WGA Strike 90%+ vote to strike
Charles French
Prepare for a long, nasty fight folks.
Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
other writers in this.
STRIKE!!!!
Peace,
Charles
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
> other writers in this.
No, you don't.
--
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
Promote someone else.
.
Josh Hill
Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>
>> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>> other writers in this.
>
>No, you don't.
Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
studios' proposal is a travesty.
--
Josh
"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.
We know now that it is bad economics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Patty Winter
In article <evdkh3t3mkakmh9d6...@4ax.com>,
Josh Hill <joshu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
>studios' proposal is a travesty.
The articles that came out yesterday about the authorization vote
did mention that the studios have backed down on the "you don't
get paid until the show/film makes a profit" section. But that
was only one of several unreasonable sections.
Patty
Kurt Ullman
Patty Winter <pat...@wintertime.com> wrote:
As far as I could tell they were back to status-quo
Jan
>
>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\"
>Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>>
>>> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>>> other writers in this.
>>
>>No, you don't.
>
>Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
>studios' proposal is a travesty.
>
As of Tuesday, they've taken their proposed revamp of the residuals payments off
the table completely. Probably most ballots had already been cast by then.
What bugs me is that when they get together on Monday it'll be only the 11th
time they've met since July. I can't help but wonder if either side is actually
interested in negotiating yet and when they'll drop all the posturing and get
serious.
Jan
--
We see what we look for and we look for what we think we will see.
--jms
Kurt Ullman
wrote:
> What bugs me is that when they get together on Monday it'll be only the 11th
> time they've met since July. I can't help but wonder if either side is
> actually
> interested in negotiating yet and when they'll drop all the posturing and get
> serious.
>
If this collective bargaining agreement gets serious before the strike
deadline is set, it will be the first one in history ...
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\"
> Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>>
>>> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>>> other writers in this.
>>
>>No, you don't.
>
> Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
> studios' proposal is a travesty.
Unions are an anachronism. They have long since ceased to serve the
purpose of preventing labor abuse. They now exist to perpetuate
themselves as institutions and nothing more. Without continually
bringing up "issues" over which to strike these institutions would be
(rightly) regarded as irrelevant.
Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
nonetheless.
Jan
\"Hammer\" Schultz says...
>
>
>Unions are an anachronism. They have long since ceased to serve the
>purpose of preventing labor abuse. They now exist to perpetuate
>themselves as institutions and nothing more. Without continually
>bringing up "issues" over which to strike these institutions would be
>(rightly) regarded as irrelevant.
In many cases, I agree. In this case, I don't.
>
>Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
>anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
>not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
>of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
>nonetheless.
>
There's plenty of individuality available. The union negotiates the *minimum*
agreement, not every agreement. And there's (I believe) a form of membership in
the union that allows writers to work for signatories of the MBA (Minimum Basic
Agreement) as well as non-signatories.
I also disagree with your concept of it being a 'sin' to 'abdicate your
individuality' here. What's wrong with accepting an organization that ensures
certain minimuns in order for you and your agent to not have to negotiate every
little point in every contract? It's far better for all concerned to have a
jumping off point. From there, the items to be negotiated are more likely to be
those that benefit that individual writer and that are more germaine to that
project.
In an industry where there's such a huge difference in power and money as there
is between the Companies and the writers/actors/directors, I'm all in favor of
the unions in order to try to balance the scales.
Jan
Kurt Ullman says...
Too true, I'm afraid. Still, it's annoying.
Jon Schild
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:19:40 -0400, Josh Hill wrote:
>
>
>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\"
>>Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>>>>other writers in this.
>>>
>>>No, you don't.
>>
>>Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
>>studios' proposal is a travesty.
>
> Unions are an anachronism. They have long since ceased to serve the
> purpose of preventing labor abuse. They now exist to perpetuate
> themselves as institutions and nothing more. Without continually
> bringing up "issues" over which to strike these institutions would be
> (rightly) regarded as irrelevant.
I will agree with you in most cases. The ones my father and
father-in-law belonged to were certainly worthless. About the only ones
left that have any meaning are the ones like WGA, where the "employees"
are independent individuals with no power and the "employers" are very
powerful and have no ethics.
> Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
> anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
> not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
> of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
> nonetheless.
Unions like to claim that if they didn't exist, the poor working man
would get paid 50 cents per hour. In most cases that is nonsense. I
think that TV networks would actually try that if they could.
--
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
Josh Hill
Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:19:40 -0400, Josh Hill wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\"
>> Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>>>
>>>> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>>>> other writers in this.
>>>
>>>No, you don't.
>>
>> Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
>> studios' proposal is a travesty.
>
>Unions are an anachronism. They have long since ceased to serve the
>purpose of preventing labor abuse. They now exist to perpetuate
>themselves as institutions and nothing more. Without continually
>bringing up "issues" over which to strike these institutions would be
>(rightly) regarded as irrelevant.
>
>Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
>anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
>not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
>of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
>nonetheless.
While I'm hardly uncritical of unions, which not infrequently seem to
me their own worst enemies, I think you're making an unjustified
assumption here, namely that because the house hasn't collapsed, it's
OK to remove the beams.
Anyway, I'm not sure that the surrender of individuality that occurs
in a union situation is any worse than the surrender of individuality
that occurs when one becomes an employee. Unions, after all, differ
from corporations in being democracies, and the union employee is less
susceptible to arbitrary actions on the part of management than the
non-union employee.
Josh Hill
wrote:
It was certainly true before there were unions: in some cases,
employees were literally worked to death. And non-union companies like
Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states, Wal-Mart
employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
insurance.
Jon Schild
In states where closed union shops are illegal, has the house collapsed?
> Anyway, I'm not sure that the surrender of individuality that occurs
> in a union situation is any worse than the surrender of individuality
> that occurs when one becomes an employee. Unions, after all, differ
> from corporations in being democracies, and the union employee is less
> susceptible to arbitrary actions on the part of management than the
> non-union employee.
BS. Union leadership is self-perpetuating. The employees vote on one of
two candidates picked by current leadership, or yes or no on one
candidate. In one election, when my father came out of the voting booth
and gave his ballot to the local secretary, she handed him a new union
magazine with the election results already printed in it. Some
democracy. Locals sometimes have better leadership. But they continue to
take worker dues and use them to make very large contributions to
political candidates without the membership having any say where the
contributions go.
Jon Schild
I keep hearing this, but people I know personally who work at Wal-Mart
are all happy with it. They report NONE of the supposed abuses that
activists are always talking about. I think unions are just spreading
lies about how horrible it is to work without having union dues forced
out of your pocket. They see how much power they could get by bringing
down a company that large, and they want it.
Josh Hill
wrote:
>
>
Closed shops are illegal in the United States; you're thinking of
union shops. In any case, here's a map of the states with anti-union
laws:
It's pretty much a map of the red states, which is to say it's pretty
much a map of the poor ones. Funny how that works.
>> Anyway, I'm not sure that the surrender of individuality that occurs
>> in a union situation is any worse than the surrender of individuality
>> that occurs when one becomes an employee. Unions, after all, differ
>> from corporations in being democracies, and the union employee is less
>> susceptible to arbitrary actions on the part of management than the
>> non-union employee.
>
>BS. Union leadership is self-perpetuating. The employees vote on one of
>two candidates picked by current leadership, or yes or no on one
>candidate. In one election, when my father came out of the voting booth
>and gave his ballot to the local secretary, she handed him a new union
>magazine with the election results already printed in it. Some
>democracy. Locals sometimes have better leadership. But they continue to
>take worker dues and use them to make very large contributions to
>political candidates without the membership having any say where the
>contributions go.
I was in a union briefly when I was younger. The rank and file grew
dissatisfied with the local leadership, and voted in a reform slate.
They were hardly the first to have done so.
Josh Hill
wrote:
>Josh Hill wrote:
>> It was certainly true before there were unions: in some cases,
>> employees were literally worked to death. And non-union companies like
>> Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states, Wal-Mart
>> employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
>> insurance.
>
>I keep hearing this, but people I know personally who work at Wal-Mart
>are all happy with it. They report NONE of the supposed abuses that
>activists are always talking about. I think unions are just spreading
>lies about how horrible it is to work without having union dues forced
>out of your pocket. They see how much power they could get by bringing
>down a company that large, and they want it.
According to a web site I found:
In 2001, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on
average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861. The 2001 poverty
line for a family of three was $14,630. ["Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?",
Business Week, 10/6/03, US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001
Poverty Guidelines, 2001]
A 2003 wage analysis reported that cashiers, the second most common
job, earn approximately $7.92 per hour and work 29 hours a week. This
brings in annual wages of only $11,948. ["Statistical Analysis of
Gender Patterns in Wal-Mart's Workforce", Dr. Richard Drogin 2003]
Wal-Mart Associates don't earn enough to support a family
The average two-person family (one parent and one child) needed
$27,948 to meet basic needs in 2005, well above what Wal-Mart reports
that its average full-time associate earns. Wal-Mart claimed that its
average associate earned $9.68 an hour in 2005. That would make the
average associate's annual wages $17,114. ["Basic Family Budget
Calculator" online at www.epinet.org]
http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/
It seems they're paying poverty-level wages.
Patty Winter
In article <1f8atmpyk28f6.1gkjubrodnyb8$.d...@40tude.net>,
Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Unions are an anachronism. They have long since ceased to serve the
>purpose of preventing labor abuse. They now exist to perpetuate
>themselves as institutions and nothing more. Without continually
>bringing up "issues" over which to strike these institutions would be
>(rightly) regarded as irrelevant.
You're painting with a very broad brush. Some unions may indeed
be more concerned with themslves than their members. But in my
mind, when a powerful set of companies tells certain employees
that the employees won't get paid unless the project they're
working on clear a profit, there's a very good reason to have
a union fighting for them.
I realize that the studios just dropped that demand, but it's
the kind of thing the WGA has to keep beating down. And the
remaining proposals about, for example, residuals on new-media
distribution also demonstrate the need for strong representation
of the writers.
Patty
Wes Struebing
wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\"
>Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>>
>>> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>>> other writers in this.
>>
>>No, you don't.
>
>Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
>studios' proposal is a travesty.
I would have to agree with that sentiment, from what I saw, too.
Do what you have to do, Joe!
--
Wes Struebing
Jan. 20, 2009 - the end of an error
Wes Struebing
Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 13:19:40 -0400, Josh Hill wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 11:12:51 -0500, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\"
>> Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 03:07:21 -0000, Charles French wrote:
>>>
>>>> Joe, I'm sure I speak for everyone here, we're with you and all the
>>>> other writers in this.
>>>
>>>No, you don't.
>>
>> Well, then, count me as with the writers. From what I've seen, the
>> studios' proposal is a travesty.
>
>Unions are an anachronism. They have long since ceased to serve the
>purpose of preventing labor abuse. They now exist to perpetuate
>themselves as institutions and nothing more. Without continually
>bringing up "issues" over which to strike these institutions would be
>(rightly) regarded as irrelevant.
