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This is clearly a case of fighting fire with fire. There’s yet more fallout from that WGA East and West leadership’s decision to make public to its members the names of those writers who went fi-core during the strike. Now the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (i.e. the AMPTP) has filed an “unfair labor practice” charge against the Writers Guild East And West over it with the National Labor Relations Board. (You may remember that, during the strike, the WGA filed “unfair labor practice” charges against the AMPTP when the networks and studios kept refusing to bargain with the striking writers.) Here’s the AMPTP’s statement today:
April 22, 2008 — The 28 writers listed in the WGA’s recent letter exercised their legal right to elect financial core status during the recently concluded WGA strike. As such, they are entitled to full coverage under the WGA’s collective bargaining agreement, including the same wages, residuals, health and pension benefits and protections afforded to all members.
By publicly naming names and encouraging people who have the power to hire writers to keep them “at arm’s length,” and saying they must be “judged accountable” it is clear the WGA leadership is seeking to deny employment to these writers in the future. That is a direct violation of federal labor law, and as the employers of those writers we have a responsibility to defend them and the rule of law in this case.
- Unfunny Spoof Of That WGA Fi-Core Letter
- WGA East & West Identify “Puny Few” Who Went Fi-Core During Writers Strike
- WGA Files Federal ‘Unfair Labor’ Charges Against AMPTP
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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It’s not the AMPTP’s place to file charges
It’s also pathetic and transparent
These guys are jokes – the AMPTP and the evil 28
LOL…now, I don’t think for a second AMPTP is standing up for these writers because it’s the right thing to do, just a way to kick WGA in the balls, but, what would be ironic(and funny) is if the writers named by WGA get MORE work than they would’ve if they hadn’t been singled out. I hope they do, because that WGA letter was a punk-ass bitch move.
Thank goodness the AMPTP is finally recognizing its obligation to the writers who generate so much revenue for the corporations. We could have used the help a few months back, but they were too busy, uh, sticking it to the writers. As for the naming of names: every union when it strikes has a wall of shame, and those who bail (in what might reasonably be called a punk-ass bitch move) on the rest of us should expect to have their attitude toward the WGA and the protections it offers every writer publicized thereupon. The WGA just named names — back in the 70′s truckers who refused to join a strike had concrete blocks thrown through their windows and their radiators. We’ve been asked to keep these deadbeats at “arm’s length.” Not so severe.
More than punk-ass, it was just so dumb and tin-eared. The Guild has a bad history of not protecting its members when they were blacklisted in the 50s. They should NEVER ever be involved again in the business of naming names. No matter what the members did. I just wish some of these kids who write in here and vigorously support Verone’s actions would get a sense of context and history. It’s embarrassing to read some of the letters of support they have posted. Clearly, they are talking out of their asses with utterly no concept of how bad this makes us look.
On the other hand, having the AMPTP be the voice of reason is equally sickening. All the Guild had to do was keep its mouth shut. Look at the mess that has been stirred up.
And it’s going to cost the rest of us members plenty when the Guild has to defend itself against the inevitable lawsuits….
Tolja.
Thank you, easywriter, for proving my point exactly. This is what happens in an industry where youth is valued over season and reason: no historical concept, no idea of the Guild’s checkered past and, of course, no sense of shame for being part of an organization that just pissed on its past heroes. And we wonder why the studios undervalue us?
The AMPTP is right about filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the WGA leadership but they should just file charges against their own selves as well. It is no secret that each studio and Network has their own black list hidden in a desk drawer somewhere on the lot.
I think the email Patric Verrone and Michael Winship sent to me last week as a WGA member was an astonishing brilliant move on their part.
When I joined the Screen Actors Guild, I remember reading in the bylaws that working non-union or working as an actor is strictly forbidden during a labor strike.
I know Fi-core is a legal way around this but the effect it has on the union membership morale is devastating. If this was a Teamster Strike and they watched Fi-core members cross the picket line and go back the would be blood running down the streets of Melrose and Pico. Fi-core or no Fi-core what Verrone and Winship did was show balls like a true leaders of a labor union.
Sure it is legal to cheat on your wife with her sister but is it right? Will there be dire consequences even a shunning by certain family members? One can call that a black list too.
