Sunday, December 19, 2021

LABOR HISTORY 
100 Days That Changed Hollywood: The Writers Strike, 10 Years Later

A decade after scribes walked out over digital pay, The Hollywood Reporter gathers key players to reflect on the tension and "traitors," strategies and solidarity, picket-line romances and the ultimate deal that still impacts how the town runs today.



MATTHEW SIMMONS/WIREIMAGE

BY REBECCA FORD, LACEY ROSE
MAY 17, 2018


It was early 2006 when Damon Lindelof headed down to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica to see advertisements for his television series Lost, then in its second season on ABC, blanketing the Apple Store. In that moment, he was tickled by the cachet of having his sci-fi creation be among the first series to roll out on Apple products. A few hours later, however, he got what his 11-year-old refers to as the “uh-oh” feeling. “It’s when your body is telling you that something is wrong,” he explains. “People were downloading Lost and paying $1.99 an episode. … I didn’t quite make the leap to, ‘I don’t get compensated for this at all.'


A year and a half later, he would. As would 12,000 other screenwriters who joined Lindelof on picket lines in Los Angeles and New York, as the Writers Guild of America waged war on the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers largely over pay for work that’s distributed via the internet, iPods, cellphones and other new media. The work stoppage — the industry’s first in nearly two decades — ultimately lasted 100 days and, according to the Milken Institute, took a $2.1 billion toll on the L.A. economy.

Now, 10 years later, THR gathers more than three dozen people involved to share their recollections of the charged period and answer the complicated question of whether it was all worth it.

On Nov. 2, 2007, after three months of negotiations, the Writers Guild announced that its members would strike if a deal was not reached by 12:01 a.m. Nov. 5.

SHAWN RYAN, THEN THE SHIELD SHOWRUNNER AND WGA NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE MEMBER The final day of negotiations was at the Sofitel Hotel. We all felt like, “We’re going to make a deal today.” But by about 3 or 4 o’clock that afternoon, it became clear to us that the other side wasn’t really interested in making a deal that day.

DAVID A. GOODMAN, THEN FAMILY GUY WRITER AND WGA BOARD MEMBER Their point of view was, “We don’t know what [the internet] is yet.” But Hulu went live [a month after] the strike ended. They knew where the business was going.

BARRY MEYER, THEN CHAIRMAN OF WARNER BROS. These new-media models were beginning to emerge. We said, “Let’s see what develops in three years. If there’s something really there, we’ll address it then.” It sounded perfectly logical to us, but there was a credibility issue that we had with the guilds because we’d made that same speech related to home video, and they had to fight for years to achieve their goals.


PATRIC VERRONE, THEN PRESIDENT OF WGA WEST It was brinkmanship. They were just going to call our bluff, and we weren’t bluffing. Next morning, we were out on strike.

STEVE LEVITAN, THEN BACK TO YOU SHOWRUNNER AND UNITED SHOWRUNNERS LEADER In past strikes, some showrunners worked as producers through the [stoppage]. But our goal was to make this one as short as possible, so anything that made the companies keep going, we felt would be detrimental. I’d worked at Leo Burnett in the ’80s, so I volunteered to do an ad with pledges from all of the biggest showrunners not to work in any capacity if we went on strike. The ad led to some showrunner meetings. Five minutes before the first big one, we were in a circle; it was Matt Weiner, me, I can’t remember who else, and someone said, “We need somebody to run this meeting.” Everybody turned and looked at me. In my mind, I thought, “Oh, fuck.”

SETH MACFARLANE, THEN FAMILY GUY SHOWRUNNER Those showrunner meetings were interesting because you didn’t have any hierarchy. It was a roomful of people who were each used to being the final voice in their respective rooms.

LORENZO DI BONAVENTURA, PRODUCER There was a total panic to get things moving as fast as we could in the hopes that the strike would not derail the movies we were putting together. For G.I. Joe, we brought on three writers and split up the script. It was really a Rubik’s Cube of trying to map out a process that I had never done before — and I have never done since.

BILLY RAY, SCREENWRITER I was doing a movie called State of Play. On the last day before the strike, everybody was arguing about the ending. I knew I couldn’t write another word starting the next morning, so I wrote 10 endings, and sent them all in and said, “Take your pick.”

KEVIN FALLS, THEN JOURNEYMAN SHOWRUNNER Journeyman was my first show on the air. I had talked Kevin McKidd, who had just finished Rome, into moving his wife and family to the U.S. from England to be the lead, and I felt responsible for now upending his life.