>
>Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
>anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
>not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
>of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
>nonetheless.
Tell that the dead mine workers, or the one who are still dying.
(though I mostly agree with you; I just hate blanket statements)
Carl
"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1...@4ax.com...
Those figures could be very misleading. How many of those workers are high
school students and not people trying to live on those wages?
The people that scream about minimum wages often misreport statistics as
though every high school student working at McDonalds for minimum wage was
trying to live off of $11,000 annually. They aren't, nor are they doing
without health care. Trying to claim them as working poor is disingenuous
at best.
Low end jobs are supposed to be stepping stones... you do them to get the
money (and sometimes experience) that you need to move on to something
better.
Josh Hill
wrote:
>
>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1...@4ax.com...
>> According to a web site I found:
I'd find a higher evidence to speculation ratio more convincing, Carl.
Anyway, why do you assume that the sort of person who has to take a
job at Wal-Mart -- and we aren't talking about moonlighting high
school students, who are a tiny percentage of the workforce and don't
work 29 hours a week -- have the skills, qualifications, and ability
necessary to "move on to something better"? We aren't talking law
school graduate here.
Dennis (Icarus)
> wrote:
>
> >Josh Hill wrote:
>
> >> It was certainly true before there were unions: in some cases,
> >> employees were literally worked to death. And non-union companies like
> >> Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states, Wal-Mart
> >> employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
> >> insurance.
> >
> >I keep hearing this, but people I know personally who work at Wal-Mart
> >are all happy with it. They report NONE of the supposed abuses that
> >activists are always talking about. I think unions are just spreading
> >lies about how horrible it is to work without having union dues forced
> >out of your pocket. They see how much power they could get by bringing
> >down a company that large, and they want it.
>
> According to a web site I found:
>
> In 2001, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on
> average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861. The 2001 poverty
> line for a family of three was $14,630. ["Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?",
> Business Week, 10/6/03, US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001
> Poverty Guidelines, 2001]
And 8.23 is a couple of bukcs over the minimum wage in 2001.
>
> A 2003 wage analysis reported that cashiers, the second most common
> job, earn approximately $7.92 per hour and work 29 hours a week. This
> brings in annual wages of only $11,948. ["Statistical Analysis of
> Gender Patterns in Wal-Mart's Workforce", Dr. Richard Drogin 2003]
> Wal-Mart Associates don't earn enough to support a family
Still over the minimum wage in 2003.
>
> The average two-person family (one parent and one child) needed
> $27,948 to meet basic needs in 2005, well above what Wal-Mart reports
> that its average full-time associate earns. Wal-Mart claimed that its
> average associate earned $9.68 an hour in 2005. That would make the
> average associate's annual wages $17,114. ["Basic Family Budget
> Calculator" online at www.epinet.org]
Still well over the minumum wage in 2005.
>
> http://www.wakeupwalmart.com/facts/
>
> It seems they're paying poverty-level wages.
And above the minimum wage.
Thnk that may be why they have thousands of applicants when a new store
opens?
Dennis
.
Carl
53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
(High school and college).
High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work force.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a week,
when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that many hours.
Carl Dershem
news:1f8atmpyk28f6.1gkjubrodnyb8$.d...@40tude.net:
> Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
> anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
> not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
> of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
> nonetheless.
Pfaugh. Pfui. Other words.
I'd rather share my collective bargaining rights with other people who
actually work for a living than surrender them to managers and owners who
don't and who never will and who do not understand what it means to work
for a living.
My biggest complaints with unions are that:
A) They are quite prone to corruption (harder to do when the members are
active and edicated, as per Jefferson), and
B) Most (including mine) are pretty inactive, and have been emasculated by
"Free Trade" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) imbeciles and lazy
members.
cd
--
The difference between immorality and immortality is "T". I like Earl
Grey.
Carl Dershem
news:2tKdncEeQtGLUofa...@comcast.com:
> 53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
> (High school and college).
>
> High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work
> force.
>
> http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
>
> Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a
> week, when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that
> many hours.
OK - now quote a credible source. (YOur source is infamous for its bias
and disingenuousness).
Carl
"Carl Dershem" <der...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:Xns99CFDB3B5A5...@69.28.173.184...
> "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote in
> news:2tKdncEeQtGLUofa...@comcast.com:
>
>> 53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
>> (High school and college).
>>
>> High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work
>> force.
>>
>> http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
>>
>> Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a
>> week, when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that
>> many hours.
>
> OK - now quote a credible source. (YOur source is infamous for its bias
> and disingenuousness).
It was the very first source from a Google of
minimum wage "high school"
Here's another. I think it said 57 %
http://www.house.gov/jec/cost-gov/regs/minimum/against/against.htm
Addition breakdown
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg18n1c.html#table1
Kurt Ullman
Carl Dershem <der...@cox.net> wrote:
> "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote in
> news:2tKdncEeQtGLUofa...@comcast.com:
>
> > 53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
> > (High school and college).
> >
> > High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work
> > force.
> >
> > http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
> >
> > Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a
> > week, when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that
> > many hours.
>
> OK - now quote a credible source. (YOur source is infamous for its bias
> and disingenuousness).
>
That means "they don't agree with me so I am not even going to look at
the evidence" . If you had, you would have noted that the original
source was Bureau of Labor Statistics and that the numbers came directly
from their report.
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2005.htm
# Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of workers earning
$5.15 or less were under age 25, and about one-fourth of workers earning
at or below the minimum wage were age 16-19. Among employed teenagers,
about 9 percent earned $5.15 or less. About 2 percent of workers age 25
and over earned the minimum wage or less. Among those age 65 and over,
the proportion was about 3 percent. (See table 1 and table 7.)
(The less part is often because the BLS for some reason (probably ease
of getting the information) doesn't include tip income).
Even those that I habitually don't agree with, I look at the original
data because even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again.
Amy Guskin
(in article <-5OdnRI79YD6R4fa...@comcast.com>):
Yes, but it still only reflects the entire US workforce, and not Wal-Mart's
specifically.
Amy
--
"In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over
again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda." - George
W. Bush, May 24, 2005
Carl
> "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:1f8atmpyk28f6.1gkjubrodnyb8$.d...@40tude.net:
>
>> Being intimidated into joining a union just to work should bother
>> anyone who values individual liberties. The writer's guild may or may
>> not be as "bad" as the break-your-kneecaps labor unions, but the sin
>> of abdicating your individuality to a collective will is the same
>> nonetheless.
>
> Pfaugh. Pfui. Other words.
>
> I'd rather share my collective bargaining rights with other people who
> actually work for a living than surrender them to managers and owners who
> don't and who never will and who do not understand what it means to work
> for a living.
Sigh. I know a lot of managers that work their rear ends off... and don't
get any extra money for the extra hours they put in. Most managers that
I know put in at least 60 hour weeks.
To say that managers don't work for a living is unfair.
If you're only definition of work for a living is getting your hands
dirty,then
I would suggest that is far to narrow and self-serving a definition.
It's also just plain nonsense.
Wendy of NJ
wrote:
>
The last time I was in Wal Mart, I saw much more gray-haired people
than High School students with uniforms on.
Josh Hill
wrote:
A non-sequitur: being between the ages of 16 and 24 doesn't mean that
a worker is in high school and college.
>High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work force.
>
>http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
Where did they say that? I couldn't find any statistics that did.
>Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a week,
>when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that many hours.
I said high school students were a tiny percentage of the workforce,
and they are, given that high school students are a tiny percentage of
the population. And let us hope that not many high school students are
working 29 hours during a school week: that would be illegal for a
student under 16, and harmful to the academic aspirations of a junior
or senior. Certainly, I've never met any who did.
In any case, no one is denying that high school kids work at
McDonalds. The problem here is everybody else. All I have to do is go
to the store to see people struggling on minimum wage or something
like, e.g., the poverty-level wages paid by Wal-Mart. Most of them
aren't high school students, who wouldn't even be available during
business hours. These are precisely the conditions that unions would
help to redress; this source, for example, says that the average union
wage is 28% higher than the average non-union wage:
http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/index.php?page=Union+vs.+Nonunion%3A+Wages+(2004)
-- and benefits such as health care and pensions would increase that
differential.
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> I'd rather share my collective bargaining rights with other people who
> actually work for a living than surrender them to managers and owners who
> don't and who never will and who do not understand what it means to work
> for a living.
That's bigotry. How is being management less "working for a living"
than being labor?
Wendy of NJ
wrote:
>
>
If you want to see an example of this, please look at local performing
musicians. Go ask how much the band in your local club is earning that
night. If they are performing original music, the answer is likely
"nothing" or enough to cover their gas money, or they've had to "pay
to play" (which means it COST them money for the privelege to
perform).
Yes, there is a musician's union, but most venues don't participate,
and aren't forced to hire union musicians; places that do, however,
pay their musicans an actual living wage.
If SAG and EQUITY didn't exist, actors would make nothing, like they
did in the past, and all writers would be making what people are
offering on elance for writing, which is generally 0.25 to 1 CENT per
word. (and there are people willing to work for that, hence the
continued crappy opportunities)
-Wendy
Amy Guskin
(in article <40cd1$471ace72$4c49ae41$18...@KNOLOGY.NET>):
> "Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1...@4ax.com...
>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:03:00 -0700, Jon Schild <j...@xmission.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Josh Hill wrote:
>>
>>>> It was certainly true before there were unions: in some cases,
>>>> employees were literally worked to death. And non-union companies like
>>>> Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states, Wal-Mart
>>>> employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
>>>> insurance.
>>>
>>> I keep hearing this, but people I know personally who work at Wal-Mart
>>> are all happy with it. They report NONE of the supposed abuses that
>>> activists are always talking about. I think unions are just spreading
>>> lies about how horrible it is to work without having union dues forced
>>> out of your pocket. They see how much power they could get by bringing
>>> down a company that large, and they want it.
>>
>> According to a web site I found:
>>
>> In 2001, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on
>> average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861. The 2001 poverty
>> line for a family of three was $14,630. ["Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?",
>> Business Week, 10/6/03, US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001
>> Poverty Guidelines, 2001]
>
> And 8.23 is a couple of bukcs over the minimum wage in 2001.<<
Yeah, but haven't we read story after story, report after report, that says
that they keep employees' hours down below 40/week so they don't have to give
them benefits? I don't have _anything_ like a citation on this, but it's all
too easy to see how paying employees more than the minimum wage can still
work out to poverty and no health insurance, just by putting a teeny bit of
thought into it. And if _I_ can think of it, I'm pretty sure the head
honchos at Wal-Mart can, too. :-)
Josh Hill
wrote:
>Pfaugh. Pfui. Other words.
>
>I'd rather share my collective bargaining rights with other people who
>actually work for a living than surrender them to managers and owners who
>don't and who never will and who do not understand what it means to work
>for a living.
>
>My biggest complaints with unions are that:
>
>A) They are quite prone to corruption (harder to do when the members are
>active and edicated, as per Jefferson), and
>
>B) Most (including mine) are pretty inactive, and have been emasculated by
>"Free Trade" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) imbeciles and lazy
>members.
