This Labor Day Continues to Illustrate the Importance of Unions

Today was Labor Day, which we owe to unions along with many other things (the weekend existing, minimum wage, child labor laws, and the list goes on). Right now it is clearer than ever how important unions are to protecting workers through collaboration and strength being together. Whether it is UPS negotiating a deal, autoworkers, or writers and actors, many people benefit from unions. The big corporations will try to claim unions are bad or not needed. They'll say, "We're like family here," while the CEO makes 1,000X what other employees do. It'll be pointed out how unions aren't perfect, and that is true! That said, unions are better than nothing and most of them do good work as opposed to some having an element of corruption. If unions didn't pose a threat to those in power, they wouldn't work so hard to stop them from forming or functioning. We had Labor Day today, thank a Union for that, and much, much more.

Now Almost ALL of Hollywood is on Strike

At the start of May, the Writer's Guild of America went on strike. This meant a whole lot of television shows/streaming shows and movies that were being written had the, "Pencils down," and stopped production. Stuff that was already written out could still be filmed as actors weren't on strike, however. That just changed too because the Screen Actors Guild--American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (which represents essentially all actors/actresses) had their union talks break down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (studio execs and such). The writers and acting talent are now on strike, together. At this point, Hollywood is basically shut down as unless you're doing a reality television show you're screwed. I expect unless this all resolves quickly we're going to suddenly see a lot of foreign shows getting picked up along with a lot more reality programming, talent shows, and so forth. This is going to be messy.