MARTI NOXON, THEN PRIVATE PRACTICE SHOWRUNNER I was running Private Practice with Shonda [Rhimes], and part of us was so tired that we were like, “Please, let’s have a strike.”

BEN SILVERMAN, THEN NBC CHAIRMAN I had been named chairman of NBC [five months earlier], and I remember asking [then CEO] Jeff Zucker, “What are we planning if there’s a strike?” The basic feeling there and in town was, “There’ll never be a strike.” Then bingo, it happens. The first thing hit were our late-night shows, where we built no contingency. We were super-well-positioned otherwise. I knew Biggest Loser could expand, I greenlit Phenomenon and American Gladiators. Then I came up with the idea of doing Celebrity Apprentice. I reached out to Mark Burnett, who said, “There’s no way Donald [Trump] will want to be around other celebrities. He has to be biggest celebrity.” And I said, “Actually, he’s going to be the biggest celebrity because he’s going to be the boss.” I called up Trump and he agreed, and we relaunched to huge ratings.






Hundreds and sometimes thousands of writers took to the picket lines, held daily outside the major studios in L.A. and corporate headquarters in New York.

GREG DANIELS, THEN THE OFFICE SHOWRUNNER I was the first writer to picket because I had to get to our set at 4 a.m. to try to prevent the Teamster caterers from crossing the line.

MICHAEL SCHUR, THEN THE OFFICE WRITER Steve Carell decided that if The Office couldn’t be produced with the writer-producers on set then he wasn’t going to make the show. So even though the “Dinner Party” episode was done and ready to be filmed, he just didn’t show up, and everything came to a grinding halt. The NBC lawyers and very high-powered suits pressured him like crazy, but he just calmly told them he wasn’t interested.

J.J. ABRAMS, SCREENWRITER-DIRECTOR It was ridiculous. In the morning, I’d go to picket at Paramount as a writer. Then when my call time happened, I would have to put down the signs and go in as a director and work on a movie [Star Trek] that we couldn’t rewrite because the script had to be locked.

JANE ESPENSON, THEN BATTLESTAR GALACTICA WRITER I remember young writers — aspiring writers — approaching me to walk beside me on the picket line. It’s a strange situation, to give advice about getting into a business while you’re in the process of protesting conditions within that business.

RENE BALCER, THEN LAW & ORDER SHOWRUNNER Some development guy at Fox nudged his car through the line and bumped into me. He came out yelling. The police who investigated it called it mutual combat and decided not to press charges against him. Then I turned it into an episode of Law & Order, where there was a strike and some loudmouth gets run over. Yep, I monetized my experience.

ELENA TROPP, THEN SCREENWRITER My daughter Rosie was born in August 2007, so she came with me. We thought it would be funny to make signs for her, like, “Stop milking us.” The plus of wearing your baby while you’re doing this is that a lot of people came up to us, like Mindy Kaling, who asked to take a picture with my baby. Then we were on Defamer. The headline was, like, “Strike Baby spotted!” Once we knew we had an audience, we thought, “Let’s have some more fun with it.”

NOXON People who were single kept asking for introductions to other single writers [on the picket line]. It was Tinder before Tinder.

TONY GILROY, SCREENWRITER-DIRECTOR We were looking for names to [picket]. I didn’t really know Ron Howard, but we shared an agent, so I called him and said, “Hey, man, is there any way …?” The guy was there in an hour.

RON HOWARD, DIRECTOR I was in the WGA, but I also had a production company so I wasn’t sure how they’d feel about me. They might feel my sympathy was on the other side. But I was very much welcomed.

KERRY EHRIN, THEN FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS WRITER I remember we were having a mother- son event at the school in my neighborhood, and this woman, who was the wife of an agent, just pointed at me: “She’s one of them!” It was funny and awful — like we were just a few steps away from the torches and pitchforks.

LEVITAN I remember at one point being at a rally where people were chanting these childish things aimed at the executives, and I’m thinking, “We’re not doing ourselves any favors here.” I just felt like it was beneath us. There was one sign that still makes me laugh, though: “Gary Newman’s wine has too many tannins.” Now, that was funny.

JOHN WELLS, SCREENWRITER AND FORMER WGA WEST PRESIDENT I remember walking the Fox picket with people chanting, “Hey, Chernin, what you earnin’?” after the executive [pay at Fox] came out, which was pretty great. I ran into [then News Corp. COO Peter] Chernin, and he thought it was fabulous, too.