Free trade is the gist of it, I think. It's impossible to maintain
wages and benefits when you face competition from Chinese workers
earning 15 cents an hour. All a union can "achieve" under those
circumstances is to put their own members out of work.
Amy Guskin
(in article
<kurtullman-560B5...@032-478-847.area7.spcsdns.net>):
> In article <Xns99CFDB3B5A5...@69.28.173.184>,
> Carl Dershem <der...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote in
>> news:2tKdncEeQtGLUofa...@comcast.com:
>>
>>> 53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
>>> (High school and college).
>>>
>>> High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work
>>> force.
>>>
>>> http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
>>>
>>> Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a
>>> week, when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that
>>> many hours.
>>
>> OK - now quote a credible source. (YOur source is infamous for its bias
>> and disingenuousness).
>>
> That means "they don't agree with me so I am not even going to look at
> the evidence" . If you had, you would have noted that the original
> source was Bureau of Labor Statistics and that the numbers came directly
> from their report.
>
> http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2005.htm <<
Right, but it _still_ has nothing to do with the demographics of Wal-Mart's
workforce. This is general US statistics.
Amy Guskin
(in article <2tKdncEeQtGLUofa...@comcast.com>):
>
>
> 53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
> (High school and college).
>
> High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end work force.
>
> http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
>
> Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a week,
> when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that many hours. <<
I'm no statistician, but that only says that 53% of ALL workers in the US
making minimum wage are in that age range; it doesn't necessarily reflect an
identical (or even similar) demographic statistic at Wal-Mart specifically.
Especially since Wal-Mart makes such a big deal about hiring older people (in
my research to find the average age of Wal-Mart workers -- which I didn't
find -- I found a speech given by their CEO in 2001 crowing about the number
of Wal-Mart workers who are over 55, and why they like to hire them).
If anyone _can_ find a demographic statistic about Wal-Mart's workforce, I'd
be very interested to see it. I don't shop at Wal-Mart, so I couldn't tell
you about the makeup of our local store, but I also don't know any kids of
friends who work there, either. Nor can I ever recall seeing a Wal-Mart
commercial that features any employees other than head-of-household aged
adults. Anecdotal, sure, but it's no sketchier than your cited evidence.
:-)
Josh Hill
<ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1...@4ax.com...
>>
And I believe it was Carl who referred to the minimum wage, not I. I
referred to the poverty-level wages paid by non-union companies like
Wal-Mart: The minimum wage is even lower than that, in part because
the Republicans block increases.
>> >>And non-union companies like
>> >> Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states, Wal-Mart
>> >> employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
>> >> insurance.
>Thnk that may be why they have thousands of applicants when a new store
>opens?
That merely says that poor people are desperate for work: unemployment
and underemployment are endemic in that segment of the population.
Josh Hill
wrote:
>Yeah, but haven't we read story after story, report after report, that says
>that they keep employees' hours down below 40/week so they don't have to give
>them benefits? I don't have _anything_ like a citation on this, but it's all
>too easy to see how paying employees more than the minimum wage can still
>work out to poverty and no health insurance, just by putting a teeny bit of
>thought into it. And if _I_ can think of it, I'm pretty sure the head
>honchos at Wal-Mart can, too. :-)
I was wondering why they said Wal-Mart cashiers work only 35 hours a
week. How sleazy!
Josh Hill
wrote:
>If you want to see an example of this, please look at local performing
>musicians. Go ask how much the band in your local club is earning that
>night. If they are performing original music, the answer is likely
>"nothing" or enough to cover their gas money, or they've had to "pay
>to play" (which means it COST them money for the privelege to
>perform).
>
>Yes, there is a musician's union, but most venues don't participate,
>and aren't forced to hire union musicians; places that do, however,
>pay their musicans an actual living wage.
>
>If SAG and EQUITY didn't exist, actors would make nothing, like they
>did in the past, and all writers would be making what people are
>offering on elance for writing, which is generally 0.25 to 1 CENT per
>word. (and there are people willing to work for that, hence the
>continued crappy opportunities)
Even bands that go platinum get cheated -- the contracts they sign
with the record companies when they're starving and desperate mean
they can make a record without earning a cent:
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
Josh Hill
wrote:
>Sigh. I know a lot of managers that work their rear ends off... and don't
>get any extra money for the extra hours they put in. Most managers that
>I know put in at least 60 hour weeks.
>
>To say that managers don't work for a living is unfair.
True. Some employees seem to assume that because work takes place
behind closed doors, it isn't work. Perhaps if companies opened the
doors a bit, they'd see that that isn't the case.
Carl
"Amy Guskin" <ais...@fjordstone.com> wrote in message
news:0001HW.C340C7F2...@news.verizon.net...
So? Is there any reason to believe that Wal-Mart in particular has a labor
pool is inherently skewed to older workers?
A lot of businesses hire older workers because there aren't enough younger
ones to fill the jobs. They WANT younger workers so they don't have to
keep paying raises, etc., the worker moves off to college or something
better.
Statistically (checking the tables) the number of people that are actually
heads of households with 2 kids and working for minimum wage is very
small. My point was simply that when someone decries "living wage"
and gives examples of how hard it is for a family of 4 to live on Min wage,
the number of people actually trying is statistically pretty low, and most
of the people on Min Wage don't have to live on it at all and have insurance
from their parents.
Amy Guskin
(in article <qa2dnUiWHZrYLYba...@comcast.com>):
Hey, don't drag me into this. You and Josh were talking about Wal-Mart; you
posted some statistics; I'm merely pointing out that your statistics _are not
specific to Wal-Mart_. Period.
Carl
I found them for a similar conversation elsewhere a few weeks ago.
I'm sure you can find them. Th e statistics are there to be found.
>
>>Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a week,
>>when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that many hours.
>
> I said high school students were a tiny percentage of the workforce,
> and they are, given that high school students are a tiny percentage of
> the population.
But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
minimum wage.
> And let us hope that not many high school students are
> working 29 hours during a school week: that would be illegal for a
> student under 16, and harmful to the academic aspirations of a junior
> or senior. Certainly, I've never met any who did.
By the time high school students are juniors and seniors, many do.
I worked that many hours, and so did a number of people that I worked with.
I can't speak of the people you knew.
I had a car and a girlfriend in high school...both of which required
attention.
>
> In any case, no one is denying that high school kids work at
> McDonalds. The problem here is everybody else. All I have to do is go
> to the store to see people struggling on minimum wage or something
> like, e.g., the poverty-level wages paid by Wal-Mart.
Oh please. Give me a break.
> Most of them
> aren't high school students, who wouldn't even be available during
> business hours. These are precisely the conditions that unions would
> help to redress; this source, for example, says that the average union
> wage is 28% higher than the average non-union wage:
>
> http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/index.php?page=Union+vs.+Nonunion%3A+Wages+(2004)
>
> -- and benefits such as health care and pensions would increase that
> differential.
Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
benefits.
See what that did to the US auto industry. How about the US electronics
industry?
Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
time,
until they get laid off.
Great business model.
Carl
Commercials are not a fair basis by which to judge; they are carefull
designed to show just the right age/ethnic mix to be politically correct.
Many companies hire older workers because there are not enough younger ones;
they had to reach beyond the traditional demographic. They initially went
after retired workers...they didn't need the full time income because they
were retired and had other income...and they also didn't stay long periods
of time to keep getting raises, etc.
Somehow suggesting that because the national figures did not specify
Wal-Mart makes them invalid is unfair... you need to provide some
compelling evidence that Wal-Mart is sifficiently different from the norm
to validate that the statistics don't apply, rather than the other way
around.
Carl
"Wendy of NJ" <voxw...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:kuomh31ukojik87rm...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:41:33 -0500, "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1...@4ax.com...
>>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:03:00 -0700, Jon Schild <j...@xmission.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>Josh Hill wrote:
>
> The last time I was in Wal Mart, I saw much more gray-haired people
> than High School students with uniforms on.
I addressed this elsewhere..and YMMV. I was in one a few weeks ago and
my daughter saw a number of people that she goes to school with.
Carl
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:41:17 -0500, "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>>Sigh. I know a lot of managers that work their rear ends off... and don't
>>get any extra money for the extra hours they put in. Most managers that
>>I know put in at least 60 hour weeks.
>>
>>To say that managers don't work for a living is unfair.
>
> True. Some employees seem to assume that because work takes place
> behind closed doors, it isn't work. Perhaps if companies opened the
> doors a bit, they'd see that that isn't the case.
I doubt it. Many people don't want to see that others work just as hard.
Too many people feel sorry for themselves and envy someone else.
If someone doesn't like where they are in life...change it. Bill Gates
isn't holding them down. The board of Wal-Mart isn't holding them down.
People should be more concerned with their own lives and less concerned
with the lives of people they seem naturally predisposed to despising.
Carl
I wasn't taking a shot at you Amy (never).
I was only suggesting that ther is nothing specific to suggest that the
statistics don't
also apply to Wal-Mart.
Josh Hill
wrote:
Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
>> And let us hope that not many high school students are
>> working 29 hours during a school week: that would be illegal for a
>> student under 16, and harmful to the academic aspirations of a junior
>> or senior. Certainly, I've never met any who did.
>
>By the time high school students are juniors and seniors, many do.
>
>I worked that many hours, and so did a number of people that I worked with.
>I can't speak of the people you knew.
>I had a car and a girlfriend in high school...both of which required
>attention.
>
>>
>> In any case, no one is denying that high school kids work at
>> McDonalds. The problem here is everybody else. All I have to do is go
>> to the store to see people struggling on minimum wage or something
>> like, e.g., the poverty-level wages paid by Wal-Mart.
>
>Oh please. Give me a break.
You're going to have to back that up, Carl, because that's what the
people get paid around here -- poverty level wages. I see help wanted
signs, and what they're paying. And no, most of those employees aren't
kids. Do the non-unionized stores in your area pay higher wages? I
didn't think so.
>> Most of them
>> aren't high school students, who wouldn't even be available during
>> business hours. These are precisely the conditions that unions would
>> help to redress; this source, for example, says that the average union
>> wage is 28% higher than the average non-union wage:
>>
>> http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/index.php?page=Union+vs.+Nonunion%3A+Wages+(2004)
>>
>> -- and benefits such as health care and pensions would increase that
>> differential.
>
>Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
>benefits.
>See what that did to the US auto industry.
Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
can't compete.
> How about the US electronics
>industry?
>Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
>less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
>time,
>until they get laid off.
>
>Great business model.
For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
American factory closes. Great business model.
Josh Hill
wrote:
Not everyone has what it takes to be a Bill Gates, Carl. I've worked
with people who stay where they are because they're too lazy to work
to their potential, sure. But I've seen many more who were limited by
circumstance, upbringing, education, and ability.
