WGA is striking against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
Evil is a show whose producers are represented by AMPTP.
The point of the strike is to force AMPTP to the table, by making it difficult for those represented by AMPTP to make money.
Pickets are a legal method to make it difficult for a company to make money.
WGA picketed the show.
There are formal avenues for producers to object to illegitimate strike behaviors, and there are formal disciplinary measures available for unions to take against members who act out of pocket.
Neither the production company nor the union has made any claim that this picket violated any rules or guidelines, formally or informally.
Their target is a legit target. The picket served the broader purpose of the strike. Other union members recognized both that the target was legitimate and that the picket served a legitimate purpose.
Because they’re members of the Writers Guild, and this production at this point had absolutely nothing to do with writing. The writing had been completed a long time ago by a husband-and-wife team devoted to the series. Everyone involved in the production just wanted to get on with their work, on a production that was nearly complete. These three assholes totally destroyed the project mere weeks before its completion.
It reminds me of another union overreach, when members of a public service union launched a strike of garbage collectors in my town in the middle of a hot summer. Very inconvenient, OK, but they have their rights, and garbage wasn’t collected for weeks on end. But what really made my blood boil was that when homeowners took their own garbage to the transfer stations where the trucks would normally deliver it, these guys were blocking access, preventing citizens from even doing their own garbage disposal. Even worse, there were freelancers offering to pick up garbage for like $5 a bag, and there were stories of union thugs finding out about it and beating them up. Literally, assaulting them. Do you think there’s such a thing as union overreach?
I believe you think there’s some rule that says the WGA can only picket productions for which the writing is incomplete–but this is not a real rule. The only effect such a rule would have on labor negotiations would be to limit the power of the workers; there’s no reason why workers would voluntarily adopt such a rule.
As for “these three assholes,” they were representing WGA during this picket, and there’s no sign that they’d gone rogue; you may as well say “The Writers Guild of America”–the one representing that same husband-and-wife team–are assholes.
Hold on, I gotta think on this one, and it may take me a few days. Eventually, though, I’m going to find a difference between committing a violent crime and walking a picket line–and when I do, I’ll be able to admit that some union actions are deplorable even while approving of the picketline walkers. Can I get back to you on this one?
Everyone was perfectly willing to get on with their jobs until these three jerks made it a black-and-white “with us or agin’ us” issue. Quietly doing your job is one thing; crossing a picket line is another matter entirely. If said three jerks had never been born, this popular and highly anticipated production would have completed on schedule.
Hold that there sarcasm for a moment, willya? What I’m saying is that I believe that if a union has a right to strike, that means that they have the right to withdraw the services of their members for the duration. It does not and should not mean anything more than that. I know you’re probably a union member yourself and I’m sure I’d be fully sympathetic to all of your causes – but here in my jurisdiction, some public service unions are completely out of control, and I’ve become very sensitized to that. The right to strike should never equate to the right to disrupt your employer’s business in every possible way.
ETA: Also, I think this is getting off track about unions in general. Maybe we best let it drop.
How do you know that they wouldn’t have just been replaced by three different representatives of the WGA? Did these three people have some specific beef with this particular show?
Newsflash, this is a free country, and if 3 people want to walk on the street with signs, you don’t get to say they’re not allowed to do that. You don’t get to box them in and define their rights as simply “withdrawing services” while letting their employers do whatever their nimble imaginations can come up with to make that withdrawal of services irrelevant.
Yes, crossing a picket line is meaningful, and people have agency to do that or not. I’ve not seen any allegations of coercion or illegal activity. Just workers on strike picketing and others workers choosing to respect that picket. For some reason you’re angry at the picketers, but not those who do not cross a picket line.
I don’t think it’s fair to the WGA to blame them for the actions of other unions and other strikers.
I don’t. What I know is that Evil was very popular and highly acclaimed, with a 95% rating on RT, and was declared by TV Guide to be the best show on TV. Its funding from CBS Studios and Paramount+ for 36 hour-long episodes so far plus the aborted fourth season has to be substantial. So it’s not exactly obscure. WGA has 20,000 members, WGA East has well over 5,000. Of those, three assholes showed up and scuttled the entire season’s production.