ZAK PENN, SCREENWRITER My wife was a studio executive at New Line, and people were yelling at the execs as they were driving [onto the lot]. It left a bad taste in my mouth since I was sleeping with the other side.

MACFARLANE There was this animosity between showrunners who shut their shows down, like we did, and those who didn’t. But writers are so passive-aggressive, it came in the form of grumbling to each other.

Talks between the WGA and AMPTP broke down Dec. 7, after the two groups remained far apart on the key issue of new media.

MICHAEL LYNTON, THEN SONY CEO There came a moment where I was encouraged by a number of people to go visit [WGA executive director] David Young at the Writers Guild. I sat in the waiting room at the appointed time. And waited and waited. After 45 minutes, the receptionist called for the second or third time up to Young, and I could hear him say, “You should allow Mr. Lynton to wait there a while longer.” When I finally got into his office, it resulted in absolutely nothing.

LEVITAN I was really optimistic that a deal was going to happen before the holidays, and then I heard on the way to this Hanukkah dinner that [talks had broken down]. I was crushed. I get to this dinner, and [Disney CEO] Bob Iger and Michael Lynton are also there. I’m friends with those guys, and I make eye contact with them. The first moment that we could break off, the three of us walked off to a side room. I remember going, “What the fuck happened? Why can’t we solve this?”

LYNTON Running into friends who were writers in living rooms and kitchens was much more awkward than crossing a picket line.

LEVITAN Bob had this theory on what the problem was. He thought it had to do with WGA management and their negotiating tactics, and I took issue with that, but I quickly realized that they wanted to sit down and negotiate with a Hollywood insider.

VERRONE Management kept hammering, “David Young doesn’t understand the entertainment industry.” I joked that I did have to explain to him the difference between The Sopranos and The Simpsons, but other than that he understands what the entertainment industry is. They said, “We’ll meet with you if you bring in an entertainment lawyer.” So, we called in Alan Wertheimer.

ALAN WERTHEIMER, THEN OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR THE WGA I got the call from David Young while I was at the Sundance Film Festival. I didn’t say yes right then. I knew if I got into this, I’d be out of the office for quite a while, and I needed to talk to my colleagues. What I had heard was that things had reached an impasse and that the parties didn’t like each other
.

As the strike threatened to drag into the new year, many late-night hosts announced they’d return, largely sans writers, as early as Jan. 2. The 65th Golden Globe Awards, slated for Jan. 13, was canceled, with the winners announced at a no-frills press conference instead.

JIMMY KIMMEL, JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE! HOST The strike basically wiped out all my savings because I was paying a lot of the staff that was out of work. That’s a big reason why I had to go back on the air. I wasn’t making a ton of money at the time, and I couldn’t afford to do it anymore. I also felt if we stayed off the air, it was going to do permanent damage to our shows.

VERRONE We decided to make a side deal with David Letterman’s company [Dec. 28] so that [The Late Show and The Late Late Show] could go back to work. That was rife with complications, not the least of which was the fact that Jay Leno’s writers suddenly said, “What about us?” But they were employed by NBC, while Letterman employed his writers directly.

STEVE BODOW, THE DAILY SHOW WRITER It wasn’t an easy time. After years of us being in battle together every day making this show, for the first time we were on the opposite side of something. Jon [Stewart] was very frustrated — he’d worked out a deal with somebody to offer the same terms Letterman had, but the deal wasn’t accepted [by the guild]. It was uncomfortable because, in general, Jon was very loyal to the writers and the writers were loyal to Jon, and this tested that.

KIMMEL For the most part, it brought a lot of us [hosts] together, especially when the CBS shows got to go back [with writers] and we didn’t. That really made everyone mad. For the record, that was not a good idea. But we were all talking. Nobody wanted to be the first back. We all wanted to go back at the same time.



JORGE CAMERA, THEN PRESIDENT OF THE HFPA We tried every which way we could [to still have the Golden Globes]. I was even told I should go chain myself to the Writers Guild and not leave until they let us have them. Once the actors joined the strike and would not cross the picket line, there was no choice for us.

SILVERMAN I got in all of this trouble because I went on the radio and said, “It’s like the guys who weren’t invited to the prom are canceling prom even though the Golden Globes have nothing to do with the strike.” I was not only furious because it was the only awards show canceled that year and the network was being leveraged horribly and hurt financially but also I was nominated for three shows [as a producer] and I wasn’t going to be in that awesome room.

