LABOR MATTERS
Clinton, Obama Neck-and-Neck
compiled by Jeff Burman
 Jeffrey Burman |
On February 5, Senator Hillary Clinton won victories over Senator Barack Obama in states with larger numbers of delegates, while Obama countered by winning more total states in the 22-state nominating contest of the Democratic Presidential Primary. The results ensured that a fierce contest for delegates will continue, in what has become the party’s most competitive race in at least a quarter of a century, write Dan Balz and Anne Kornblut in The Washington Post.
It was a night of drama as millions of Democrats split sharply between two candidates offering a historic first: a chance to nominate a woman or an African-American to lead the party’s effort to retake the White House, writes Patrick Healy in The New York Times.
In New York, union households made up 40 percent of voters and chose Clinton over Obama 60 percent to 37 percent. In California, union households made up 31 percent of voters and backed Clinton 54 percent to 39 percent. The polls were conducted by MSNBC and the Associated Press. On February 5, Clinton and Obama were separated by just 26 delegates, with 139 yet to be allocated. At press time, Clinton had 1,136 delegates, more than half of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Obama was right behind with 1,108.
 Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential debate in Hollywood in January. AP Photo/Chris Carlson |
Organized labor failed to unite around John Edwards––the candidate who most clearly embraced its goals, writes Dana Goldstein in The American Prospect. Indeed, before his departure from the race in late January, there was no parallel popular movement in America demanding a rollback of corporate power.
“It is still true in America that class politics has a lot of trouble breaking through,” a union official close to the Edwards campaign said. “A fundamental challenge of corporate power is very, very hard for people to absorb.”
Directors, Writers Expected to Ratify Deals
At press time, the Writers Guild of America’s boards of directors had
unanimously approved a three-year tentative deal with film and television
producers, write Cynthia Littleton and Dave McNary in Variety. The WGA’s
membership will then vote on whether to lift the strike and on whether to
accept the terms of the tentative agreement. Official results on the first
question were expected within days, and on the second question, by late February.
The Writers Guild consists of two unions representing about 12,000 writers
on the east and west coasts.
In a message sent to Writers Guild members, WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA East president Michael Winship emphasize the strengths of the new contract, much of which use an earlier (and still tentative) Directors Guild of America agreement as a template. Those strengths include WGA jurisdiction and separated rights in new media, residuals for Internet reuse, enforcement and auditing tools, expansion of fair market value and language establishing the use of the distributor’s gross for residuals, wrote Dave McNary in Variety.
The tentative agreement, according to a New York Times article by Michael Cieply, would let writers claim to have bettered a similar deal achieved in January between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the DGA. In the third year of the Writers Guild deal, writers would be paid a percentage of the distributor’s revenue rather than the flat fee for Internet-streamed television shows accepted by the directors.
On the other hand, one of the most disliked elements of the deal is in the area of web streaming, where the majors have a 17-day window (or 24 days for first-year programs) of free usage before residual fees are applied, write Littleton and Dade Hayes in another Variety article.
Movie and television directors agreed to a new contract with film studios and television networks on January 17. The three-year deal between the DGA––which represents about 13,500 directors and related production workers––and the AMPTP will take effect when members of the DGA give final approval to the agreement and when the directors’ existing contract expires June 30.
The directors’ agreement marks a breakthrough for union members in several areas, write Cieply and Brooks Barnes in The New York Times. It roughly doubles the residuals rate that was paid for decades when films and television programs were resold on cassettes or DVDs. And, for the first time, it requires Hollywood studios and production companies to pay a re-use fee when advertising-supported programs are streamed free over the Internet, as many television networks do now on their websites.
Among many significant new features in the tentative DGA contract is a promise of “unfettered access to [studios’] deals and data. This access is new, unprecedented and creates a transparency that has never existed before,” according to a DGA statement. Further, payment for “electronic sell-through” (EST)––or the downloading of features and television programming through the Internet––will be based on the “distributor’s gross.”
Number of Women in Key Hollywood Jobs Declines
Women working in the film business have yet to break through the “celluloid
ceiling,” making up just 15 percent of those in significant, behind-the-scenes
jobs, according to a study released by San Diego State University.
The annual study by professor Martha Lauzen examined Hollywood’s top-grossing films in 2007 and found no growth in the number of women working in the positions of director, producer, writer and cinematographer. Editors saw a small increase, writes Jacqueline Marmo in The Hollywood Reporter.
Female employment rates have decreased in most behind-the-scenes film positions. Women accounted for only 20 percent of producers (16 percent of executive producers), 10 percent of all writers, 7 percent of directors and 2 percent of cinematographers. The only increase was in the ranks of editing, where women held 21 percent of positions. The study analyzed employment of 2,883 people working on the top 250 domestic-grossing films last year.
