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.

The WGA is on Strike

The Writer's Guild of America is on strike as of today. Gizmodo's Linda Codega has an article that gives an in-depth breakdown of how that might impact what you watch for entertainment, but to summarize: If you like a scripted show it's eventually gonna be in trouble. This immediately impacts nightly talk shows with monologues (Colbert, Meyers, Kimmel, Fallon--which is also the order of which I enjoy watching them the most to least) and means we don't get a new Saturday Night Live for the rest of this season. That's a bummer as Pete Davidson was set to host. Then, other scripted shows that don't have everything written will be delayed/canceled. Before you know it, movies won't be made either and tons of stuff in pre-production will wither away. 

The last strike occurred in 2007-2008 for 100 days and it was a royal mess. This strike is focused on how writers of television shows and movies want better pay, better residual in the streaming era we are now in, and protections against AI being used to quickly craft a junky script they could theoretically get paid peanuts to patch up. 98% of the WGA voted in favor of a strike when a deal could not be reached with the  Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, so everyone is fed-up and ready to either be treated better or quit working until they get proper recognition/pay/etc.

As I said, this impacts a small number of shows immediately but will delay work on a lot of stuff in the long term. The longer this goes on the more unscripted television you can expect. In other words, I hope you like junky reality television because there is going to be even more of it if the strike takes a while. I do like trashy reality shows, but I also enjoy scripted programming and I want the people who make it to receive fair compensation. Therefore, I'm not happy there is a strike, but I totally understand why there is one and support the WGA. I still really would have liked to see Pete Davidson on SNL this Saturday, to be completely honest, but again, I offer my full support.