{"id":301152,"date":"2017-03-28T23:38:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T22:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hollywood-screen-and-tv-writers-call-for-strike-vote\/"},"modified":"2017-03-28T23:38:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T22:38:22","slug":"hollywood-screen-and-tv-writers-call-for-strike-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/hollywood-screen-and-tv-writers-call-for-strike-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Screen and TV Writers Call for Strike Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>On March 24, after two weeks of frustrating contract talks, negotiators for the WGA (Writers Guild of America) notified the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) that, because the talks were stalled, they had no choice but to ask their 12,000 members to give them strike authorization.\u00a0 It was a bold move.<\/p>\n<p>As sparklingly glamorous and self-absorbed as Hollywood\u2019s entertainment business is, when it comes to contract negotiations between the AMPTP and the WGA (or the DGA or SAG-AFTRA), they\u2019re depressingly similar to those between, say, a group of pipefitters and welders and the IAM (International Association of Machinists).<\/p>\n<p>The issue is money, plain and simple.\u00a0 Money in the form of money, money in the form of benefits, money in the form of staking a claim to new technology.\u00a0 Accordingly, as in any contract negotiation, logic, honesty, fairness, and generosity will play no part.\u00a0 It all centers around muscle.\u00a0 Think of being hit with Hunter Thompson\u2019s \u201cmillion-pound shit hammer.\u201d \u00a0Hence, the threat of a strike as a weapon.<\/p>\n<p>In truth, strike authorization, in most cases, doesn\u2019t constitute a genuine \u201cthreat.\u201d\u00a0 Yes, the negotiators need it to demonstrate that they\u2019re serious (because you can\u2019t go on strike without the membership\u2019s okay), and yes, it counts as evidence that the rank-and-file is on their side, but beyond that it\u2019s seen more as a display of saber-rattling and macho posturing than a prelude to serious&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/2017\/03\/hollywood-screen-and-tv-writers-call-for-strike-vote\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On March 24, after two weeks of frustrating contract talks, negotiators for the WGA (Writers Guild of America) notified the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) that, because the talks were stalled, they had no choice but to ask their 12,000 members to give them strike authorization.\u00a0 It was a bold move. As [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2525,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-301152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2525"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}