On Jan. 14 , dubbed by the media “Black Monday,” the major studios axed more than 40 writer-producer overall deals, citing the “force majeure” clause, which allows a party to break a contract in the wake of an unforeseeable event. The loss of millions of dollars roiled the WGA membership, with some groups pushing for a swift end to the strike.

FALLS There was talk that the studios might force majeure writers’ overall deals, but I naively thought I wasn’t going to be one of them. Then my agent called and told me I was being “forced.” I thought he was joking. Then Jennifer Salke [then at 20th Century Fox TV] beeped in, and I knew I was a goner.

HOWARD MICHAEL GOULD, SCREENWRITER AND THEN WGA NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE MEMBER I was told that there was a group [nicknamed The Dirty 30] that had been meeting. They were concerned about the direction things had been going. They were upper-middle-class writers, and I was told they were going to go public with a statement demanding that the Writers Guild pledge, even before the DGA deal was sealed, to accept the parameters of that deal. I was given a name and a number and I called.

VERRONE To this day, I have no idea who was in The Dirty 30.

JONATHAN PRINCE, THEN CANE SHOWRUNNER Am I the only one admitting I was in it? I remember we left this one meeting and there were fliers on each of our cars that basically said, “You’re a traitor, I know who you are.”

GOULD I negotiated a sit-down. Robert King and I went to Jonathan Prince’s house. There were about three dozen of them. And they were furious. They tore into us for two hours. Our message to them was, “We know you’re hurting, but there’s nothing to be accomplished by doing what you’re going to do before the DGA makes their deal. If you do this, it will undermine the DGA’s negotiation.”

PRINCE We never undermined the negotiations. I know that in order to make any gains, there must be pain. We just thought that the pain should have been ours, the writers, it shouldn’t have been others’ to bear. And getting a bigger piece of the backend of this future technology doesn’t trickle down to [nonwriters]. How would that have helped my caterer who lost her mortgage or my greensman who had to move out of L.A.? We weren’t traitors. By day, we were walking the picket line and reporting to our strike captains; and by night, we were saying, “How do we get this thing to end?”

RAY We were really afraid that the DGA would begin to negotiate their deal while we were still out there. It was all anyone talked about: Is the DGA going to torpedo us? I reached out to a bunch of writer-directors and I invited them to my house. There was 40 of us, and we began to call ourselves “The WD-40.” We wrote the DGA asking them to stay out of their negotiations until our strike was resolved. We called people to try to get them to sign the letter. I only had one guy who basically told me to go jump in the lake — it was John Carpenter.

KEN ZIFFREN, OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR THE DGA There was pressure put on by the Writers Guild. But the DGA firmly believed if you make a deal sufficiently ahead of time to take the pressure off of management, you’re going to make a better deal than if you stumble into it last minute, or even after a short period of strikes.

The DGA signed its new deal Jan. 17, 2008. After that, key factions within the WGA pushed aggressively for the strike to end. Both sides returned to the table in an attempt to hammer out a contract.

WELLS Once the DGA made that deal, our bargaining position was significantly reduced.

MICHAEL WINSHIP, THEN WGA EAST PRESIDENT That was a low point. God bless ’em, they got a deal, but we felt strongly that they fell on our backs.

GILROY I was very disappointed in the Directors Guild, and angry. If we could’ve pressed just a little bit further and really threatened to shut down the Academy Awards. … I would have been willing to not go to the Oscars.

AARON SORKIN, SCREENWRITER Paul Attanasio called and asked if I’d come to a meeting at his house. There were about 20 people, including a former president and a former vice president of the Guild. The DGA had just approved their contract, and people in the room who knew what they were talking about felt that the terms were the best we were going to get.

AKIVA GOLDSMAN, SCREENWRITER The emotional fuel for the strike had started to outpace the potential gains. We were sitting around [at Attanasio’s house] going, “Let’s get our hands in this in a more direct way.”

MEYER Leslie [Moonves], [Chernin], [Iger] and I met fairly regularly to talk strategy. We had a standing table at the Bel Air Hotel.

RYAN The issue was we were a group of decision-makers who were empowered to make a deal and we spent months in a room with people who weren’t — people who then had to go back to some room and call [the CEOs].

VERRONE So we said, “In exchange for us bringing Wertheimer, you’ve got to bring in CEOs.”

WERTHEIMER Once we were close to the finish line, those guys [Iger and Chernin] started showing up. Then we made some progress.



