|
I spent some part of tonight chatting with Patrick Verrone, the President of the Writer's Guild of America (WGA). He's in town testifying on behalf of net neutrality, which is significant for reasons I'll go into. The WGA has not traditionally done much political work or political organizing, at least in the modern era. In fact, while much of labor translates some of its organizing power into political influence via political donations, having a PAC is actually against the constitution of the Writer's Guild. While the group has worked on issues, items like Fyn-Syn, or the consolidation or content producers and distributors went through without much of a fight. The independent TV producers simply died as it became unprofitable to make TV by anyone but the conglomerates, reducing the power of writers versus the studio.
The decline of leverage for writers through the WGA was arrested during the strike, when the WGA used fan communities and internet messaging to maintain solidarity and win the battle of public opinion. It has had two significant effects on the WGA. One, it allowed the WGA to continue existing. The studios did not think that the writers could resist for that long, and certainly did not realize that their ability to control the message from the trade journals in LA and the media would be undercut so dramatically by the internet. And two, it has created an awareness within the WGA that the internet is fundamental to their organizing power.
Verrone is in town to testify for net neutrality, a far cry from would have seemed to have been his mandate when he was elected to lead the guild. And yet, the internet genuinely won a labor struggle against corporate power, and so it's clear to writers how important it is that they associate themselves with internet freedom. Business models are moving to the web, but more significantly, the studios are trying to extend their control over distribution to the web and the writers now know how problematic that is. The WGA never goes against studio interests on non-core related issues, so this is a huge break in precedent.
In our conversation (with more than just Verrone), I learned about a couple of interesting parts WGA strike that actually do scale across the rest of labor. One, the extension of the communications into fan communities was key, and while not every industry has fan communities, there are more of them than you'd think. Two, one of the killers in any strike are rumors, because corporations float them to wedge leaders against members. They make leaders think that members aren't with them, and they make members think leaders are selling them out or acting irresponsibly truculent. In the WGA strike, the writer-led blog United Hollywood simply killed rumors through robust and open discussion. Combined with the exceptionally high quality communications from the writers to the public at-large, the rumor-killing completely defanged the PR operation of the studios. And three, the liberal blogospher was able to damage Chris Lehane, a very narrow target of PR consultants that intersect with the political realm that the liberal blogs in particular are good at hitting.
There are unique elements to the WGA strike, obviously, but I suspect the basic narrative of greedy corporate bullies fighting workers with reasonable demands is applicable across labor. Labor density is on the uptick, and there are new tools in place to make sure that continues.
|
STATE BLOGS
