An Interesting Season for Unions by Steve Cohen It’s been an interesting season for unions in America. We’ve seen three major strikes in the last few months, at Verizon, United Airlines and Firestone. All have resulted in victories for labor. The strikes demonstrated a new focus on quality-of-life issues in the American labor movement, something that’s been important to us in post-production for a long time. Many of us have been affected by the SAG/AFTRA strike, and we may soon be hit by critical job actions from SAG and the Writers Guild. Let us hope that these strikes also result in labor victories without too much disruption for the post-production community. Meanwhile the Guild continues to rack up organizing successes. We’ve just hired a new person to help us run our organizing effort nationwide, Tris Carpenter, and we’re very excited about the focus we hope he’ll bring to this endeavor. As editing technology migrates to the masses, organizing becomes critical. We can’t stop computers from becoming more powerful and media-friendly. But neither can we afford to be drowned by a mass of non-union editors who’ll do their jobs from home over Internet links. When I took over the editing of this publication last January, my goal was to put the new magazine on a firm editorial foundation and then turn over the lion’s share of the work to someone else, while I remained on as senior adviser. Mary Lee and I have spent the ensuing months putting out the best magazine we could, but the pressure of constant deadlines has made it impossible for us to implement some of the organizational changes we believe are necessary if the Magazine is to continue to grow. After considerable discussion, we’ve decided that the best course for us is to skip an issue so that we can focus on these matters. We hope to bring you an even better publication when we come back. I want to thank our dedicated writers, especially Jeff Burman, who has contributed three articles to this issue. Thanks also to Dave Whittaker and Andy Somers, who found time in their hectic schedules to once again contribute to our tips section. And thanks to our other contributors: Bob Berman, Patrick Gregston, Bob Grieve, Scott Janush, Alex Komisaruk, Marty Levenstein, F. Hudson Miller and Sidney Wolinsky. The Magazine could not exist without the generosity of these Guild members. We’ll be back in February. In the meantime, have a great holiday season.   Steve Cohen is an editor, Guild Board member and editor of the Guild Magazine. He is currently cutting '15 Minutes' for New Line. He can be reached via email    Reprinted from The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine Vol. 21, No. 5 - September/October 2000   Guild Home | Magazine Home | Top of Page   Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700