VERRONE Chernin and Iger represented the two factions of the AMPTP. Chernin was the hard-liner who represented Fox, NBC and Warner Bros. The other side was Iger, whose best interest was in making sure the Academy Awards went off in a few weeks, and Moonves, who was looking to make a deal much earlier than anybody else.

RYAN If we had been negotiating only with CBS, there never would have been a strike. It didn’t make sense for them. For a company like Fox, which didn’t have as many hours of programming and relied very heavily on American Idol at that time, they had a different perspective.

VERRONE Those final negotiations took about a day and a half. We were at the Luxe Hotel under a press blackout.

JOHN BOWMAN, WGA NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE CHAIR At the end, there was a lot of confusion about what we would settle on. I’m not sure we even knew what our bottom line was. The negotiating committee was made up largely of showrunners, and the board had a slightly more proletarian, workaday-writer feel. There was a sense that some on the board might hold out for animation or DVDs. My feeling was we needed a win, and we needed to be unified. I was getting phone calls from labor leaders all over the country throughout saying, “Labor’s taking a hit. You have to win this.” A public split would have been a disaster.

After 100 days, on Feb. 12, 2008, more than 90 percent of the WGA voted to end the strike. On Feb. 26, WGA membership approved a three-year contract, with the Writers Guild winning a piece of digital revenue.

WINSHIP I had decided to go ahead and have the [WGA East] awards because I thought it would be good for morale. It turned out to be this incredible fortuitous coincidence. We had the meeting to announce the end [of the strike], immediately followed by this party.

GOLDSMAN Our business — how deals worked, how writers worked within the system — has never been the same.

BRYAN FULLER, THEN PUSHING DAISIES SHOWRUNNER It’s no exaggeration to say there was a punitive cloud that wove across writers rooms and interactions with studios for years. There was a lot of blame going around.

TROPP I stopped writing not that much longer after the strike. It became so much harder to get jobs. Rosie’s in the fifth grade now, we live in South Carolina, and we showed her some of those old pictures from the picket line. She’s going through a social justice phase, so it was a nice entree to, “This is a union and this is what unions do. I’m sorry that at the end of that strike there wasn’t room for me writing movies anymore, but that’s OK, too.


FALLS Journeyman never got a second season. But for Kevin McKidd, I’m relieved to say, it turned into a pot of gold. The next year he started his first of 10 seasons on Grey’s Anatomy. He also learned to surf. …

VERRONE We absolutely didn’t get everything we wanted, but getting the jurisdiction in new media completely changed the way writers, actors, directors and the entire industry are employed. If we hadn’t done that, Netflix wouldn’t be what it is today, which is the company that employs something like a third of our members now.

WELLS Patric and some of the other leaders, who did a courageous job running this strike and standing up to tremendous pressure, were later punished electorally. But they were planting seeds for the future.

RYAN I don’t know that you can look at the landscape in 2018 with everything that’s playing online and not see that us caving and not winning jurisdiction over the internet would be anything other than an utter disaster for the creative community.

Additional reporting by Michael O’Connell.

‘Communist Daughter’ Director on Uber-Left Comedy, Socialism and Marxism: “They’re Worth Fighting For”

"My father went through a Marxist phase," says Leah Cameron, creator, showrunner and director of the Web Series World Cup winning political satire.


BY ETAN VLESSING
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
DECEMBER 9, 2021 2:54PM
The Communist's Daughter COURTESY OF CONOR FISHER

Leah Cameron takes pride in The Communist’s Daughter having an unabashed socialist streak, even if her Canadian uber-left web comedy is a world away from Russian bread lines and iron-fisted Stalinism.

“I’m excited about the comedy that comes from black and white thinking that some people have in America, about communism being the enemy,” Cameron, who created, show ran and directed the recent winner of the coveted Web Series World Cup, told The Hollywood Reporter.

In her native Canada, where snowbirds vacation in Cuba and Russian cars are popular with local drivers, socialism as a word has shades of meaning. “I wanted to make a show where even if the quest of the politics and the neighborhood gets petty and silly, we can still see the positive in the ideals of socialism and Marxism, and they’re worth fighting for,” Cameron added.

The Communist’s Daughter — set in 1989 during the Ronald Reagan era just as the West and capitalism were about to win the Cold War — portrays the Bolshevik McDougald family fighting against that political tide. The personal and the political come together in the titular character, 15-year-old Dunyasha, played by Sofia Banzhaf, who is mortified as her Marxist father picks her up at school in a spluttering Russian army vehicle just as she falls for her high school heartthrob, played by Kolton Stewart.

