LABOR MATTERS
Blame Canada!
Hollywood Advocacy Group Challenges Subsidies
compiled by Jeff Burman
 Jeffrey Burman |
A coalition of entertainment industry workers is formally asking the US government to investigate the legality of film production subsidies in Canada, writes Richard Verrier in The Los Angeles Times. Other organizations, such as the Motion Picture Association of America, the Directors Guild of America, the Independent Film and Television Alliance, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, have long argued that such a strategy could backfire by leading to a trade war and further loss of jobs.
The Screen Actors Guild of America, the Teamsters and several union locals representing Hollywood’s technical workers filed a petition in September with the US Trade Representative charging that Canadian film and television subsidies constitute unfair trade practices and violate Canada’s obligations under the World Trade Organization (WTO). The US Trade Representative has 45 days to assess the legality of the subsidies, which could trigger negotiations with Canada and possible intervention by the WTO.
The filing of the petition culminates a long-running and contentious campaign in Hollywood, which in the last decade has lost thousands of film and television jobs as productions have migrated to cheaper locales offering tax credits and other sweeteners, adds Verrier. It took a six-year effort by the Film and Television Action Committee (FTAC), fundraising and lining up endorsements, to arrive at this moment, adds Dave McNary in Variety.
FTAC’s 3,447-page document asserts that Canadian subsidies have resulted in an average annual loss of 46,200 below-the-line jobs in the United States, with $9.35 billion in losses to the US economy. If the petition’s request is granted, the formal investigation could take over a year.
Industry groups in Canada dispute the extent of the economic losses and the underlying legality of the petition. A 2004 study for Film Ontario––a coalition of Canadian industry groups that includes both producers and the Alliance of Canadian Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA, the union that represents Canadian actors) found that the direct impact on the industry in the US was much lower than the claims made by FTAC, according to an unsigned article on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website. And while the amount of film production in Canada increased in the five-year period ending in 2003, it has been sliding since then because of a much stronger Canadian dollar.
“One of the ironies is that if it was found that Canadian subsidies did violate NAFTA, then that would make [films] into goods and services,” said Stephen Waddell, national executive director of ACTRA. “Then we could take action against the US networks for dumping their products into the Canadian television market.” Waddell, writes Mark London Williams in Below the Line, is ironically the same union leader who negotiated advantageous terms earlier this year on new media, which at the time, were thought to be a template for Hollywood.
 Cartoon by M.e. Cohen, Cagle Cartoons Inc. |
SEIU Endorses No One
After being courted intensely by the top Democratic presidential candidates,
the Service Employees Inter-national Union (SEIU) decided on October 8 not
to endorse anyone, writes Steven Greenhouse in The New York Times.
Officials with the union, which represents nearly 1.9 million workers, said that former Senator John Edwards had lobbied hardest for its endorsement, but that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama had pushed to stalemate Edwards by urging the executive board not to endorse him.
Many board members urged the union to endorse Edwards, adds Greenhouse. Others argued against an endorsement, partly because Edwards is far behind Clinton in the polls.
A look further inside the process lessens the blow for Edwards, writes
Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post.
From the beginning, securing a national endorsement was never going to be
easy. SEIU chapters in New York and Illinois are large and powerful, and an
endorsement would only work if leaders representing 60 percent of the SEIU’s
total membership were aligned behind a single candidate. There was always
a high bar for Edwards to secure the nod, adds Cillizza.
Perhaps more importantly, Edwards is doing quite well with SEIU locals in California, Nevada and other crucial early primary states, writes Jonathan Tasini in the online Working Life, so he might pick up several locals––and, therefore, union activists––in big states.
Census Bureau Reports Hawaii’s Union Density Is Nation’s
Highest
Hawaii, at 25 percent, has the highest rate of wage and salary workers
belonging to unions in the United States. New York was second with
24 percent of workers belonging to unions, according to the US Census
Bureau’s upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States
for 2008, as reported in an unsigned article in the Pacific Business
News.
Nationally, there are 15.4 million workers who belong to labor unions. That accounts for about 12 percent of all wage and salary workers.
CBS Backs ‘Kid Nation’ Despite Outcry
Despite a drumbeat of accusations directed toward its new reality series Kid
Nation, CBS has shown no sign of backing away from the show, which first aired
September 19, writes Bill Carter in The New York Times.
The show takes 40 children, ages 8 to 15, and places them in a “ghost town” in New Mexico to see if they can build a working society without the help of grown-ups. Kid Nation became the subject of a New Mexico attorney general’s investigation after one of the featured children’s parents complained that her daughter was hurt during the production. Apparently one girl suffered burns on her face in a kitchen accident; others accidentally drank bleach.
New Mexico legal officials suspected that labor laws might have been violated, writes Edward Wyatt in The New York Times. Reportedly, the kids had to be available to the producers 24 hours a day and often worked for 14 hours or more each day, or risk expulsion from the show, according to a copy of the contract signed by the children and their parents. The contract states that “while the children could be paid for their participation, those payments or the agreement to be fully under the producers’ direction did not constitute employment under the producers’ interpretation and therefore was not subject to any state or federal labor laws,” adds Wyatt.
“In order to legitimate the free labor that they extract from cast members, every reality show producer claims that this is some kind of experience where people grow and learn about themselves,” said Mark Andrejevic, author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. “The producers rely on the tradition of the documentary to make this seem like it’s not exploitation when the only true commitment they have is to turn a profit,” writes Maria Elena Fernandez in The Los Angeles Times.