Union Membership’s Long Decline Ends
The proportion of American workers belonging to labor unions climbed last
year by the largest number since 1983, writes Steven Greenhouse in The
New York Times. Union membership grew by 311,000, to 15.7 million, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January, despite a decline in such
membership in manufacturing, long organized labor’s stronghold.
As a result, union membership as a share of the total work force rose in 2007 for the first time in a quarter of a century, inching up to 12.1 percent from 12 percent the year before. A total of 7.5 percent of private sector workers were in unions, as were 35.9 percent of public sector workers.
Labor leaders welcomed the increase, saying it was a harbinger that the union movement, which represented 20.1 percent of the work force in 1983, was bottoming out after decades of decline.
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Enron's End-Run
The Supreme Court dealt a setback in late January to Enron investors
who had sued investment banks to recover money lost when the Texas
energy giant collapsed amid a huge accounting fraud in 2001. The court
refused to review the investors’ lawsuit, ending what might
have been the investors’ only hope of keeping the case alive,
according to an unsigned article from the Associated Press. The failure
of Enron wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market
value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.
“For the last five years, lower courts have been considering whether
the powerful, politically connected financial institutions at the center of
the Enron fraud will have to answer to investors for what they did,”
writes AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in a press release. “And now we
have the final answer from the Supreme Court. They will not. And the public
will not even have the benefit of the Court explaining why because the Court
simply refused to hear the case.
“It is hard to reconcile the result in the Enron case with either the
principles of substantive justice or the rule of law,” continues Sweeney.
“But the decision not to hear a case that corporate big shots do not
want heard fits very nicely with the overall direction of our legal system
since Bush vs. Gore.”
NLRB Ruling Lets Firms Bar Union E-Mail
The National Labor Relations Board issued a ruling that employers have the
right to prohibit workers from using their company’s e-mail system to
send out union-related messages, a decision that could inhibit communications
between labor unions and their members, writes Steven Greenhouse in The
New York Times.
In a 3-to-2 ruling just before Christmas, the labor board held that it was
legal for employers to bar union-related e-mail if employers had a policy
stopping employees from sending e-mail for “non-job-related solicitations”
for any outside organizations.
The ruling is a setback to the nation’s labor unions, which argued that
e-mail systems have become a modern-day “commons” where employees
should be able to communicate freely with co-workers to discuss work-related
matters of mutual concern.
FCC Defiantly ‘Relaxes’ Media Ownership Rules
On December 18, the Federal Communications Commission, by a 3-to-2 vote, passed
new regulations that would allow more media consolidation. This, despite the
increasing concern by the public and by members of Congress over the nation’s
media being controlled by a few giant corporations.
The federal regulation in play is the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban, writes Amy Goodman in the online TruthDig. It has for decades prevented the same company from owning a television or radio station in the same city as well as a newspaper. Underlying the ban is the core concept of the public interest. “[The FCC’s decision] would make George Orwell proud,” said FCC commissioner Michael Copps. “We claim to be giving the news industry a shot in the arm––but the real effect is to reduce total newsgathering.” Future mergers, adds Goodman, will result in newsroom layoffs and less, not more, coverage of local issues.
In a joint statement, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Communications Workers of America, the Newspaper Guild-CWA and the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians-CWA ex-pressed their concern that the FCC did not require that any merged newspaper-broadcast operation in the same market maintain separate newsroom and editorial staffs, an addition that would have helped to ensure an independent editorial voice in local communities, writes James Parks in the AFL-CIO blog Now.
Representative John Dingell of Michigan, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee (which has broad jurisdiction over telecommunications policy), had already planned an inquiry into how the FCC operated before the media ownership ruling was announced. Despite requests from Dingell and others in Congress to delay the ruling, FCC chairman Kevin Martin forged ahead. Dingell, according to The Congressional Quarterly, was “furious” and said Martin and the commission had acted “arrogantly and brazenly” in brushing aside the postponement requests. After the holidays, Dingell promised a full-blown congressional investigation. Fellow commissioners had publicly accused Martin of playing fast and loose with agency procedures and data, and Dingell demanded to find out more.
 Rob Callahan Photo by Wm. Stetz |
Callahan Joins Guild
The Editors Guild would like to welcome Rob Callahan to the Organizing staff.
Rob was hired this past January to fill the vacant Organizer position in Los
Angeles.
Prior to joining the Local 700, he served as a national representative for the American Federation of Teachers, working with professionals around the country to develop drives for representation and contract and political action campaigns.
Rob will be primarily involved in working to organize fixed facility post-production shops in Los Angeles, and will also help with reality television editors who are trying to organize.
Jeff Burman represents Sound Editors on the Guild's Board of Directors. He can be reached at jeffrey.burman@nbcuni.com.