The McDougalds, led by neighborhood Pinko parents played by Aaron Poole and Jessica Holmes, in their madcap adventures are less about pushing political radicalism than just having outsized dreams of society sharing the wealth in a workers’ paradise. “My father went through a Marxist phase, calling himself a communist at the height of the Reagan 80s. It just seemed normal to me,” Cameron recalled.

She added the series — part political satire, a send-up of 1980s America and its devotion to consumer capitalism — is more an exaggerated account of her high school years in Toronto delivered with gentle sarcasm and wit. During her youth, Cameron’s father did drive a Russian-made Lada 4 X 4 and ran (unsuccessfully) for political office, which echoes Dunyasha’s father, Ian, in the web series campaigning in local politics by espousing sentimental delusions about socialism on the doorstep.

The sophisticated satire in The Communist’s Daughter comes from the patent fact that Ian McDougald, a modern-day Don Quixote, denies the collapse of communism just as the Berlin Wall falls and chooses to keep his family in an ersatz reality.

“Because the 1980s was a consumerist time, Reaganism was all about tax cuts for the rich and there was a lot of America Ra Ra Ra and American military power and all those things gave the family more to be opposed to, but also made them feel more like odd ducks,” Cameron explained.

The challenge in The Communist’s Daughter was to portray the McDougalds with humor and heart and get past the veneer of little c communism to what that ideology calls for, including less inequality and more social progress for common people.

Here Cameron’s farce about the daughter of happily married Communists caught between fitting in at high school and singing the praises of socialism points up the elaborate delusions and lies many people construct to fight decades-old cultural wars. “I was excited to find the comedy in that and how we on both sides of the political spectrum stereotype people,” she insisted.

Cameron argued the lost world of Soviet Russia communism and Reaganomics is distant enough to allow her web series to play for laughs. “Trickle-down economics, who thought that was a good idea? Didn’t work out that well, didn’t it,” she insists.

Cameron adds audience reaction online to The Communist’s Daughter has been forthright, whether from the right or the left. “It can be like, ‘I’m a communist. I feel personally attacked,’ or ‘this is dangerous. This is how (communist dictatorship) starts,” she explains.

The Communist’s Daughter is executive produced by Lauren Corber of LoCo Motion Pictures, Josh Gal, Emer Connon and Cameron, with Natalie Novak of Natalie Novak Films serving as producer.

TRAVELING CARD

USA

Ongoing San Antonio strike leads to musicians playing at orchestras across the country

Clarinetist Stephanie Key is performing a Christmas-themed concert with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Key remains hopeful in the future of San Antonio's Symphony.
Volume 90%
 

SAN ANTONIO — Daniel Taubenheim woke up Friday morning from his new home in Phoenix, Arizona, remembering the first time he heard the San Antonio Symphony.

“I will never forget that experience. I just won a job with a professional orchestra and they sound amazing,” Taubenheim said.

He’s one of dozens of musicians who’ve found work at other orchestras across Texas and the nation due to the ongoing strike after symphony management proposed to cut pay and the size of the symphony.

The trumpeter had played with the San Antonio Symphony since 2016. Taubenheim also taught trumpet at local universities.

He resigned from his teaching positions at local universities but remains with the San Antonio Symphony during the ongoing strike.

Stripped health insurance combined with the proposal of reducing fulltime musician pay from $35,000 to $24,000 annually doesn’t bode well for the striking musicians.

“The symphony’s (San Antonio Symphony) financial proposals would have made a huge loss,” Taubenheim said. 

Kenneth Freudigman has spent the last 21 seasons with the San Antonio Symphony as principal cellist.

“We are the seventh largest city in the country. It is a crime that we are on the edge of losing the symphony,” Freudigman said. “Their contract asking for an A/B split where there are a core which is not paying even a living wage and then a B which pays poverty levels is not a model that I want to be a part of.”

For the past several weeks, he’s played with the Atlanta Symphony.

“Atlanta gets it. They understand what a thriving arts community means to an entire city,” he said.

However, Freudigman stressed there are personal drawbacks to performing multiple weeks in a different city.

While that is great for me artistically and financially it’s helping me, it’s also the problem is that it’s taking me away from my family. It’s taking me away from my seventh grader who is back in school,” Freudigman said.