I am proud of my union leaders who had the courage to stand up for the good of the family over a few bad apples.
The SCAB writers needed to be outed like the perps on ‘To Catch a Predator’ where Chris Hanson plays the calm moral center to men looking for sex with a 14 year old girl.
Well, writers like me who walked on the WGA picket lines, who got ran over by cars and into fights with studio employees needed our Chris Hanson too. Our WGA leadership (Patric Verrone and Michael Winship) didn’t forget our suffering so holding those fi-core perps accountable for their actions during a strike is justifiable righteousness.
I think publishing the names of the fi-core writers is a mistake. Like anotherWGAmember said, the Writers Guild has a bad history when it comes to naming names, and it shouldn’t be repeated.
I would like to suggest an alternative. When the apartheid regime collapsed in South Africa, they held a “Truth & Reconciliation Committee” which allowed those on opposing sides of the old conflict to air their grievances, explain their motives, find common ground, and maybe some level of forgiveness. It worked.
Now people were oppressed, tortured, and murdered in that situation, so it puts the whole fi-core/unionist split into perspective.
I suggest that the hardcore unionist leaders and the fi-core writers have a meeting moderated by a neutral 3rd party. This 3rd party would strictly enforce civility, forbidding shouting, name calling, and any other bullying tactics on either side. They would then explain what they did, why they did it, and maybe find that precious common ground, end all the bad blood between them, and not crash the union into a near civil war.
And anything that stops the AMPTP from looking like the voice of reason, has to be a good thing.
That’s just a suggestion.
Chris Jackson-it matters HOW you do things, not just what you do..what they did was stupid. They should have anticipated AMPTP doing this in response..and, it was a bitch move, because real men don’t do things in this way….if I’m in WGA leadership, and I want to hurt these people, I’d do it in-house…this letter comes across like an angry woman during a nasty divorce…seriously, their dicks should have just fallen off their body in protest, the minute they hit “send” on that letter..
I am not an expert on labor law…
But when the WGA filed their claim to the NLRB during the strike, I correctly predicted it was a nusiance claim and nothing would come of it. I am gonna take the exact oppostite stance on this time and predict that the WGA will be penalized for this action and probably will see lawsuits directly from the writers named in the letter in the near future.
As I said when the letter was first posted, just unprofessional and unnecessary. If they are a “puny few” as claimed in the letter why bother with them? Just ignore them and move on.
My brother-in-law is a labor relations attorney and he said he would take this case on in a second. It has legal merit and emotional appeal. This was a huge mistake.
The WGA didn’t make the list of names “public”. It wasn’t a press release. It was a memo to the guild membership that was leaked to the press. Members are entitled to know who went fi-core during the strike. Obviously, those who did had to know this information wouldn’t be a secret. There’s no case here.
Voguy, one thing in encouraged my on the WGA strike lines was to act more like blue collar workers and not nonchalant white collar workers on strike.
I would tell my fellow strikers to make their shouting heard, stand your ground and back our leadership. For them to turn their anger at the AMPTP for them pulling a fast one by getting the WGA to take a DVD increase off the table in order to really show good faith and not on each other. Well now is the time to turn our rage against the Fi-core members who abandoned us all when we needed them most.
It is my belief that an in-house letter to the fi-core people on the list would have done nothing but a waste of ink. The Fi-core people would have just thrown the letter into a pile of junk mail in the waste paper basket. Trust me on that one, their act by the very nature of it was to give the finger to the WGA leadership and its members.
I no nothing about the state and federal labor laws but as far as a reasonable person can see – the WGA leadership are within its rights to lash out at now non-members who needed to be punished for their egregious acts of abandonment during a critical time in the strike.
I actually walked the NBC picket line when Sen. John Kerry visited and spoke to an African American female soap opera writer about her position on the strike.
She told me that most of her friends who were soap opera writers were being threatened by the Network that if they didn’t come back to work their shows would be canceled and reality programs ala judge, game, cooking, and talk shows would take its place.
She told me that the network soap operas were losing in the daytime ratings war for years. That Ad revenues were down across the board for all three major networks.
I sensed she was trying to tell me something and asked her for the truth; was she going to break the strike and go back to work as a Scab? She said yes she would and apparently her peers did too. Her livelihood and the genre survival depended on it.