You say it's wrong for employees to suppose, whether out of envy or
ignorance, that managers don't work. I agree. But I say it's just as
wrong to suppose that the person who operates a crash register or
sweeps the floors is where he is because he lacks initiative. You
can't become a Bill Gates if you're functionally illiterate, or have
an IQ of 85, or can scarcely speak English. You can't become a Bill
Gates if you're an abandoned mother with two kids who's working two
shifts for poverty-level wages to keep a roof over their head.
Amy Guskin
(in article <5pudnSL7n4vGJYba...@comcast.com>):
I'm also not saying that they _don't_, just that it doesn't necessarily
follow. For instance, what's the percentage of males to females in the
workforce, and is that precisely mirrored by the way the Hooters corporation
demographics shake out?
Carl
>>But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
>>minimum wage.
>
> Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
> You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
> earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
Not every job is intended to support a family.
>>
>>Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
>>benefits.
>
>>See what that did to the US auto industry.
>
> Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
> universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
> insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
> can't compete.
Yeah... government run health care systems are wonderful.
Consider the SCHP program. It's supposed to be for children
whose parents work and can't afford health care.
Here in MN, 92% of the people on the program are adults,
with well over half of them CHILDLESS adults.
Oh yeah, you can make almost 80K and qualify. The highest
tax bracket (what Dems define as the rich) is 67K.
That's what you want to trust the government with?
No thanks.
The only govt program that is even moderatly well run is
SS, and that's because it's controlled by age. That doesn't mean there
isn't fraud, but
it's somewhat more controlled.
Every other govt program that I can think of is full of fraud, and the govt
shows
no signs of doing anything other than fund more of it.
Have a system in which any time a politician wants to gain favor they just
promise
more entitlements and benefits? Nah.. we have enough of that.
Have the government dispense the funds for medical equipment and hospitals
will have fewer and older machines. Think not? Look at thge Canadian
system...
their hospitals have very old (by our standards) equipment and it's hard to
schedule timely tests. That's true of many oif the hniversal health care
systems
out there.
It makes sense if your goal is to drag everyone to the same level of
mediocrity.
>> How about the US electronics industry?
>
>>Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
>>less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
>>time,
>>until they get laid off.
>>
>>Great business model.
>
> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
> American factory closes. Great business model.
Ahh. You're an isolationist then. Hide your head in the sand and pretend
the rest of the world isn't there. Great way to abandon the goals of freedom
(to sell my goods abroad or buy from wherever I want).
Or would you try to force your idea of what a worker should earn on
other countries...based on what's convenient for American workers.
What gives you the right?
Interventionist AND isolationist. Cute.
Try getting that view over anywhere else...even the impotent UN.
Good luck.
What guiding principle guides these plans? American worker uber alles?
The American public isn't willing to pay the prices that support the unions,
so the unions are dying.
Matthew Vincent
>In an industry where there's such a huge difference in
>power and money as there is between the Companies
>and the writers/actors/directors, I'm all in favor of the
>unions in order to try to balance the scales.
Well said. Whilst there's potential for abuse by unions, the potential
for abuse by the companies (I can't bear to write that word with a
capital 'C' as they don't deserve the respect) in the absence of
anyone to fight back is huge and has already occurred many times
over.
The same thing can be said for some forms of government intervention
against economic inequalities and exploitation. Particularly since the
Cold War and McCarthyism, it's become a popular idea in the US to have
an exaggerated, paranoid fear of government intervention but yet to
not be equally concerned about the abuse that can happen under "free
market" conditions where there's nothing to stop the parties with the
most bargaining power exploiting others.
This is not to say that individuals shouldn't have the right to
decline to participate in unions -- which, generally, they do.
However, individuals who make this choice face the potential to be
exploited as a result. That being said, oftentimes non-union members
end up with better conditions due to the work of unions, and so are in
effect bludging off the union without contributing.
Matthew
Carl
If a person is capable of working and bettering themselves... if they stay
where they are out of complacency, then I have little tolerence for their
complaints. If you can work harder and don't, don't complain about
where you are. Get off your rear end. If yo're happy where you are in
life,
more power to you... I wish you the very best.
Whining and blaming others holds no weight with me.
If a person is in hard circumstances and willing to work their way out of
it,
I have no problem with them getting a hand... on a temporary basis ... to
give them an opportunity to work their way up.
Too many people feel they are *entitled* to this help. They are not.
It's charity. If that sticks in your craw and you don't like the
term...work
like hell to avoid it or to stop needing it as soon as possible. If you
take a little
from society in order to better yourself, and then when you're on your feet
you;re willing to give back... you have my utmost respect.
If you stay on a government program longer than you have to...
you're a parasite.
If a person is incapable of working their way up (physical or mental
challenge)
then an accommodation should be made for them. I have no problem with that.
If a person just gives up on themselves... I have little tolerance for that.
In *none* of those cases is it appropriate to whine about what other people
have
or do.
jms...@aol.com
jms
------------
Let me jump in here for a second to try and turn the discussion a bit,
in that the situation as it affects writers is vastly different than
in any other union.
First, to the non- or anti-union folks, a question: when you go into a
book store to buy a copy of a novel by your favorite author, do you
mind that roughly twelve percent of the price of that book goes to the
author? Or do you feel that he's entitled to that royalty?
Most folks, I would suggest, are totally okay with that idea. They
wrote the book, the publisher published the book, they're both
entitled to get something back from the publishing of it. That seems
only fair.
The situation with the WGA is really no different. It's a way of
ensuring that artists -- who live in a very different world than the
9-5 universe everybody else lives in -- receive some regular form of
compensation to keep them alive and solvent during the often very long
periods of time required to create the next thing.
Leaving off such catastrophic events as being laid off or fired...most
people go to work every day in expectation of a paycheck that will
come regularly. Writers don't. They get paid when they a) write, b)
finish what they write, and c) someone decides to *pay* for what
they've written.
It's not uncommon for writers to go a year, two years, even longer
without working in their chosen field. Doesn't matter who you are.
After William Goldman won his first Oscar, he didn't work again for
almost five years.
The royalties formula in books, and the residuals formula in tv/film,
is all that allows writers to keep doing what they're in the period
when they're *writing* and not *selling*. Take that away, and many of
the works of literature and film that we've come to enjoy would not
exist because the writers involved would not have been able to create
them, they would've been forced to go out and seek employment
elsewhere.
Prose writers have the authors' guild or SFWA or other organizations
that watchdog publishers and provide assistance and information on
royalties, contracts, health insurance and the like.
TV/film writers have the WGA, which is a much more complex
organization because the permutations and ways in which monies can be
hidden, and by which revenue streams are delivered, are all massively
more complex.
There was a time, back in the 30s and 40s, when writers got nothing
more than a script fee for their work, even though it might take a
year or more to write that script. And a lot of talented writers fell
by the wayside. The creation of the WGA changed that and brought into
par with the prose writers whose royalties you would seem to feel are
right and proper.
And those can't be negotiated person-by-person because the studios see
us as individually replaceable. Only collectively can there be any
impact.
I've had my problems with the WGA over the years, some of them have
become nearly legendary with the WGA. But if the WGA did not exist,
there would be no way for most writers to survive doing what they love
to do.
As to this coming labor action, when you go into the store next and
buy a DVD and a book, look at the two of them and know that the author
of the book gets a full twelve to fifteen percent of the price...and
the author of the DVD gets, *at most* four cents per DVD, and most of
the time literally and absolutely *nothing* for it...and ask yourself,
"Why the difference?"
That's the question at hand at the WGA as well.
jms
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> This is not to say that individuals shouldn't have the right to
> decline to participate in unions -- which, generally, they do.
> However, individuals who make this choice face the potential to be
> exploited as a result. That being said, oftentimes non-union members
> end up with better conditions due to the work of unions, and so are in
> effect bludging off the union without contributing.
Spoken like a true Leninist.
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> People should be more concerned with their own lives and less concerned
> with the lives of people they seem naturally predisposed to despising.
Well said. But these days, we have politicians who pander to them
instead and promise to "make things right" by seizing income and
property from the people they despise. So rather than work to get
themselves in a better position, they vote someone in office to just
give it to them.
Carl
<jms...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1193010197....@i38g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
I have my issues with many unions. Not this one though.
Good luck to you.
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
Book and movies are very different. Books don't involve talent from
hundreds or thousands of creators.
I'm all for royalties -- I earn them myself. But the studio is the
entity taking on the risk of a project not achieving profitability. I
wonder how many writers are willing to share the investment
consequences of a failed project with the studio?
Keep in mind that the studio has to show profit and loss to
shareholders, and people go to jail if they lie about those things
now. If they're reporting profit on a movie to shareholders and a
loss to you as a writer, then they should be taken to court.
If the WGA succeeds in forcing studios to pay more than they think
writing is worth, or force the studios to take on even more risk
during investment than they already do, then the end result is
predictable: fewer and fewer executives will be will to take chances
on projects they don't *know* will turn profit. In the end, this will
make Hollywood even more formulaic and boring.
Carl
"Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:6yitugzhw85n.1742e108hgjf5$.dlg@40tude.net...
>
> Book and movies are very different. Books don't involve talent from
> hundreds or thousands of creators.
>
> I'm all for royalties -- I earn them myself. But the studio is the
> entity taking on the risk of a project not achieving profitability. I
> wonder how many writers are willing to share the investment
> consequences of a failed project with the studio?
>
> Keep in mind that the studio has to show profit and loss to
> shareholders, and people go to jail if they lie about those things
> now. If they're reporting profit on a movie to shareholders and a
> loss to you as a writer, then they should be taken to court.
Do they report a profit to shareholders on a movie by movie basis,
or simply for the whole studio?
I would suspect the latter, which allows them to take from one pile
(hurting some) and give to a movie that lost money.
Dennis (Icarus)
So what should the minimum wage be?
10 dollars an hour?
20? 40?
When I see MicDonalds, Wendy's, they're just paying minimum wage.
> >> >>And non-union companies like
> >> >> Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states,
Wal-Mart
> >> >> employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
> >> >> insurance.
>
> >Thnk that may be why they have thousands of applicants when a new store
> >opens?
>
> That merely says that poor people are desperate for work: unemployment
> and underemployment are endemic in that segment of the population.
>
Dennis
.
Dennis (Icarus)
> jms
>
> ------------
>
> Let me jump in here for a second to try and turn the discussion a bit,
> in that the situation as it affects writers is vastly different than
> in any other union.
>
> First, to the non- or anti-union folks, a question: when you go into a
> book store to buy a copy of a novel by your favorite author, do you
> mind that roughly twelve percent of the price of that book goes to the
> author? Or do you feel that he's entitled to that royalty?
Entitled.
I think the publisher bears the brunt of the cost of creating and
distributing the book, but without the author, there's no product to
distribute.
This does preume the production costs outweights the cost the author
incurred while writing.
>
> Most folks, I would suggest, are totally okay with that idea. They
> wrote the book, the publisher published the book, they're both
> entitled to get something back from the publishing of it. That seems
> only fair.
Indeed.
