LABOR MATTERS
House Supports Employee Free Choice; Bill Moves to Senate
compiled by Jeff Burman
 Jeffrey Burman |
Defying a veto threat from the White House, the House of Representatives approved landmark legislation in early March that would make it far easier for unions to organize workers, writes Steven Greenhouse in The New York Times.
The bill, HR 800, would enable employees at a given workplace to unionize as soon as a majority signed cards saying they favored a union. Under current law, companies have a right to insist on a secret-ballot election to determine their workers’ choice. Labor leaders and many Democrats believe such elections are frequently poisoned by employer coercion and intimidation.
Stewart Acuff, organizing director of the AFL-CIO, predicts that when the Senate takes up the legislation, it will get the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster, but not the two-thirds vote needed to escape a promised veto by President Bush. Despite the long odds, many agree the fight must move forward, forcing opponents of the bill to go on record before their constituents and strengthening the bill’s chances in 2008. Another advantage in pressing on is the likelihood of even more political turmoil buffeting the White House, freeing the hands of senators up for re-election.
 Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) smiles before speaking at a news conference in support of the Employee Free Choice Act at the Labor Council in San Francisco in February. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu |
The bill is organized labor’s No. 1 legislative priority, and Democrats say it’s essential to rebuilding unions and bolstering the nation’s middle class. “In the past few decades, labor law has been so twisted by corporations and their union-busting hired guns that it is now virtually impossible to form a union against an employer’s wishes,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.
Some 57 million US workers tell pollsters that they would join a union if they could, writes Peter Rothberg in The Nation magazine. Similarly, if workers were provided the union representation they desired in 2005, the unionization rate would be about 58 percent, according to a study by Richard Freeman of Harvard University. Current US labor law is often too weak to stop the intimidation, harassment and retaliation that workers can face from employers when they try to organize.
“Employers argue for the more elaborate secret ballot,” writes Robert Reich in the online American Prospect. “They say a secret ballot is essential to democracy. But they’ve got it wrong. Workplaces aren’t democracies; employers have the power to hire and fire––and that’s exactly where the potential for intimidation lies.”
Cartoon by Scott Santis. Courtesy of Copley News Service |
“Workers talking to workers are equals, while managers talking to workers aren’t,” Bill Samuel of the AFL-CIO said. He cites the 31,358 cases of illegal employer discrimination acted on by the National Labor Relations Board in 2005, writes Christianne Zappone for CNN/Money. And despite claims from the business lobby, the secret ballot would not be eliminated, adds Samuel. The change would take the timing of union elections out of the hands of employers.
The Employee Free Choice Act would make certain that when a majority of employees in a workplace decide to form a union, they can do so without the debilitating obstacles employers now use to block their efforts.
Media Sector’s Exports Outpace Every Other Industry in 2005
In the months leading up to the next round of contract talks, Hollywood unions
will seize upon the latest data on the enormous profits Hollywood is bringing
home from around the world, writes Elizabeth Guider in Variety.
A February report, from the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), provided additional ammunition for unions, suggesting that the “core copyright industries” of film, TV and music collectively earned $110 billion in 2005 from foreign exports. That puts the industry ahead of even American petro-chemical and pharmaceutical companies. The study also reports that the media sector accounted for almost 13 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005, more than any other single industry.
The Directors Guild of America’s current contract with studios and networks expires in June 2008, as does the Screen Actors Guild’s. Negotiations are expected to start late this year. Scheduling may be affected by the Writers Guild of America, which has said it should be ready for its negotiations in July. The WGA’s contract expires on Halloween.
Canadian ACTRA Strike Ends with a New Media Deal, Anxious US Producers
A six-week-long actors strike, the first of its kind in Canada, seems to be
over, but the issue of actors’ pay for new digital media hasn’t
really gone away, and will likely rear its head again in a few years’
time, writes Guy Nixon in The Toronto Globe and Mail.
The tentative settlement between the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA), the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) and the Association des Producteurs de Films et de Télévision du Québec, representing producers in Quebec and the Hollywood studios, includes a 10 percent pay and benefits raise for actors over three years and a formula for residuals on new-media use. There is also a sunset clause allowing the new media terms to be renegotiated after guild negotiations are completed in the US later this year, writes Tamsen Tillson in Variety.
But Hollywood producers complained that the new-media terms, which includes a cut of distributors’ gross revenue, could set a damaging precedent for them when they sit down with the major actors, writers and directors guilds here in the states, adds Tillson.
“The message we’re getting is that the deal on the Internet, as far as the American studios are concerned, will not be written in Canada,” said Karl Pruner, head of the Canadian actors’ union in Toronto, before a final deal was reached.