Film Downloads May Reach Three Percent of Market by 2011
The US and Western Europe markets for movie downloads will be worth a total
of $1.3 billion in 2011, according to a Screen Digest report.
“Online Movie Strategies: Competitive Review and Market Outlook,” written by Arash Amel and Dan Cryan, predicts that the movie download business, both rental and retail, will annually generate $720 million in the US and $572 million in Western Europe by 2011.
Overall, the study forecasts that the online digital movie market will represent three percent of all movie home entertainment revenues in the US and Western Europe four years from now.
NY, Illinois Governors Sign Measures to Prevent Employee Misclassification
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in September announced an executive order
that addresses the problem of employee misclassification. The misclassification
of workers takes place when an employer improperly identifies an individual
as an independent contractor rather than an employee, or pays workers off
the books.
Misclassified employees can be deprived of many protections to which they are legally entitled. Businesses can use misclassification to avoid complying with laws governing unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, social security, tax withholding, temporary disability insurance, minimum wage and overtime. Misclassification also puts law-abiding businesses at a competitive disadvantage, since they must bear the expense of providing these benefits, while those who skirt the law bear no such costs.
Unions contend that misclassification also denies union membership and benefits to many who would otherwise be members by considering them management. A bill with a similar purpose was signed into law by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich in August.
Are Unions Really in Decline?
According to a study by Peter Hall-Jones in the online New Unionism, trade
union membership, taken internationally, is growing. “Not only are they
growing, a fact that flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, but the
data suggests that a lot more growth is going unrecorded, and that the potential
for sustained growth has never been higher,” writes Hall-Jones.
The best available data––largely from the United Nation’s International Labor Organization and the European Industrial Relations Observatory––suggests that union membership in most countries has increased, not decreased, in the last five years. Furthermore, there are reasons to think that these figures under-represent the real situation internationally, adds Hall-Jones.
Among the 39 countries from which the best information is available, 23 (59
percent) experienced trade union membership growth from 1998 to 2003.
But how are union members counted? Are they counted differently in developed
countries as opposed to developing ones?
From this point on, concedes Hall-Jones, the numbers rapidly get political. China should be treated as a separate case. China’s union federation is not generally regarded as being sufficiently independent from the state to meet accepted definitions. Yet, argues Hall-Jones, if we are counting as a negative the loss of manufacturing jobs (and union members) in developed countries, why refuse to count the corresponding increase that this transfer has generated in China?
A similar argument applies to Eastern Europe, where trade union membership used to be more or less mandatory. Considering the rest of Europe separately, Hall-Jones still finds that union membership has increased by 1,401,636 members over the same period, or 3.6 percent.
Another consideration juxtaposes wealthy countries, which tend to have the best infrastructure for measuring statistics, against less developed countries, which are increasingly the hosts of the manufacturing sector. How much union growth is going unrecorded there? The New Unionism study looks at the meager data from such countries and suggests that an increase in the manufacturing base seems to be accompanied by a steady increase in union membership. In Malaysia, union membership is up by 14 percent, in the Philippines it’s up by 23 percent, in China it’s up by 32 percent, in Singapore it’s up 77 percent, and in India union membership is up by a whopping 104 percent.
What about the developed world? In a recent paper, Dutch academic Jelle Visser, a leading authority on statistics relating to union membership and activity, shows that between 1998 and 2003 membership density fell in the Netherlands by less than 2 percent. So, while Japan’s union density dropped by 12.92 percent, the US’ dropped by 2.69 percent and the European Union’s dropped by 0.21 percent, but Canada’s union density grew by 13.61 percent, New Zealand’s grew by 9.16 percent, and Korea’s grew by 8.21 percent.
“Union decline is a myth, and it is time we stopped perpetuating it,” writes Hall-Jones. “The real challenge for the union movement is not to save itself from collapse; it is to find a strategy for growth and influence at a time when the potential has never been so good.”
OSHA Calls for $2.78 Million Fine Against Cintas
Federal safety officials have called for a $2.78 million penalty against the
Cintas Corporation, the nation’s largest supplier of uniforms, for violations
at its Tulsa plant, where a worker died when he was pulled into a large dryer
in March, writes Steven Greenhouse in The New York Times. OSHA found 46 violations
at the plant, among them failing to protect employees from being pinned by
conveyor belts, failing to have a proper procedure to shut down equipment
when clearing jammed clothing, and failing to train workers on how to clear
jams.
Days after the worker, Elezar Torres Gomez, died, Cintas issued a statement, largely blaming him for the accident, saying he had violated safety rules by climbing on top of a conveyor to dislodge jammed clothing.
As Unions’ Membership Declines, Political Influence Does Not
“Why are the Democrats so stubbornly wedded to unions?” asks Jennifer
Hunter in The Chicago Sun-Times. “Why aren’t they seeking out
other constituencies with the same zeal?”
This answer is disarmingly simple. Unions encompass almost every type of worker: white-collar workers such as those in the entertainment industry; hotel workers, women, minorities, immigrants and professionals such as teachers, writes Hunter.
“Labor is one of the most socially integrated institutions and movements in the United States,” said Dan Cornfield, professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. “It is occupationally diverse and demographically diverse.”
While union membership has declined, it is misleading to think that labor’s influence has similarly declined, said Ruth Milkman, director of the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at UCLA.
Jeff Burman represents Sound Editors on the Guild's Board of Directors. He can be reached at jeffrey.burman@nbcuni.com.