>
> The situation with the WGA is really no different. It's a way of
> ensuring that artists -- who live in a very different world than the
> 9-5 universe everybody else lives in -- receive some regular form of
> compensation to keep them alive and solvent during the often very long
> periods of time required to create the next thing.
Yep.
>
> Leaving off such catastrophic events as being laid off or fired...most
> people go to work every day in expectation of a paycheck that will
> come regularly. Writers don't. They get paid when they a) write, b)
> finish what they write, and c) someone decides to *pay* for what
> they've written.
>
> It's not uncommon for writers to go a year, two years, even longer
> without working in their chosen field. Doesn't matter who you are.
> After William Goldman won his first Oscar, he didn't work again for
> almost five years.
Ouch.
<snip>
>
> As to this coming labor action, when you go into the store next and
> buy a DVD and a book, look at the two of them and know that the author
> of the book gets a full twelve to fifteen percent of the price...and
> the author of the DVD gets, *at most* four cents per DVD, and most of
> the time literally and absolutely *nothing* for it...and ask yourself,
> "Why the difference?"
>
> That's the question at hand at the WGA as well.
>
And I hope you're abe to come to a beneficial arrangement.
Dennis
.
Dennis (Icarus)
> >
> >But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
> >minimum wage.
>
> Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
> You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
> earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
The minumum wage, being less than what Wal Mart pays, seems to fit your
definition of "poverty level wages".
<snip>
>
> >> Most of them
> >> aren't high school students, who wouldn't even be available during
> >> business hours. These are precisely the conditions that unions would
> >> help to redress; this source, for example, says that the average union
> >> wage is 28% higher than the average non-union wage:
> >>
> >>
http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/index.php?page=Union+vs.+Nonunion%3A+Wages+(2004)
> >>
> >> -- and benefits such as health care and pensions would increase that
> >> differential.
> >
> >Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
> >benefits.
>
> >See what that did to the US auto industry.
>
> Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
> universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
> insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
> can't compete.
Would you trust GWB and the Republicans to run your health care?
:-)
>
> > How about the US electronics
> >industry?
>
> >Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
> >less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
> >time,
> >until they get laid off.
> >
> >Great business model.
>
> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
> American factory closes. Great business model.
>
So what would you like? Embargo? Tariffs?
Dennis
.
Gregory Weston
"Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> If you stay on a government program longer than you have to...
> you're a parasite.
I suppose the (intertwined) questions though are:
Who determines how long is enough?
Who determines that the program in question is sufficient?
Wendy of NJ
wrote:
Not just the whole studio - it's the conglomerate that OWNS the studio
- the studio is just a subsidiary of AOL/Time-Warner or Sony or
whoever.
This is like Sony reporting profit to shareholders on one model of TV
or something. Doesn't happen, because it doesn't have to happen.
This also explains why and how the studios can get creative with their
accounting so that no particular commodity can reach "profitiability"
because "profits" are being offset by other projects that don't make
money or lose money.
-Wendy
Carl
"Gregory Weston" <u...@splook.com> wrote in message
news:uce-5FAADD.2...@comcast.dca.giganews.com...
> In article <kuWdnUtHs7iCf4ba...@comcast.com>,
> "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If you stay on a government program longer than you have to...
>> you're a parasite.
>
> I suppose the (intertwined) questions though are:
>
> Who determines how long is enough?
Until you no longer need the assistance to can make it on your own.
It's a mindset thing. Letting people think they are entitled to
other people's money without any sense of obligation is a mistake.
That's what the term entitlement does.
The problem is that too many people are willing to just take.
I know someone that collects welfare rather than work because she
says it's "Free money." She doesn't feel like working and thinks
that she shouldn't have to because other people are so wealthy
and since she'll never be that wealthy, they owe her.
> Who determines that the program in question is sufficient?
The presumption must be that for a person that is capable of working,
the program is not permanent. There should be reasonable expectations that
a person must *do* something in order to get the help.
It is not unreasonable for society to believe that if they are helping
someone up,
the person being helped should actually have to get up.
David E. Powell
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:13:10 -0500, "Carl" <cengm...@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> >"Josh Hill" <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:n0hmh356mlluol7n4...@4ax.com...
> >> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 23:01:24 -0500, "Carl" <cengm...@hotmail.com>
> >> wrote:
>
> >>>"Josh Hill" <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >>>news:a1elh3llh2vrpi9v8...@4ax.com...
> >>>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:41:33 -0500, "Carl" <cengm...@hotmail.com>
> >>>> wrote:
>
> >>>>>"Josh Hill" <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> >> -- and benefits such as health care and pensions would increase that
> >> differential.
>
> >Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
> >benefits.
> >See what that did to the US auto industry.
>
> Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
> universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
> insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
> can't compete.
>
> > How about the US electronics
> >industry?
> >Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
> >less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
> >time,
> >until they get laid off.
>
> >Great business model.
>
> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
> American factory closes. Great business model.
Who signed NAFTA and Most favored Nation for China again?
Josh Hill
Schultz" <star...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:25:45 -0700, Matthew Vincent wrote:
>
>> This is not to say that individuals shouldn't have the right to
>> decline to participate in unions -- which, generally, they do.
>> However, individuals who make this choice face the potential to be
>> exploited as a result. That being said, oftentimes non-union members
>> end up with better conditions due to the work of unions, and so are in
>> effect bludging off the union without contributing.
>
>Spoken like a true Leninist.
C'mon. It's actually a bit right of center.
Wes Struebing
<David_Po...@msn.com> wrote:
>On Oct 21, 5:33 pm, Josh Hill <userepl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:13:10 -0500, "Carl" <cengm...@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
<snip>
>>
>> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
>> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
>> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
>> American factory closes. Great business model.
>
>Who signed NAFTA and Most favored Nation for China again?
>
David, for Ghod's sake, if you're gonna put a one line reply in a LONG
thread, SNIP SOME OF IT FIRST!
--
Chaos! Panic! Disorder!...my work here is done.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Homepage: www.carpedementem.org
John W. Kennedy
> If SAG and EQUITY didn't exist, actors would make nothing, like they
> did in the past,
Or less than nothing. It was common for a producer to declare bankruptcy
while the play was doing East Armpit, Iowa, and just walk away, leaving
the actors screwed out of a week's pay and stuck with the fare back
home. One of the rules of an Equity contract is that the producer has to
keep enough money in an escrow account to absolutely, positively
guarantee that the cast will receive everything they're owed.
--
John W. Kennedy
"...if you had to fall in love with someone who was evil, I can see why
it was her."
-- "Alias"
Josh Hill
wrote:
>
>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:lmgnh3l8v2lnul121...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:13:10 -0500, "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
><snip>
>
>>>But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
>>>minimum wage.
>>
>> Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
>> You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
>> earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
>
>Not every job is intended to support a family.
But who said it was?
You keep focusing on moonlighting high school kids. But this isn't
about after school jobs. It's about people who are struggling to take
care of themselves and their families on poverty-level wages.
>>>Yeah, and 30% of the cost of sa U.S. made car is in auto worker health
>>>benefits.
>>
>>>See what that did to the US auto industry.
>>
>> Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
>> universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
>> insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
>> can't compete.
>
>Yeah... government run health care systems are wonderful.
>Consider the SCHP program. It's supposed to be for children
>whose parents work and can't afford health care.
>
>Here in MN, 92% of the people on the program are adults,
>with well over half of them CHILDLESS adults.
I would submit that if MN has chosen to include adults in the SCHP
program, then the program is supposed to be for adults in MN. Which is
fine by me, since adults shouldn't be without insurance either.
>Oh yeah, you can make almost 80K and qualify. The highest
>tax bracket (what Dems define as the rich) is 67K.
The Democrats don't define $67,000 as rich: it's middle class by any
definition. That it's also the highest tax bracket says something
about the Republican war on the middle class, doesn't it?
>That's what you want to trust the government with?
>No thanks.
Why? SCHP has been an enormously successful program by any measure,
which is why a vast majority in Congress voted to extend it to more
children. Bush's veto was nothing less than obscene. What kind of
monster would veto medical coverage for needy children?
>The only govt program that is even moderatly well run is
>SS, and that's because it's controlled by age. That doesn't mean there
>isn't fraud, but
>it's somewhat more controlled.
>
>Every other govt program that I can think of is full of fraud, and the govt
>shows
>no signs of doing anything other than fund more of it.
Medicare delivers a higher percentage of the insurance dollar to
medical personnel than any private insurance plan. It's more efficient
than private systems for much the same reason that Social Security is.
It's popular, too -- ask an elderly person if they want to give it up
and you'll end up with a cane dent on your head. We could extend it to
the entire population and save money on what we're spending on
medicine. But oh, wait, it would hurt the insurance companies. Guess
it won't happen, then.
>Have a system in which any time a politician wants to gain favor they just
>promise
>more entitlements and benefits? Nah.. we have enough of that.
>
>Have the government dispense the funds for medical equipment and hospitals
>will have fewer and older machines. Think not? Look at thge Canadian
>system...
>their hospitals have very old (by our standards) equipment and it's hard to
>schedule timely tests. That's true of many oif the hniversal health care
>systems
>out there.
By any objective measure -- infant mortality, life expectancy, what
have you -- Canada delivers better health care to its citizens. It
does so for less than half of what we Americans spend. It does so in a
system that people like. And it seems that the delays that really
count -- delays that affect medical outcomes, rather than delays that
are merely for elective procedures -- are now lower in Canada than in
the United States, thanks to the horrors of American managed care.
But as usual, such is the right's irrational hatred of government
involvement in anything that doesn't involve bombs, tanks, or
controlling people's lives, that reality goes out the window.
Democratic proposals for health care become "socialized medicine,"
even though they are not. The socialized medical systems in every
industrial country other than our own become failures, even though
they are not. As in so many things, the American right has lost touch
with reality.
>It makes sense if your goal is to drag everyone to the same level of
>mediocrity.
Most people in this country would be glad to be elevated to that same
level of mediocrity, thanks in part to managed care, which combines
the worst features of socialized and for-profit medicine. For all
except a few who live on Park Avenue, medical care in this country has
become a bad joke. And countries with socialized medicine allow the
wealthy to get private care if they want, just as the United States
allows the wealthy to send their kids to private school.
>>> How about the US electronics industry?
>>
>>>Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
>>>less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
>>>time,
>>>until they get laid off.
>>>
>>>Great business model.
>>
>> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
>> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
>> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
>> American factory closes. Great business model.
>
>Ahh. You're an isolationist then. Hide your head in the sand and pretend
>the rest of the world isn't there. Great way to abandon the goals of freedom
>(to sell my goods abroad or buy from wherever I want).
No, not an isolationist. Is there nothing in your world view that
isn't port or starboard? I'm an empiricist, Carl. I couldn't care less
about ideology. Protectionism doesn't work, but neither does opening
one's shirt and inviting a tiger to eat one's guts.
>Or would you try to force your idea of what a worker should earn on
>other countries...based on what's convenient for American workers.
No. Tariffs are not force.
>What gives you the right?
You mean I don't have the right to control my own borders?
>Interventionist AND isolationist. Cute.