Stephanie Key and her husband are warming up for a Christmas concert alongside the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. While they’re grateful for the opportunity, Key noted she wishes she could perform in San Antonio.

But until there’s an agreement met between the symphony board and musicians union, Key will be playing her clarinet professionally at different organizations.

Key and other San Antonio musicians have received invites to perform from more than 30 orchestras nationwide. Cities include Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Los Angeles and New York.

“People can’t, they shouldn’t stay in San Antonio if they’re not going to be appreciated, they need to play,” she said.

Corey Cowart, executive director of the San Antonio Symphony expressed optimism in the future of the symphony despite the months-long strike that’s resulted in no agreed solution from both parties.

In a statement, Cowart said:

"We understand the difficult choice the extended contract negotiations and strike has forced on our musicians. We’ve offered binding arbitration and mediation with neutral mediators and arbitrators in an effort to resolve the strike before the musicians have had to make these decisions. So far, the musicians’ union has refused both and has not provided a proposal since September.

It's important to note that our musicians have always played in other cities both outside of our season and during it as well, so we are not surprised that they are performing in other symphonies at all - they've done so for years. In fact, several of our musicians had pre-planned sabbaticals or requested for leave to play with other organizations before the start of our season. We are fortunate that San Antonio is home to many talented musicians, we believe when a sustainable contract is achieved, we will retain and attract performers."

The ongoing strike has resulted in canceled performances including Handel's Mesiah, which was scheduled for December 22-23. 

Meanwhile, Taubenheim is ready to perform for the Phoenix Symphony's Handel's Mesiah on December 17. After Taubenheim's one-year stint at the Arizona orchestra, it's not known for sure what the future holds. But he longs for the day when the strike ends and the San Antonio Symphony can make a comeback and perform at the Tobin Center. 

“I’m happy to be performing. This orchestra’s (Phoenix Symphony) awesome. But yeah, the whole things been a little hard and just odd not being in my normal orchestra.”


https://www.tempestmag.org/2021/05/history-and-independent-politics-in...

2021-05-11 · 

Kim Moody, a co-founder of Labor Notes, aims to provide an answer to this

 question with his 2019 book, 

Tramps and Trade Union Travelers: Internal Migration and Organized Labor 


WAGE THEFT
UK
MOD supplier will strike over pay row



December 16 2021
Anna Cooper

GMB members at Somers Forge are set for strike action on the 17th of December.

The manufacturer builds components for the defence industry and is a supplier to the MOD.

Based in Halesowen, the company is currently in a row over pay. GMB says the proposal would see members lose six months of higher pay.

The strike has been announced after members rejected the latest pay deal of 4% over two years, but the company refused to backdate the award to the pay anniversary of April.


GMB says the dispute began after the previous two-year deal was withdrawn, with only the first year of the deal being honoured, which has left the employees with little trust in their employer.

Russell Farrington, GMB regional organiser said: “Nobody expects that you agree a new rate, but then only get if for half the time.

“No-one wants to go out on strike in the middle of winter, but at the end of the day, we’re talking about a significant amount of money that the company is trying to withhold here.


“Rather than trying to pull a fast one, the company should come back to the table and we’ll hammer this out together.”

Whilst the company have told the workforce they couldn’t afford to backdate to April, but recently they have been quoted as a ‘thriving’ company.

Somers Forge said they were unable to divulge any information in regards to the strike.



Workers at carmaker Aston Martin have threatened industrial action following news that it plans to close its defined benefit pension scheme in January 2022.

Unite the union said that workers “voted overwhelmingly in a consultative ballot” for full-scale industrial action in the new year, in order to protect their retirement incomes.

Some 400 members of the Aston Martin Lagonda Limited Pension Scheme are set to be affected by the proposed change. The company has approximately 2,000 employees in total.

Staff at sites in Gaydon and Wellesbourne, both in Warwickshire, as well as Milton Keynes, Newport Pagnell, and St Athan in South Wales took part in the consultative ballot.

These workers have done as asked and saved for their retirement, but they have also worked hard to deliver improved profits for Aston Martin. There is, therefore, no case to be made for closing the DB pension schemes, a move that robs our members of tens of thousands of pounds – in the case of Aston Martin workers, that is about £100,000

Sharon Graham, Unite

Workers face losing about £100,000 in retirement income if the DB scheme, based on a career-averaged salary, is closed from February next year, Unite argued.

The company wants to move the DB members to the existing defined contribution scheme, which currently covers the majority of the workforce and also new employees.