According to a statement on the union’s website, “We had quite an argument with producers about the Internet. They demanded that we agree, in effect, to allow them to distribute our work on the Internet for free. We told them that we were willing to defer this issue for a while to a study committee. But if they insisted, they would have to pay for those rights, since the Internet is likely to be one of, if not the principal distribution channels for our work in the future.
“What happened, ultimately, is that the producers split,” the statement continues. “Canadian producers agreed to pay. American producers decided to wait a while, as we originally proposed, to see what gets negotiated in looming talks with the DGA, WGA and SAG.
“So, Canadian producers will begin paying 3.6 percent of any Internet revenues, accounted for in a separate stream, from first dollar. This is the first clean, unqualified residual in our agreement. American producers will track Internet revenues, pay interest on them and pay sums owed retroactively after we finalize Internet terms with them about 24 months from now.”
Earlier, Canadian producers, represented by the CFTPA, challenged the legality of ACTRA’s strike as well as the continuation letters the union had been offering some 150 Canadian producers in exchange for a seven percent wage and benefits increase. The continuation letters allowed signators to continue working, despite a strike, as long as they paid the wage and benefit increase. ACTRA, in a statement on its website, claims these Canadian producers “defied the instructions of their trade association and signed interim agreements with ACTRA” to avoid “further industry instability.”
The legality of the strike and of the continuation agreements were left unresolved by the Ontario court, which made “no ruling on whether provincial Labour law ultimately applies to this collective agreement. The Court only directed the parties to first go through an arbitration process.”
An Ontario judge failed to issue an injunction to end the strike, but instead referred the producers’ case to arbitration. ACTRA members were to vote on the deal by mail-in ballot, with results expected in mid April.
IATSE, Quebec Union Resolve Dispute
In more news from Canada, an 18-month dispute between the IATSE and the Quebec
film technicians’ union has been resolved, allowing American productions
to return to the province, writes Brendan Kelley in Variety.
The Alliance Quebeçoise des Techniciens de l’Image et du Son (AQTIS) and the IATSE reached a deal in February. According to an AQTIS press release, “AQTIS would accept that IATSE exercise jurisdiction over ‘independent American productions’ inasmuch as the acquisition of the distribution rights by one of the majors resulted in its overall financial participation equaling 51 percent or more of the production budget.”
The IATSE has been trying to break into Quebec to represent technicians on American film shoots there. AQTIS had argued that it has exclusive rights to represent Quebec technicians because of the province’s unusual Status of the Artist law.
Strike Fears May Create Thousands of Jobs, Says LAEDC
Worries about possible motion picture industry strikes will lead to a surge
of 7,300 jobs in Los Angeles this year, followed by a loss of 2,400 slots
in 2008, according to a forecast issued in February by the Los Angeles Economic
Develop-ment Corp., writes Dave McNary in Variety.
Jack Kyser, chief economist at the agency, said that a production increase by studios and networks will be by far the biggest factor promoting Hollywood job growth this year.
Leaders of the Writers Guild of America have said they expect to start negotiations in July to replace the current contract, which expires at the end of October. The contracts for the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild expire in June 2008. The unions are looking to make a deal on compensation for movies and TV programs shown on new media outlets, such as mobile phones or online downloads, writes Alex Viega in The San Francisco Chronicle.
Based on the unions’ demands, media companies have developed contingency plans that would include stockpiling scripts and productions in anticipation of a strike.
Those plans could lead to a “de facto” strike, similar to the one that led to an industry slowdown in 2001, which put thousands of entertainment industry employees out of work, adds Viega.
Feds to San Manuel Indians:
No Dice on Labor Law Exemption
A ruling in February by the US Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia rejected arguments by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians that
they should not be subject to federal labor laws. Judge Janice Rogers Brown
said in the ruling, “Tribal sovereignty is not absolute autonomy permitting
a tribe to operate in a commercial capacity without legal restraint.”
The ruling was issued in response to a complaint filed by the Communications Workers of America with the National Labor Relations Board. The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians had appealed that ruling by the NLRB favoring the union.
“The smaller and newer tribes are now getting involved in legal disputes that will impact all of the tribes in America, and they are doing so without consulting the larger and more established and traditional Indian nations,” writes Tim Giago (Nanwica Kciji) in the online Native American Times. “The case just ruled upon with the NLRB is one example and, believe me, there will be many more that will be even more damaging to all of the tribes of Indian country. The new casino Indian is rapidly supplanting the older and more traditional Indian. Greed is the new Indian God, and where it stops, nobody knows.”
Jeff Burman represents Sound Editors on the Guild's Board of Directors. He can be reached at jeffrey.burman@nbcuni.com.