>
>Try getting that view over anywhere else...even the impotent UN.
>Good luck.
>
>What guiding principle guides these plans? American worker uber alles?
You may be willing to sacrifice your country and your neighbor on the
altar of foreign slave labor and starvation wages, Carl, but I am not.
If the carpet I buy is made by child slaves in Pakistan, I am as
guilty as I would be if those children were in New York. If an
American garment worker loses his job because of the exploitation of
those children, I am guilty twice. And if I allow my country to lose
its factories, to become deindustrialized, to be reduced slowly to the
status of a third-world country that lives off loans from China, I'm
guilty of treason as well.
>The American public isn't willing to pay the prices that support the unions,
>so the unions are dying.
The unions are dying because we send our capital abroad to build
factories and our management and technological know-how abroad to
design products and run them and those factories hire workers who earn
15 cents an hour. They're dying because China dumps its products by
keeping its currency artificially low and lends us vast sums of money
to buy them. Which is to say they're as smart as our government is
myopic and dumb.
Josh Hill
<ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:lmgnh3l8v2lnul121...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 15:13:10 -0500, "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >
><snip>
>> >
>> >But they are NOT a tiny percentage of the workforce that works at
>> >minimum wage.
>>
>> Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
>> You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
>> earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
>
>The minumum wage, being less than what Wal Mart pays, seems to fit your
>definition of "poverty level wages".
Guess you didn't see the figures I posted from that web site. It seems
that Wal-Mart's wages are higher than the minimum, but they still put
some employees below the poverty line, and others only slight above
it.
>Would you trust GWB and the Republicans to run your health care?
>:-)
You have a point . . .
Seriously, I'm not wild about government care. But having no
insurance, or having managed care or one of these phony individual
insurance plans that drop you when you become seriously ill is worse.
>>
>> > How about the US electronics
>> >industry?
>>
>> >Make everyone pay more and more for everything and people will buy
>> >less and less of it. You'll have wonderfully paid employees for a short
>> >time,
>> >until they get laid off.
>> >
>> >Great business model.
>>
>> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
>> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
>> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
>> American factory closes. Great business model.
>>
>
>So what would you like? Embargo? Tariffs?
Tariffs would I think be the way to go. But I suspect we wouldn't even
have to go that far (and it would take some doing to get there, since
they'd probably be illegal under current agreements). Right now, the
Asian countries are manipulating their currencies, dumping, engaging
in protectionism, stealing our intellectual property. I'd tell them
that if they didn't clean up their act they'd face tariffs. I'd repeal
tax incentives that encourage companies to move factories overseas.
And I'd require that foreign companies meet basic labor and
environmental standards. I suspect that those measures would be
enough. One doesn't want to go too far, to cause a depression or halt
the industrialization of the third world, which is in our interest as
well as theirs. The idea would be to move slowly and act
conservatively, and to bring the other industrialized countries --
with whom we should IMO have a common market free of impediments to
commerce -- along. Done correctly, there wouldn't be much by way of
actual tariffs, since the third world countries would find it in their
interest to comply.
Josh Hill
<ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> And I believe it was Carl who referred to the minimum wage, not I. I
>> referred to the poverty-level wages paid by non-union companies like
>> Wal-Mart: The minimum wage is even lower than that, in part because
>> the Republicans block increases.
>>
>So what should the minimum wage be?
>10 dollars an hour?
>20? 40?
>
>When I see MicDonalds, Wendy's, they're just paying minimum wage.
Actually, I don't think there should be a minimum wage, because it
increases unemployment and makes it difficult for businesses to hire
teenagers. Instead, I'd use a negative income tax. And as a last
resort for the few who are unemployable, I'd offer a public works job
to anyone willing and able to work.
Those who couldn't work because of sickness or disability would
receive insurance payments, and those who couldn't work because they
were addicted to drugs or alcohol would be offered residential
treatment, but nothing else: putting welfare or SSI money in the hands
of an addict is like pouring gasoline on a fire. And I'd give everyone
an opportunity to better themselves through education.
John W. Kennedy
> Not everyone has what it takes to be a Bill Gates,
Greed, egomania, a complete lack of ethics....
--
John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract,
Man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams. "Bors to Elayne: On the King's Coins"
Josh Hill
wrote:
That's probably true, unless you're genuinely misinformed about what
they do -- or they're genuinely slacking, and I've known both managers
and employees who did just that.
In any case, I've never had any problem with the notion that people
should do their best or pull their own weight. What bothers me is when
people work hard and it isn't recognized, or when people excoriate
welfare recipients while ignoring wealthy coupon clippers who do no
more work than the welfare recipients do, or criticize putative
welfare cheats even as they invent deductions for their tax return, or
minimize the weight of poverty or the advantages that accrued to those
of us who were lucky to grow up on the right side of the tracks.
I'm not in favor of welfare dependency, and if truth be told I'd
sooner starve than receive government assistance (and as a freelancer,
I"ve gone through a few fallow periods during which I pretty much
did). But I do believe in giving people a hand up if they're doing the
best they can, and I think that in a society as rich as ours those of
us who can earn more money have an obligation to help out those who
can't.
Dennis (Icarus)
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:11:26 -0500, "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
> <ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:lmgnh3l8v2lnul121...@4ax.com...
> >>
> >> Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
> >> You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
> >> earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
> >
> >The minumum wage, being less than what Wal Mart pays, seems to fit your
> >definition of "poverty level wages".
>
> Guess you didn't see the figures I posted from that web site. It seems
> that Wal-Mart's wages are higher than the minimum, but they still put
> some employees below the poverty line, and others only slight above
> it.
So talking about folks making the minimum wage less than Wal Mart pays,
would fit your definition of poverty level wages.
>
> >Would you trust GWB and the Republicans to run your health care?
> >:-)
>
> You have a point . . .
>
> Seriously, I'm not wild about government care. But having no
> insurance, or having managed care or one of these phony individual
> insurance plans that drop you when you become seriously ill is worse.
>
Well, we could always address the needs of the uninsured, except government
programs just tend to get larger over time.
And what are the basic standards?
Dennis
.
Dennis (Icarus)
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:00:50 -0500, "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
> <ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> And I believe it was Carl who referred to the minimum wage, not I. I
> >> referred to the poverty-level wages paid by non-union companies like
> >> Wal-Mart: The minimum wage is even lower than that, in part because
> >> the Republicans block increases.
> >>
> >So what should the minimum wage be?
> >10 dollars an hour?
> >20? 40?
> >
> >When I see MicDonalds, Wendy's, they're just paying minimum wage.
>
> Actually, I don't think there should be a minimum wage, because it
> increases unemployment and makes it difficult for businesses to hire
> teenagers. Instead, I'd use a negative income tax. And as a last
That's pretty much the rationale opponents to minimum wage increases use.
The negative income tax looks much like the exceptions and prebates
discussed in "The Fair Tax".
> resort for the few who are unemployable, I'd offer a public works job
> to anyone willing and able to work.
And if they're unwilling?
>
> Those who couldn't work because of sickness or disability would
> receive insurance payments, and those who couldn't work because they
Like we do now (disability)
> were addicted to drugs or alcohol would be offered residential
> treatment, but nothing else: putting welfare or SSI money in the hands
> of an addict is like pouring gasoline on a fire. And I'd give everyone
> an opportunity to better themselves through education.
>
And that happens now, too.
Dennis
.
jms...@aol.com
staking out territory....
On Oct 21, 4:19 pm, "Lance Corporal \"Hammer\" Schultz"
<starf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Book and movies are very different. Books don't involve talent from
> hundreds or thousands of creators.
>
This is not a true statement. Books involve publishers, editors,
assistant editors, proofreaders, typesetters, publicists, art
directors, photographers, and a host of others, all of whom in their
way "create" the book being purchased.
And in TV/film, the actors and directors who create the work are also
able to participate in the same kind of royalty as a book writer.
> I'm all for royalties -- I earn them myself. But the studio is the
> entity taking on the risk of a project not achieving profitability.
Also not true. A writer can invest years into a project and his whole
livelihood is based on how that project goes. Studios front dozens of
projects each year, and can write off the losses on one project
against the profits on another. They do not take all of the risk.
> I wonder how many writers are willing to share the investment
> consequences of a failed project with the studio?
But this is what residuals and royalties ARE. They are deferred
compensation that only kicks in if the show succeeds. In other words,
the writer IS sharing the risk. If the show succeeds, then by
residuals they share in the profit. If the show tanks, then the time
they spent working on it dead-ends with no further compensation.
> Keep in mind that the studio has to show profit and loss to
> shareholders, and people go to jail if they lie about those things
> now. If they're reporting profit on a movie to shareholders and a
> loss to you as a writer, then they should be taken to court.
>
You're talking apples and oranges. There's the profit a studio makes
on a project in toto, and what it makes on the books for the writers.
When you sign a deal for a share of the profits, all but a very few
writers get a piece of the net...but the formula used in determining
what that net is, in other ways what point the project achieves
profitability, can be worked to show no profit *for purposes of that
deal*.
I have a share of the net profits of B5. But by the terms of the deal
that was made, WB takes 60% of all monies in overhead, and can charge
almost anything they want against profits. If a stage used on some
other WB project being shot in Bolivia burns down, they can charge it
against B5. Consequently, B5 has never shown a profit even though
it's made half a billion dollars just in DVD sales, leavinng out
foreign sales, syndication, merchandising and so on.
And yes, individual writers can sue the studios, and never work
again. That's why you need someone who can bargain collectively.
But residuals aren't based on net profit, they're based on a formula
that says you get x-percent of the original fee for the first x-number
of runs, then it drops for the next x-number of runs, then eventually
it runs out altogether. The studios have been saying they want to
reduce or eliminate residuals. That can't stand.
> If the WGA succeeds in forcing studios to pay more than they think
> writing is worth, or force the studios to take on even more risk
> during investment than they already do, then the end result is
> predictable: fewer and fewer executives will be will to take chances
> on projects they don't *know* will turn profit. In the end, this will
> make Hollywood even more formulaic and boring.
>
Also not correct. Studios must turn out x-number of films per year,
and x-number of TV shows per year, to continue their revenue stream.
And the amount of money being paid to writers is ridiculously small by
comparison to what's paid to actors and directors. Nobody is asking
for big increases in writers fees, only to *not* have them
*decreased*. It's quite literally small change by comparison.
Top-level A writers can earn as much as 500K-1M on a script (and there
are only about a hundred writers who fit that category). Actors can
make up to ten million per movie, plus a piece of the gross, and many
directors get deals in the middle fo that. Even if you doubled what's
paid to writers, it would have no significant effect on the output.
jms
Carl Dershem
news:kurtullman-560B5...@032-478-847.area7.spcsdns.net:
> In article <Xns99CFDB3B5A5...@69.28.173.184>,
> Carl Dershem <der...@cox.net> wrote:
>
>> "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote in
>> news:2tKdncEeQtGLUofa...@comcast.com:
>>
>> > 53% of workers making minimum wage are between the age of 16 and 24
>> > (High school and college).