I was shocked that she was so honest. Then at the Paramount diversity day during the strike she was there marching on the strike line with her fellow writers. We didn’t speak but I thought to myself maybe she put her own selfish ways behind her and showed solidarity and didn’t go back to work.
Then I thought to myself she made her bed if she went fi-core — after the strike she gets to lay in her bed and suffer the consequences with her choice.
Let Patric Verrone and Michael Winship alone and praise them for their courage to be the loud bullies we need them to be for the next scab that breaks the strike and goes back to writing.
Chris Jackson
it is the 100% right move for a claim to be filed, though I do doubt that AMPTP is doing it for 100% noble reasons.
Still, WGA messed up BAD and should absolutely be sued heavily for this gaffe.
manny,
with 99.9% certainty I can assure you that the AMPTP’s motives for filing this claim are DEFINTELY NOT NOBLE! But it doesn’t make the claim any less credible. The AMPTP saw an opportunity and seized it. Win or lose they look good in the eyes of the public and even some writers. In fact I’m pretty certain they don’t even care how the NLRB rules, it was strictly a PR move.
And if this continues to be an issue, it was all created by WGA leadership’s own doing by writing an unnecessary letter.
Oh, please, the AMPTP whining about the Guild not covering up the fi-core people’s names? A bunch of their identities were “revealed” back in January when they went fi-core. By Variety, THR, and even the NYT. Even more identities were “revealed” long ago on their Wikipedia pages… BY THEIR OWN FANS.
And as the NYT article notes, the writing credits for each soap went from 20-ish people to around three… the three being those who went fi-core. They outed themselves long before the Guild did it.
And finally, as to whether it was “nice” or “fair” for the Guild not to cover up the names — does anyone really think the Guild didn’t warn the fi-core people that their names would be revealed back when those people were deciding whether to go fi-core? Come on.
It doesn’t matter that this wasn’t a publicly distributed email (although I think it was obvious that it would become public). What is important is that it was sent to potential employers of the 28 listed. And it was not just a list. It was a letter that was accompanied by an inherent threat to do financial harm and career damage to those individuals. It is not the petty phrasing that is important it is this:
“this handful of members who went financial core, resigning from the union yet continuing to receive the benefits of a union contract, must be held at arm’s length by the rest of us and judged accountable for what they are – strikebreakers whose actions placed everything for which we fought so hard at risk.”
This is very strong language. It is not subtle. There is intent.
And think about when any one of those individuals applies for a writing job for which they meet or exceed the qualifications. If they do not get hired it can easily appear as discrimination due to the WGA letter. Which will be just cause for individual suits. Fair or unfair, that’s the way it is.
I’m not saying that the case is a slam dunk, but odds are definitely very much against the WGA.
This was not courage. It was cowardly bullying overshadowed by stupidity. And there will be a price to be paid.
On top of the most harmful phrases “keep at arms length” and “judged accountable” nother phrase in the letter will be damning for the WGA as far as threatening the welfare of the fi-core writers:
We send this joint letter with a link to a list on respective websites of those who went financial core during the strike. To view it now and for future reference”
“Future reference.” What that can be construed as is “look at this list, if you see the name of your prosepective employee on it, don’t hire them.”
Re-read this letter and look at it as if it were from another organization and not the WGA. Take it out of your personal arena. If you had to judge it solely from a legal and ethical standpoint it would be difficult not to see it as a completely feasible case. Remember, the option of financial core is a right granted by the Supreme Court. I think any sensible person knows that there will be backlash from fellow union members in making the decision to go fi-core, but as long as an intent of retaliation from the union is not put into writing, you can’t prove the intent and you just have to deal with it. That’s not what happened.
And to those who say it wasn’t “made public.” No, technically it was not. But I think everyone knew it would be. As was any important email issued by the WGA during the strike. If you look at that history, you can make the case that it was intended to leak. Really, was anybody surprised when it showed up here or in Variety or the HR or anywhere else?
I find it insane that anyone would support such an act by leadership that is so irresponsible, not to mention the ethics of it which is equally if not more disturbing.