You think I’m a “union-breaker”? I’m just an ordinary citizen living in a particularly liberal community where certain unions – public service unions in particular – have been allowed to get completely out of control. I realize this is going to get pushback from those in completely different political environments where public service unions and others are being weakened and dismantled. Neither extreme is good for the public.
Anyway, hopefully enough about unions now and back to the WGA specifically, whose strike I do support.
Yeah, you’re at least the second person who’s come into the thread whose claims about how unions should work are fundamentally at odds with how unions do work, and indeed how unions must work if they’re to have real power.
There’s a name for a strike that’s polite and doesn’t disrupt an employer’s business: a failed strike.
It’s difficult to discuss this particular labor action when there’s such widespread misapprehension of labor actions in general. It’s as if someone comes into a thread on California’s best sushi restaurants to declare that fish shouldn’t be eaten raw. How do you respond to their posts without a general discussion of food safety?
But I do agree that inasmuch as explaining why your objections are without merit requires explaining how strikes work, it may not be possible to offer such an explanation here.
I’m saying your stated position is #1 with union breakers.
They say they’re totally fine with unions, as long as union activity falls within a particular set of guidelines.
A particular set of guidelines that ensures any union action is ineffective, because union activity is bound while union busting activity is wide open. Anything an employer can imagine that makes a union ineffective is fair game, because it’s just good business.
As a “management” person who works in an industry tied to the Longshoreman unions, I appreciate the fact that unions can get out of hand. However, those situations are the exception not the rule, most unions are fighting for basic lifestyle needs rather than exorbitant slush funds.
I think the quality has a lot to do with the legitimacy. Specifically, the better and more popular the show, the smarter it is to shut it down. Same thing with the number of picketers: the smaller the number of picketers, the more effective the action.
Strikes should be uncomfortable and inconvenient. Shutting down a major production with three guild members is freaking awesome: it shows the power of solidarity and flexes the union’s might. If this is what WGA can do with a picketing trio, imagine what they can do with fifty members!
and my WAG is that - today the guild still can do it from a relative position of strenght, vs. 3 yrs down the road, when most of the B and C shows will be scripted by AI already (and none of those brilliant Geraldo/Oprah/DiGeneris/et al. watchers will notice).
…I only just saw this now: but I can’t really allow this to stand. Those “three assholes” didn’t scuttle the entire season’s production. That isn’t how things work. For starters: from your cite:
It’s right there in black and white.
But secondly:
What actually happened:
Do you see the word “refusing” there? That means workers from the IATSE had agency. It wasn’t as if the people on the picket line set up an invisible barrier and members of the IATSE had no choice but to “wait patiently” then gave up. They didn’t cross the picket line because they didn’t want too.
Because the IATSE will be going into contract talks in 2024. And the studios have played their hand already. The studios have given the finger to the writers and to the actors and they sold the directors a lemon. They will give the IATSE the finger as well. So come 2024 the IATSE will be expecting the writers and the actors to have their backs.
This is just a weird argument. Because you do know what the writers are fighting for, right?
Because if the studios get their way, then the writers/showrunners, Michelle and Robert King, probably won’t ever again get the sort of agency or autonomy to write a show like Evil ever again. The studios want to break the writers room. They want to shift the showrunner responsibilities from the writers to the producers, smash the size of the writers room so that all of the burden goes on the “head writers” with the slack taken up effectively by interns and AI. They’ve already slashed many writers rooms, effectively turning them into “gig economy” workers.
You love the show Evil? Disappointed that the 4th season is going to be delayed? If the strikes fail, you’ve probably seen the last, great era of TV before most of it turns into “content.” From yesterday:
These are the genius’s running the studios now. They aren’t in the film and television business any more. They are in the “content creation” industry. Think I’m kidding? Look what they tried to do to the HBO app:
The people running the studios don’t care about good stories. They’ve memory-holed entire productions that will never ever see the light-of-day again, taken shows off the air after being on air for a few months. Its just content now. The only thing that matters any more to them are the shareholder reports. They are, completely, 100%, unreservedly, the bad guys here. And if you’ve got a problem with Evil being delayed for a few months then it rests at the feet of the AMPTP, not three random “WGA activist jerks.”
If you want to know more about why they are on strike, here is noted writer of the acclaimed TV show Evil with a few thoughts:
It seems like Robert King has some strong feelings about the strike.