>> >
>> > High school students are a *significant* portion of the low end
>> > work force.
>> >
>> > http://www.heritage.org/Research/Economy/wm1186.cfm
>> >
>> > Certainly not a "tiny" percentage as you suggest. As to 29 hours a
>> > week, when I was in high school and college I certainly worked that
>> > many hours.
>>
>> OK - now quote a credible source. (YOur source is infamous for its
>> bias and disingenuousness).
>>
> That means "they don't agree with me so I am not even going to look
> at
> the evidence" . If you had, you would have noted that the original
> source was Bureau of Labor Statistics and that the numbers came
> directly from their report.
>
> http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2005.htm
>
> # Minimum wage workers tend to be young. About half of workers earning
> $5.15 or less were under age 25, and about one-fourth of workers
> earning at or below the minimum wage were age 16-19. Among employed
> teenagers, about 9 percent earned $5.15 or less. About 2 percent of
> workers age 25 and over earned the minimum wage or less. Among those
> age 65 and over, the proportion was about 3 percent. (See table 1 and
> table 7.)
>
> (The less part is often because the BLS for some reason (probably ease
> of getting the information) doesn't include tip income).
>
> Even those that I habitually don't agree with, I look at the
> original
> data because even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again.
Had he quoted it as BLS stats that would have made a difference, but
quoting the Heritage Foundation is about as credible as quoting Fox News.
And that was MY point.
cd
--
The difference between immorality and immortality is "T". I like Earl
Grey.
jms...@aol.com
send. If this dupes, ignore it.
jms
---------------
Let me jump in here for a second to try and turn the discussion a bit,
in that the situation as it affects writers is vastly different than
in any other union.
First, to the non- or anti-union folks, a question: when you go into a
book store to buy a copy of a novel by your favorite author, do you
mind that roughly twelve percent of the price of that book goes to the
author? Or do you feel that he's entitled to that royalty?
Most folks, I would suggest, are totally okay with that idea. They
wrote the book, the publisher published the book, they're both
entitled to get something back from the publishing of it. That seems
only fair.
The situation with the WGA is really no different. It's a way of
ensuring that artists -- who live in a very different world than the
9-5 universe everybody else lives in -- receive some regular form of
compensation to keep them alive and solvent during the often very long
periods of time required to create the next thing.
Leaving off such catastrophic events as being laid off or fired...most
people go to work every day in expectation of a paycheck that will
come regularly. Writers don't. They get paid when they a) write, b)
finish what they write, and c) someone decides to *pay* for what
they've written.
It's not uncommon for writers to go a year, two years, even longer
without working in their chosen field. Doesn't matter who you are.
After William Goldman won his first Oscar, he didn't work again for
almost five years.
The royalties formula in books, and the residuals formula in tv/film,
As to this coming labor action, when you go into the store next and
buy a DVD and a book, look at the two of them and know that the author
of the book gets a full twelve to fifteen percent of the price...and
the author of the DVD gets, *at most* four cents per DVD, and most of
the time literally and absolutely *nothing* for it...and ask yourself,
"Why the difference?"
That's the question at hand at the WGA as well.
jms
Gregory Weston
"Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> "Gregory Weston" <u...@splook.com> wrote in message
> news:uce-5FAADD.2...@comcast.dca.giganews.com...
> > In article <kuWdnUtHs7iCf4ba...@comcast.com>,
> > "Carl" <ceng...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> If you stay on a government program longer than you have to...
> >> you're a parasite.
> >
> > I suppose the (intertwined) questions though are:
> >
> > Who determines how long is enough?
>
> Until you no longer need the assistance to can make it on your own.
> It's a mindset thing.
And "need" means? I know some people who think that one aspect of "need"
is a fixed time limit. That, in effect, given X amount of time anyone in
at least nominal health should have achieved self-sufficience.
> Letting people think they are entitled to
> other people's money without any sense of obligation is a mistake.
> That's what the term entitlement does.
>
> The problem is that too many people are willing to just take.
>
> I know someone that collects welfare rather than work because she
> says it's "Free money." She doesn't feel like working and thinks
> that she shouldn't have to because other people are so wealthy
> and since she'll never be that wealthy, they owe her.
You know people who are abusing the system, but I know people who've
been just barely scraping by for decades. They do just too well to
qualify for any meaningful help, but not well enough to actually have
the freedom to try to improve their situation. Where do people who
literally lack the opportunity to do better than survive fit in?
> > Who determines that the program in question is sufficient?
>
> The presumption must be that for a person that is capable of working,
> the program is not permanent. There should be reasonable expectations that
> a person must *do* something in order to get the help.
>
> It is not unreasonable for society to believe that if they are helping
> someone up, the person being helped should actually have to get up.
That didn't answer the question. The question was: Who determines that
the help available is enough? Or, more directly, what _is_ enough help?
Of course, people must do something. But is it enough that they _try_,
or does one actually have to succeed? I don't buy into the time limit
because I've seen too many people who don't give up, but don't succeed
either.
Gregory Weston
"jms...@aol.com" <jms...@aol.com> wrote:
> I have a share of the net profits of B5. But by the terms of the deal
> that was made, WB takes 60% of all monies in overhead, and can charge
> almost anything they want against profits. If a stage used on some
> other WB project being shot in Bolivia burns down, they can charge it
> against B5. Consequently, B5 has never shown a profit even though
> it's made half a billion dollars just in DVD sales, leaving out
> foreign sales, syndication, merchandising and so on.
The production budget for B5, including Crusade and the movies, was
what? About $150M?
Carl Hoff
> <starf...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Book and movies are very different. Books don't involve talent from
> > hundreds or thousands of creators.
>
> This is not a true statement. Books involve publishers, editors,
> assistant editors, proofreaders, typesetters, publicists, art
> directors, photographers, and a host of others, all of whom in their
> way "create" the book being purchased.
>
> And in TV/film, the actors and directors who create the work are also
> able to participate in the same kind of royalty as a book writer.
I agree there is other talent involved in publishing a book but are
editors, assistant editors, proofreaders, typesetters, publicists, art
directors, photographers, etc. ever in a situation to collect
royalties? I don't know... but I'd tend to think it would be just the
author getting royalties. In regards to a movie on DVD I imagine
there could be dozens entitled to some royalties, actors, directors,
producers, writers, etc. I agree that getting 4 cents per DVD sounds
incredibly low but I doubt 12% of the price is realistic either. By
your own admission, actors and directors get better deals then the
writers and I just can't see them all getting 12% or better.
And in addition to the actors, directors, producers, and writers, I'm
wondering about the people behind the sound track. Does John Williams
collect royalties when a DVD of Star Wars or Jaws is sold? What about
Queen when a Flash Gordon DVD is sold? In these cases the sound track
is a very key part of the movie and I personally feel they should be
entitled to royalties too. However I have no idea if that is the way
things work or not.
Asked another way, if 12% to 15% of the price of a book goes to
royalties, do you know what percentage of a DVD price goes into paying
all royalties, not just the authors? I would agree that amount should
be at least 12% to 15%, but again I have no idea if that is the case
or not.
Just curious,
Carl
Josh Hill
<ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:145oh3lkbq5vu1qtr...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:11:26 -0500, "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
>> <ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>> >news:lmgnh3l8v2lnul121...@4ax.com...
><snip>
>> >>
>> >> Perhaps, but I wasn't talking about people who work at minimum wage.
>> >> You were the one who brought that up. I was talking about people who
>> >> earn poverty-level wages, like employees at Wal-Mart.
>> >
>> >The minumum wage, being less than what Wal Mart pays, seems to fit your
>> >definition of "poverty level wages".
>>
>> Guess you didn't see the figures I posted from that web site. It seems
>> that Wal-Mart's wages are higher than the minimum, but they still put
>> some employees below the poverty line, and others only slight above
>> it.
>
>So talking about folks making the minimum wage less than Wal Mart pays,
>would fit your definition of poverty level wages.
Would fit within it, sure. But you can't apply statistics that apply
specifically to one end of a range to the entire range. It just isn't
valid. Kids working after school jobs are going to be clustered at the
low end of the poverty-wage range.
>> >Would you trust GWB and the Republicans to run your health care?
>> >:-)
>>
>> You have a point . . .
>>
>> Seriously, I'm not wild about government care. But having no
>> insurance, or having managed care or one of these phony individual
>> insurance plans that drop you when you become seriously ill is worse.
>>
>
>Well, we could always address the needs of the uninsured, except government
>programs just tend to get larger over time.
Sure. But the figures show that countries like Canada that have
single-payer government health care spend /half/ of what we do. With
universal care and better results.
The problem I think is that American health care no longer has
anything to do with the market. People just say "Oh, my insurance will
pay," and spend without regard to costs. And then the insurance
companies try to cut costs by adding a layer of bureaucracy that means
doctors have to hire several full-time staff members just to handle
the insurance claims, and waste their own extremely expensive time.
And then the uninsured get care in emergency rooms, which costs
several times what a visit to a doctor's office would cost, or they
can't pay their hospital bills, meaning that the hospitals have to
raise their rates for those with insurance. The private system just
isn't working anymore.
>> >So what would you like? Embargo? Tariffs?
>>
>> Tariffs would I think be the way to go. But I suspect we wouldn't even
>> have to go that far (and it would take some doing to get there, since
>> they'd probably be illegal under current agreements). Right now, the
>> Asian countries are manipulating their currencies, dumping, engaging
>> in protectionism, stealing our intellectual property. I'd tell them
>> that if they didn't clean up their act they'd face tariffs. I'd repeal
>> tax incentives that encourage companies to move factories overseas.
>> And I'd require that foreign companies meet basic labor and
>> environmental standards. I suspect that those measures would be
>> enough. One doesn't want to go too far, to cause a depression or halt
>> the industrialization of the third world, which is in our interest as
>> well as theirs. The idea would be to move slowly and act
>> conservatively, and to bring the other industrialized countries --
>> with whom we should IMO have a common market free of impediments to
>> commerce -- along. Done correctly, there wouldn't be much by way of
>> actual tariffs, since the third world countries would find it in their
>> interest to comply.
>>
>
>And what are the basic standards?
Complex and for the regulators to work out. I'm not saying that to
duck the question, but because I lack the expertise to regulate
mercury emissions or workplace exposures. But the general idea is to
level the playing field between a domestic textile company that's
required to pay minimum wage and overtime, say, and a foreign company
that uses bonded child workers.
Charlie Edmondson
>>>On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:02:36 -0400, Dennis \(Icarus\) wrote
>
> (in article <40cd1$471ace72$4c49ae41$18...@KNOLOGY.NET>):>>news:gfskh39lal1sco0c1...@4ax.com...
>>
>>>On Sat, 20 Oct 2007 15:03:00 -0700, Jon Schild <j...@xmission.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Josh Hill wrote:
>>>
>>>>>It was certainly true before there were unions: in some cases,
>>>>>employees were literally worked to death. And non-union companies like
>>>>>Wal-Mart pay their people miserable salaries. In some states, Wal-Mart
>>>>>employees have signed up for Medicaid because they don't get medical
>>>>>insurance.