Yeah, going financial core is the same as being a child molester. That’s the perfect analogy. Brilliant. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Even Mark Twain would be jealous. I hear they also started a dog-fighting ring and they are trying to organize a way to adopt foreign children to use for Americans who need organ transplants. There is no “justifiable righteousness” in that, people. Amen!
To pick up on LKB’s point, the letter on the WGA website is addressed to members. However – and I fully support the WGA in their action – they didn’t put this letter in a “members only” area of the website. Anyone can access it. Whether this constitutes an intentional public release of the names I will leave the lawyers to hash out. IMHO, regardless of whether it was a public release, the WGA can make a strong argument that its member list is accessible in any case and that the letter was actually a public service for anyone considering hiring a writer.
The soap writer cited above who sensed the sword of Damacles over her head would have done well to recall at the time that the AMPTP signatories said everything they could to instill fear and foment disunity in the membership. I would never believe a “threat” to cancel a program – even a soap (which, BTW, is relatively cheap to produce). To the specifics of the producers’ argument, network viewership is down generally. The days of the three-network no DVD no free cable no pay cable no videogames no Internet world are long gone, but the moguls have still found a way to squeeze a buck out of a scripted program.
If it’s making $$$, they keep it. If it’s losing $$$, and it’s going to keep losing $$$, they dump it. Period.
As for the Fi-Core individuals, they made their bed. I hope they’re comfortable in it.
Another thing, apparently at least one of the fi-core writers on the list was a WGA member under the CBS newswriter’s contract– in other words a member who wasn’t on strike, since the newswriters don’t / can’t strike with the rest of the Guild. So what possible purpose is there in releasing that name, beyond vindictiveness?
Let’s name the names of the Three Puny Stooges who should be kept permanently at arms length and forced out of this business for being such idiots.
1) Patric Verrone
2) Michael Winship
3) David Young
I urge all Guild members to never do business with these three. They are pathetic spiteful losers.
Comment by Anonymous — April 22, 2008 @ 11:29 pm
Speakling of naming names… glad to see you feel so strongly about this that you refused to put your name on it. How’s the pontificating from the moral cheap seats?
To the victor goes the spoils — and the bitter soap writers who went fi-core during the strike should pay the price for their actions. Let them eat CAKE!
What the WGA leadership did was to protect the integrity of the guild during a strike action. The ghost of Jimmy Hoffa is applauding the WGA leadership for having the balls to stand up for something and risk a public beating on behalf of UNION WORKERS!
The NLRB is a joke when it comes to actions taken by a guild during a strike. They know in the heat of battle things happen.
The NLRB really only governs over faulty elections so they will not be encourage to pursuit this case on behalf of the AMPTP. If they did do such an asinine thing as to fine the WGA leadership for the letter and outing the names it would only play into the hands of the AMPTP. The AMPTP has everything to gain if they can convince the SAG members to go Fi-Core as leverage to not pay any DVD increases. Trust me my brothers and sister that is the true intent behind the AMPTP actions.
Today, I paid my SAG dues so I am in good standing with all three of my unions – WGA, AFTRA & SAG.
Tomorrow I’m working on NCIS and will enjoy my catered lunch just like the rest of my fellow SAG actors.
Long live UNIONS!
Fuck off SCABS!
Dear Tony,
Having used my name on this board, I understand why a lot of people don’t. Things can get pretty vicious. I took a lot of shit on this site during the strike. And do you know why? Because I urged people to use their names to show the strength of their statements/resolve and lack of fear of the AMPTP. I thought I was being pro-writer. I was trying to be. It ended up using your name made you the target of WRITERS. I got my feelings over it then wrote some silly, emotional posts to defend myself that I now find embarrassing.
p.s., what does the “C” stand for?
fyi, for those of you claiming this email was not made “public” you are wrong! This email was made public on two fronts…
1) It was posted on the WGA’s public website!
2) Once the WGA issued the email to members’ personal email addresses it became “public” as a legal matter. Legally for an email to considered private and/or property of an entity the email cannot be distributed to outside sources. (i.e any sent to address that doesn’t end in @wga.org is legally considered public distribution)
But legally, whether the email was intended to be made public is irrelevant. If this letter were never made public, it is the action of leadership to encourage members of the union to treat other members of the union as 2nd class citizens which is the only legal issue. Did they have a legal right to do it?