However, Unite argues that such DC schemes are at “the mercy of sudden fluctuations in global stock markets and produce worse retirement incomes”.

Changing gears

Plans to close the company’s DB scheme come four years after it transitioned away from a final salary model.

In 2017, its structure was changed to a career average revalued earnings scheme. The scheme was closed to new entrants on May 31 2011.

According to the pension fund’s 2020 actuarial valuation, the value of its assets stood at £314.6m, sufficient to cover 76 per cent of the benefits that had accrued to members.

It had been planned that from January 2022, contributions would increase from 23.7 per cent to 37.5 per cent for active members who do not participate in the salary sacrifice scheme. Those who do participate make no contributions.

From January 1 2022, the group contribution would increase from 30.2 per cent and 34.7 per cent to 44 per cent and 48.5 per cent for members who opted for benefits of 1/80th’s and 1/70th’s of pensionable salary, respectively.

With the scheme deficit standing at £97m, the group agreed in December 2020 to increase the recovery plan contributions from £7.1m to £15m a year, effective from 2021 to 2027.

Estimated contributions for the year ending December 31 2021 were £20.6m, the group’s 2020 annual report stated.

Aston Martin backs DB closure

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “We will back our members at Aston Martin 100 per cent if they decide to take industrial action to defend their pensions and defeat this threat to their retirement incomes.  

“These workers have done as asked and saved for their retirement, but they have also worked hard to deliver improved profits for Aston Martin. There is, therefore, no case to be made for closing the DB pension schemes, a move that robs our members of tens of thousands of pounds — in the case of Aston Martin workers, that is about £100,000.

“Aston Martin’s whole workforce is now aware of the gross inadequacy of the existing DC scheme by comparison, and this will be a significant factor when we put forward our claim in the 2022 pay review,” she added.

A spokesperson for Aston Martin told Pensions Expert: “As a responsible employer, Aston Martin has a duty to deliver financially sustainable pension arrangements for its circa 2,000 employees, while managing its pension risks and underlying costs.

“Having completed a detailed review of its future pension arrangements, and in line with many other UK employers, it is proposing changes to its DB scheme affecting circa 400 employees.

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“Should these changes occur, Aston Martin has outlined an attractive transition arrangement, including a one-off cash payment and equity in the company. This is in addition to supporting the DB pension scheme to meet the cost of pension benefits already earned,” the spokesperson continued.

“Aston Martin remains in direct communication with the affected employees, and their representatives, regarding these changes and is unable to comment further at this time.”

The consultation period with members is due to end on December 17, although Unite has called for it to be extended.

FIRST ACTUAL USE OF BLOCKCHAIN
First kilo of blockchain tracked gold shipped from Burkina Faso on Minexx platform
MINING.com Editor | December 17, 2021

Artisanal mining in Burkina Faso. Image from Minexx.

Minexx has exported the first kilo of gold tracked through its blockchain platform from Burkina Faso, bringing better transparency to the supply chain.


The company deploys its platform to secure the mineral supply chain for miners, smelters, traders, tech companies and governments and brings compliance and transparency which enables local banks, logistics providers and buyers to engage with the sector.

Burkina Faso, in West Africa, produces 34 tonnes of artisanal gold per year, but only 300kg was formally exported in 2019 due to a lack of traceability and lower export taxes in neighbouring countries.

The Burkina Faso government has now lowered the taxes when exporting through L’Agence Nationale d’Encadrement des Exploitations Minières Artisanales et Semi-artisanales (ANEEMAS), the government body for artisanal and small-scale production.
Image from Minexx

Minexx has been working with local traders, NGO partners and ANEEMAS to drive production via a traceable route to market. During this export the different batches from different sources were tracked on the Minexx platform, along with information obtained through due diligence and associated reports from site visits.

Last year Minexx, in a world first, exported minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo processing $250,000 of digital, blockchain certified payments.

While gold is best known for either investment or for jewellery, it is also a very efficient conductor and can be found in smartphones and televisions.

In terms of the distribution of gold demand in 2020, 8% was for technology.

“If we are going to achieve net zero we are going to require even more minerals and this is going to have an impact on countries around the world, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa,” Marcus Scaramanga, Minexx CEO said in a media release.

“It is more important than ever that we move with pace, leveraging technology to provide solutions to the challenges the world faces and to play our role in delivering benefits to all in the supply chain – from the artisanal miners through to the consumer. This breakthrough in Burkina Faso is another important step in this journey.”