The WGA has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board charging that the AMPTP is in violation of labor law by refusing to negotiate in "good faith." I'm not sure the AMPTP has ever negotiated anything in what the other side of the table would consider "good faith." Perhaps some DGA contract has been that way...but part of the current dispute is about the Alliance's usual modus operandi, which is to decide what they're going to give the union in question and make them accept that without any meaningful give-and-take. The AMPTP has responded by declaring the WGA actions are "desperate," which is not a surprising rejoinder. Right now, the WGA could send out for Chinese Food and the AMPTP would issue a statement calling it an act of desperation.
I wouldn't expect the N.L.R.B. to do much, if anything. Traditionally, they don't like to get involved in this end of contract negotiations and they boot decisions down the line, delaying them until they're meaningless. Maybe this time will be different but the most likely outcome of this filing is no outcome. It's still worth a few P.R. points for the Guild, though...one more notch in a rather successful campaign by the WGA to make sure that most of those who are paying attention to the strike see that we're not the problem.
Often in a strike, there's a tendency to blame the workers for walking out, rather than blame Management for offering them a deal they couldn't accept. Obviously, either party could be in the wrong but that possibility usually doesn't occur to those who really, really want the strike to end. It's simply faster for the workers to surrender. There are also those out there who think (in this case) that those who write TV shows and movies should be so glad to have that glamorous job that it's sheer greed to expect anything more. For some reason, it's not sheer greed for the companies to try and maximize their take...and it's not even greedy for them to try and lop a few million off some union's health plan and add it to some CEO compensation package. But somehow it's greed when writers don't want their incomes to go down. Right. You can find that viewpoint expressed in some news articles and on the Internet but it's not as prevalent as it was in our past strikes.
(I don't think, by the way, that writing TV and movies is usually as glamorous as it may seem to some people. I guess if you're stuck in a career you hate, any job of choice can look like Nirvana, and the paychecks you hear that some writers receive can sound like all the money in the world. But it's one of those "you have to be there" things. I don't know what good pay or working conditions would be in the dry cleaning business and my dry cleaner can't really evaluate those matters in mine.)
Lastly: There are reports today that the late night hosts — Leno, Letterman, O'Brien and maybe Kimmel and/or Ferguson — will all return to their shows in January, perhaps on the same day. So far, the reports don't quote a single person involved with any of those shows, nor do they say anything that would suggest that anyone spreading the rumor has talked to anyone involved with any of the shows. The story in The New York Post quotes Letterman writer Bill Scheft as saying of Dave, "...when and if he decides to come back, it will be the right decision." But that quote is several weeks old and was not sparked by any current developments. The Post also spelled Scheft's name wrong which may give you a hint as to the accuracy level of the whole article. For now, file this one in the "I'll believe it when I see a real announcement" category.
The other day, I posted a link to a video of Abbott and Costello doing "Who's on First?" with Spanish subtitles. I just received an e-mail from my amigo, Sergio Aragonés, who says, "The translation is pretty good, but it is not funny as is it in English."
Here's a nice little mini-documentary (four and a half minutes) on the voices in some Disney cartoons. One of the guys you'll see in it is my pal Will Ryan who says he reads my weblog every day and can prove it by calling me when he reads this to set up a lunch. I think that's Buddy Ebsen narrating.
December 13, 2007
