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“The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) proudly joins the Alliance for Economic Justice (AEJ) in endorsing Senator John Kerry as the Democratic nominee for President,” said International President Tom Short on February 12th. The AEJ was formed by 18 labor unions to heighten visibility and focus attention on three key economic areas: job creation, healthcare, and trade. A quick sampling of the member-unions of the AEJ includes airline pilots (APA), railroad workers (BMWE), steel workers (USA), Teamsters (IBT), food workers (UFCW) and aerospace machinists (IAM). “The bottom line is defeating George W. Bush in November,” said Short.
Last July, the IATSE backed Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt. But, after a disappointing showing, Gephardt withdrew and endorsed Senator Kerry on February 6th. Just a week after the IATSE’s endorsement, Kerry earned the endorsement of the 13 million-member AFL-CIO. “We’ve had three years of national priorities that placed the special interests of corporations and the wealthy over those of regular workers and their families,” said John Sweeney, AFL-CIO President. “John Kerry will lead us in our fight to make creating good jobs -America’s number one priority - to make affordable healthcare a right and not a privilege.” Canadian Film Production Sees ‘Crisis,’ Bush Administration Embraces ‘Outsourcing’ Runaway production has long been a thorn in the side of Editors Guild members. But lately, there has been a shift in currency exchange rates, promising at least a temporary ebb in job flight. So, while Canadian film and TV production was up 4% last year to C$4.9 billion (US$3.8 billion), local producers warn the industry is facing its worst crisis in years, writes Brendan Kelly in Variety. Homegrown production is stagnant and foreign filming is in danger due to the high value of the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar. Take British Columbia as an example. Local film unions say they are reviewing contracts and are considering substantial wage cuts. The province has become less attractive to U.S. productions because of the 20% increase in the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar over the past year, and an onerous 7.5% provincial sales tax that is not charged in Ontario and Quebec. They fear a huge drop in film and TV production, much of which originates in Hollywood, writes Don Townson, also in Variety.
Montreal film commissioner Daniel Bissonnette said that the winter
has been a busy time for shooting over the past two years in Montreal,
writes Brendan
Kelly. “We get the same level Meanwhile, Democrats from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail lit into President Bush’s chief economist in February for his laudatory statements on the movement of U.S. jobs abroad, seizing on the comments to paint Bush as out of touch with struggling workers. “Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade,” said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), when releasing the CEA’s annual economic report to Congress. “More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that’s a good thing.” “It’s outrageous that despite one of the worst job creation records in history, and despite the 9.9 million Americans still out of work in our jobless ‘recovery,’ the Bush administration has blessed sending more jobs overseas,” said AFL-CIO President Sweeney. Unions Increase Organizing Efforts for Reality Television If you’re wondering if anyone is noticing our efforts in organizing so-called Reality Television, look no further than the New York Times, which ran an article about these campaigns in late January. “[The] success of these shows is not getting passed on to everyone who makes the show happen,” said Tris Carpenter, the Guild’s National Organizer in an interview with Jim Rendon of the New York Times. What has the Guild organized lately? “Blind Date” and “Fifth Wheel” (Bobwell Productions), “House of Dreams” and “Room Raiders” (Granada Factual for MTV), “First 48” (Granada Factual for A&E) and “Ultimate Treehouse” (Granada Factual pilot). Kerry Backs Labor Law Reform Senator Kerry has endorsed the “most ambitious attempt to strengthen organized labor since a Senate filibuster blocked President Carter’s effort to rewrite the labor laws 26 years ago,” writes Ron Brownstein in the Los Angeles Times. “I think people have a right to join [unions],” Kerry said after he visited Southern California grocery workers. “ I’ve met with too many workers who tell me the stories of harassment in their workplace - they get fired if they mention the word ‘organize,’ they are ostracized, their shifts will change, things happen to them. That's wrong.” Kerry would reshape the playing field with a reform known as card-check recognition. That would force employers to recognize a union if a majority of workers simply sign cards or petitions indicating they want to join. Today, most unions are organized in a two-step process, continues Brownstein. First, labor organizers must convince at least 30% of a firm's workers to sign cards supporting unionization. Then a majority of the firm’s workers must vote in an election to join the union. Eliminating the election stage, where management exerts its greatest leverage, could greatly increase labor’s prospects of adding new members. To underscore the point, Kerry would also toughen penalties on companies that use unfair labor practices, and establish time limits, with binding arbitration, for firms to reach an initial contract with a new union. Kerry says he would even give preference in federal contracts to companies that remain neutral in organizing drives. Kerry insists his aim isn’t to increase the number of workers belonging to unions. “The goal is to empower people to do what they want to do,” he said. “Let people have a choice.” IA Renegotiates Low Budget Agreement The IATSE and a group of leading
independent producers have renegotiated the only IA theatrical motion
picture agreement that covers production
anywhere in the United States. Several major breakthroughs were achieved
in the negotiation of the Low Budget Theatrical Motion Picture Agreement.
In an effort to stimulate theatrical production by
independent producers who found the prior $7 million low budget cap
no longer realistic, the low budget cap will increase immediately to
$8.5 million and to over $9 million on January 1, 2006. When Mainstream Media Tells Labor Stories
“ The disparity in our perceptions of unions is directly connected
to the image of labor that is promoted by mainstream news “Years ago, major media outlets, especially daily newspapers in big cities, had reporters assigned to labor beats. Those reporters developed personal relationships with union sources in exactly the same way that business and police reporters develop relationships with their sources. In the process, beat reporters develop sympathy for the perspectives of their sources. But the days of media sympathy to labor perspectives are long gone. A study of labor reporting in the Chicago Tribune, conducted by the University of Illinois’ Chicago Labor Education Program, provides statistical support for the suspicions of union leaders and members. “Out of 386 labor-related Tribune stories, published between 1991 and 2001, researchers found that 77 percent of the ‘descriptors’ used to signify labor were negative. In the same stories, researchers counted only 113 positive adjectives. The study, “Evidence of ‘Class Anxiety,’ ” in the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of Organized Labor, also found that stories about labor disputes were on the average nearly twice as long as stories about labor agreements. Stories in the sports section about player unions were by far the most frequent type of labor coverage in the paper during the period, and 79 percent of those stories depicted labor in a negative light, the study’s authors wrote. “Given that the mainstream media pretends that ‘objective’ journalism is characterized by a balancing of comments from competing sources, the study’s discovery that the news stories routinely favored nonlabor sources suggests that the Tribune failed to meet professional journalists’ generally self-serving definition of objectivity.” |
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