afford college after deliberate government policies making it harder to afford college-right now, you have a better chance of going to college if you’re at the top 25% of your income group and the bottom 25% of your class than the other way around, and less if it’s vice versa.  No matter who you are, this is your life, and there will never be a time when citizen action can supplant the need for effective government.

The transcript misses one incredibly crucial part of that.  Before President Clinton said that he didn’t learn anything in the debate about climate change, education, etc. (which is a legitimate critique), he said that “I learned something in the debate about Iran.  I learned why to vote for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, and I learned why not to vote for it.  I learned that from Senator Biden, by the way, not from any of those who said that it could authorize the President to go to war.  It doesn’t authorize that, and everybody knows it.”

Let me again set the scene.  This was a speech at a nonpartisan event, given to a group of young people who obviously have a lot of enthusiasm for Bill Clinton, and look up to him as an authority figure.  I found it completely inappropriate for him to turn what was an interesting speech into what you might hear on a conference call with Mark Penn.  Furthermore, note the “listen to your elders, I know better” tone here.  After citing voluminous statistics throughout the speech, Clinton waves away legitimate concerns about the Kyl-Lieberman vote with a dismissive “It doesn’t authorize that, and everybody knows it.”  No reasons, no citation of the actual text, just a nod to “what Senator Biden said” without explicitly stating what it was.  Here’s the first thing Biden said.

Joe Biden: Well, I think it can be used as declaration.

Biden went on to talk about how the vote caused a ripple effect of rising oil prices, driving moderates underground in Afghanistan and Pakistan, perpetuating the myth that America is on a crusade against Islam, but also about emboldening Bush to “make a move if he chooses to do so.”

There’s also the factor that Clinton’s position reflects a continued naive view of the machinations of George W. Bush.  Indeed, one of Bush’s key talking points during the Iraq debate was that the Congress voted 98-0 for regime change under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998.  What the Congress says obviously matters, and calling a sovereign nation’s Army a terrorist organization is unnecessarily combative.

But that’s a bit besides the point.  The fact is that Bill Clinton used his platform to very subtly and cleverly turn a nonpartisan speech into a campaign event.  Clinton is an asset that no other candidate has, someone who still holds the trust of the American people, particularly those for whom the absence of true Presidential leadership has made the heart grow fonder.  If he’s going to advocate on his wife’s behalf, which is absolutely his right, he should at least do it with some intellectual honesty, and he shouldn’t wrap a critique of the media as a whole into what he really explains as a critique of the media’s treatment of his preferred candidate.

I’ll be checking in periodically (Wi-Fi permitted) from UCLA at the Empower Change Summit, an event sponsored by the American Democracy Institute, a new-ish organization dedicated to youth engagement.  We know that the youth vote turned out in record numbers in the past two elections, and their activism and empowerment is crucial to creating a truly progressive society.  Today’s event includes a bunch of workshops and speakers, including a keynote from former President Bill Clinton.  I’m in as media, so hopefully I can realize my dream of yelling out at the press conference “Mr. President, Mr. President!” and being called on, and continuing to yell “Mr. President, Mr. President!”

Anyway, both Dante (hekebolos) and I will be there, so we’ll let you know what’s going on.

Make no mistake, at this point, a vote for Judge Mukasey is a vote for torture.

WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California say the will support Michael Mukasey’s nomination to be attorney general. Both are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They did the old Friday-afternoon get-out-of-Dodge news dump on it, too.  Guess DiFi learned a lot on that Air Force One ride with George.

Michael Mukasey has refused to explain whether waterboarding is torture.  Allowing him to be the nation’s highest law enforcement official means sanctioning that opinion at the highest levels.  Worse, Mukasey’s views on executive power – believing that the President has unenumerated powers in wartime – sanction official lawbreaking at the highest levels, and emasculate Congress in their attempts to do anything about it.  DiFi just eliminated her need to show up at the office.

UPDATE: A bit more here.

In announcing her support for Mukasey, Feinstein, D-Calif., said “first and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales,” referring to the former attorney general who resigned in September after months of questions about his honesty.

Inspiring!

Wow, the standards of government have gone completely into the toilet.

The latest Fabian Nuñez story concerns charities:

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez used a small charity as a conduit to funnel almost $300,000 from companies and organizations with business in the Capitol to events that helped him politically.

By giving to the charity, the donors whom Nuñez solicited earned tax deductions for which they would not have qualified had they given directly to Nuñez’s campaign accounts. They were also able to donate more than the $7,200 maximum allowed under California’s campaign fundraising rules.

Those donors include Zenith Insurance Co., AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc., the California Hospital Assn., the state prison guards union, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and Blue Cross of California — all groups with high stakes in legislation.

The money was used for events including “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s Toy Drive,” “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s Soccerfest 2006,” “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s Inaugural Legislative Youth Conference” and airplane flights for 50 children from Nuñez’s district for “Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez’s Sacramento Student Summit,” according to state documents.

It’s murky whether or not this constitutes a violation of federal tax laws or state ethics laws.  If he’s soliciting the donation and then directing how it’s used, maybe.  And apparently the charity itself was shut down for failing to file tax returns a couple years ago.

I would submit that the legality question is completely irrelevant.

Here’s the problem.  Power is almost entirely centralized in the leadership in the California Legislature.  If you are a business in the health care industry, and you want to impact policy, there’s only one member of the legislature that means anything to you – Fabian Nuñez.  And so you will use a variety of techniques to try to gain access and influence over the process.  If they can be so specifically directed, it’s inevitable that stories like this will permeate.  The problem is what’s LEGAL.  It’s a structural problem that invites corruption or the appearance of corruption.

The Founders decentralized power so there would be competition between the various branches.  Spreading out the number of powerful actors lessens the chance of access-buying.  The Founders foresaw political parties and factions and were violently opposed to them, and I would guess that this kind of artificial centralization was precisely the reason.  This has been a longtime problem in both national and California politics, made worse here by all the bottlenecks created in the legislature, which make certain parts of the calendar completely confusing and ripe for control by individual actors.

I’m not sure what the answer is to dilute the power of the legislative leadership, but unless you do, you’re going to keep seeing stories like this.  The target for special interests is so inviting and so focused. 
See Also:

Bill Cavala knows what he’s talking about.

In a story printed in today’s Sacramento Bee, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa is said to be “sending out letters to the same voters who signed the recall position in 2003”.

But that’s against the law. California Elections Code 18650 states clearly that, “No one shall knowingly or willfully permit the list of signatures on an initiative, referendum, or recall petition to be used for ANY PURPOSE other than qualification of the initiative, referendum or recall”. [Emphasis added] Violation of this section is a misdemeanor.

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you expect a Member of Congress to know the law? Well, maybe we can’t expect a Republican Member of Congress to obey the law??

Somebody alert Jerry Brown.  Darrell Issa is breaking the law, and look what the result could be:

While the violation involving the use of the data is only a misdemeanor, providing the signatures, database, and anything else owned by the Recall Committee is an “in kind contribution”– an unreported contribution. The Recall committee needs to approve it in order to provide this asset to the “California Counts” committee that is trying to qualify the Electoral College scheme on the ballot. Such a use could be in violation of the trust provisions that govern ballot measure expenditures (felonies). And the unreported contribution and the person controlling the committee could be prosecuted under the criminal misdemeanor provisions of the political reform act. (Where the penalty is loss of office) (emphasis mine)

I don’t think that you could remove someone from federal office at the state level, right?  But dare to dream.  Would that be some sweet justice for the architect of the California recall, or what?