>>>>
>>>>I keep hearing this, but people I know personally who work at Wal-Mart
>>>>are all happy with it. They report NONE of the supposed abuses that
>>>>activists are always talking about. I think unions are just spreading
>>>>lies about how horrible it is to work without having union dues forced
>>>>out of your pocket. They see how much power they could get by bringing
>>>>down a company that large, and they want it.
>>>
>>>
>>>In 2001, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on
>>>average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861. The 2001 poverty
>>>line for a family of three was $14,630. ["Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?",
>>>Business Week, 10/6/03, US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001
>>>Poverty Guidelines, 2001]
>>
>
>
> that they keep employees' hours down below 40/week so they don't have to give
> them benefits? I don't have _anything_ like a citation on this, but it's all
> too easy to see how paying employees more than the minimum wage can still
> work out to poverty and no health insurance, just by putting a teeny bit of
> thought into it. And if _I_ can think of it, I'm pretty sure the head
> honchos at Wal-Mart can, too. :-)
>
> Amy
Yep, I am sure they do. As does Sears, K-Mart, Target, Macy's... ;-)
It is a common business practice in retail to have a few managers, a few
more full time people in senior or supervisory roles, and most of the
workforce as part time. And yes, it is to keep the level of benefits
and other expenses down, like vacation, etc. They are business to make
money, not support people, so they do what they can to reduce expenses
while maintaining an 'adequate' level of service.
Now, do I think this a great idea? Or even a good idea? Not really.
But, it sure helped back when I was in school...
Charlie
Charlie Edmondson
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:08:54 GMT, Amy Guskin <ais...@fjordstone.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>>Yeah, but haven't we read story after story, report after report, that says
>>that they keep employees' hours down below 40/week so they don't have to give
>>them benefits? I don't have _anything_ like a citation on this, but it's all
>>too easy to see how paying employees more than the minimum wage can still
>>work out to poverty and no health insurance, just by putting a teeny bit of
>>thought into it. And if _I_ can think of it, I'm pretty sure the head
>>honchos at Wal-Mart can, too. :-)
>
>
> I was wondering why they said Wal-Mart cashiers work only 35 hours a
> week. How sleazy!
>
IIRC, anyone who works over 29 hours per week is considered full time,
at least in California...
Charlie
Josh Hill
<David_Po...@msn.com> wrote:
Clinton, obviously. But NAFTA was a conservative Republican
initiative, and the agreement was signed by George H. W. Bush.
Clinton, a Republicrat, added some provisions to ameliorate the
effects of NAFTA. A majority of Congressional Democrats opposed it:
according to Wikipedia, in the house, 132 Republicans and 102
Democrats voted in favor, and 156 Democrats, 43 Republicans, and 1
independent voted against.
Josh Hill
<ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"Josh Hill" <usere...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:ut5oh3hamqirun07u...@4ax.com...
>> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:00:50 -0500, "Dennis \(Icarus\)"
>> <ala_di...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> And I believe it was Carl who referred to the minimum wage, not I. I
>> >> referred to the poverty-level wages paid by non-union companies like
>> >> Wal-Mart: The minimum wage is even lower than that, in part because
>> >> the Republicans block increases.
>> >>
>> >So what should the minimum wage be?
>> >10 dollars an hour?
>> >20? 40?
>> >
>> >When I see MicDonalds, Wendy's, they're just paying minimum wage.
>>
>> Actually, I don't think there should be a minimum wage, because it
>> increases unemployment and makes it difficult for businesses to hire
>> teenagers. Instead, I'd use a negative income tax. And as a last
>
>That's pretty much the rationale opponents to minimum wage increases use.
>The negative income tax looks much like the exceptions and prebates
>discussed in "The Fair Tax".
Haven't read "The Fair Tax." I disagree with the opponents of the
minimum wage not because that aspect of their argument doesn't hold
weight, but because in the absence of a negative income tax or
something similar I think that the minimum wage probably does more
good than harm.
>> resort for the few who are unemployable, I'd offer a public works job
>> to anyone willing and able to work.
>
>And if they're unwilling?
Screw 'em. Why should we pay people to be lazy? Except for me, of
course.
>> Those who couldn't work because of sickness or disability would
>> receive insurance payments, and those who couldn't work because they
>
>Like we do now (disability)
Pretty much. I'd just make sure that the benefits were sufficient to
keep people out of poverty.
>> were addicted to drugs or alcohol would be offered residential
>> treatment, but nothing else: putting welfare or SSI money in the hands
>> of an addict is like pouring gasoline on a fire. And I'd give everyone
>> an opportunity to better themselves through education.
>>
>
>And that happens now, too.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always. Every time they cut student aid or
benefits and raise the tuition at state colleges some poor students
have to drop out. And I don't think we do much for older people who
want to go back to school, for those who have families, and so on.
Which seems to me myopic from a social perspective. As long as a
student is serious and making real progress towards a real degree --
not an associate degree in hairdressing or something, there are some
vocational schools out there that exist only to milk government
student aid programs -- it seems to me that it's in our interest to
support them.
Joseph DeMartino
> Let me jump in here for a second to try and turn the discussion a bit,
> in that the situation as it affects writers is vastly different than
> in any other union.
People don't seem to realize that a union that represents independent
contractors is a very different kettle of fish than one that
represents hourly and salaried employees working 9 to 5 or similar
"regular" jobs.
I've worked in union and non-union shops, in both the private sector
and in government positions, and in the main think that the old union
model - born in the middle of the industrial revolution and the days
before OSHA and the Plaintiff's Bar - has pretty much outlived its
usefulness. There are decent arguments on both both pro-union and
anti-union, but based on my personal experience I'd have to say that
today unions have become a net negative influence in government and in
industry. (I'd assign about 80% of the blame for our miserable
government-run schools on the teacher's unions, which I've also seen
up close and personal.)
But independent contractor unions like the WGA and SAG still perform a
*very* necessary function, which really has no analog in "normal"
unions, and do *not* add onerous and self-defeating rules that
threaten the survival of the employer, as the old unions tend to.
(The WGA, for instance, does not force the studios to buy bad scripts
from lousy writers based purely on their seniority. <g>)
BTW, thought this column in LA Weekly was interesting, if rather
scary:
Good luck with everything,
Joe
Dennis (Icarus)
The projected population of Canada is 33,052,533, as of 10/22/2007, 1:02 pm
eastern time
http://www.statcan.ca/english/edu/clock/population.htm
The population of the US is 303, 185, 700 as of 10/22/2007, 1:02 pm EST
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html
So they have a tenth of the population, yet spend 1/2 of what we do on
medical care.
>
> The problem I think is that American health care no longer has
> anything to do with the market. People just say "Oh, my insurance will
> pay," and spend without regard to costs. And then the insurance
> companies try to cut costs by adding a layer of bureaucracy that means
> doctors have to hire several full-time staff members just to handle
> the insurance claims, and waste their own extremely expensive time.
I'd agree with that. I'd also add in the cost of malpractice insurance.
But,due to unions, they may not be paying above, perhaps far above, minimum
wage.
Would we do the same to, say, automated factories that may have fewer
workers if they have lower production costs?
Dennis
.
Dennis (Icarus)
So that brings me back to my uestion as to what the minimum wage should be.
:-)
>
> >> resort for the few who are unemployable, I'd offer a public works job
> >> to anyone willing and able to work.
> >
> >And if they're unwilling?
>
> Screw 'em. Why should we pay people to be lazy? Except for me, of
> course.
>
> >> Those who couldn't work because of sickness or disability would
> >> receive insurance payments, and those who couldn't work because they
> >
> >Like we do now (disability)
>
> Pretty much. I'd just make sure that the benefits were sufficient to
> keep people out of poverty.
Current disability is, I think, based on how much "credits" you've built
upwhile working.
At least that's what I get from the letters sent out by SSA.
Since cost of living varies by area, there'd have to be different payouts,
resulting in further complications.
(and new opportunities for fraud).
>
> >> were addicted to drugs or alcohol would be offered residential
> >> treatment, but nothing else: putting welfare or SSI money in the hands
> >> of an addict is like pouring gasoline on a fire. And I'd give everyone
> >> an opportunity to better themselves through education.
> >>
> >
> >And that happens now, too.
>
> Unfortunately, it doesn't always. Every time they cut student aid or
> benefits and raise the tuition at state colleges some poor students
> have to drop out. And I don't think we do much for older people who
> want to go back to school, for those who have families, and so on.
> Which seems to me myopic from a social perspective. As long as a
> student is serious and making real progress towards a real degree --
> not an associate degree in hairdressing or something, there are some
> vocational schools out there that exist only to milk government
> student aid programs -- it seems to me that it's in our interest to
> support them.
>
Or they could support themselves, like I did when attending grad school.
Dennis
.
Amy Guskin
(in article <1193065164.3...@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com>):
>
> And in addition to the actors, directors, producers, and writers, I'm
> wondering about the people behind the sound track. Does John Williams
> collect royalties when a DVD of Star Wars or Jaws is sold? What about
> Queen when a Flash Gordon DVD is sold? In these cases the sound track
> is a very key part of the movie and I personally feel they should be
> entitled to royalties too. However I have no idea if that is the way
> things work or not. <<
John Williams and Queen collect royalties for the soundtrack recordings. The
soundtrack has pretty much nothing to do with the film, and is treated as any
sound recording. Mechanical royalties are due to the composers and the
publishers on every copy distributed (which is not the same as "every copy
sold"). Artist royalties are between the artist and the label.
As for whether they collect royalties on copies of the DVD that have been
distributed, that is between their publisher and the film company. There is
no standard for synchronization rights, and thus they are negotiated on a
case-by-case basis. I'd have to say that the answer is almost universally
"no" for music used in films; they usually negotiate a flat fee for the
inclusion of such music _on the film itself_. But as I say above, the
soundtrack (audio) recording is a different story.
Amy (taking a break from watching Peter Jackson work in my neighborhood all
morning!)
--
"In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over
again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda." - George
W. Bush, May 24, 2005
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> I take it you haven't read Lenin - even in excerpts?
Sure I have.
> If you did, then you didn't understand diddly about what he wrote or
> what he did.
>
> Matthews post is, like Josh rightly said, mostly centre, leaning a bit
> to the right.
My problem here is that I latched onto "and so are in
effect bludging off the union without contributing" which reminds me
of Lenin's philosophy of society which included the wrongful notion
that nobody can separate themselves from the society they live in.
It was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part. My apologies,
Matthew.
--
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
Promote someone else.
.
Lance Corporal "Hammer" Schultz
> And yes, individual writers can sue the studios, and never work
> again. That's why you need someone who can bargain collectively.
I'll not argue against your statements correcting mine, though I don't
agree. To me, the bottom line is that independent contractors (I am
one myself) are individuals, and they should make agreements on an
individual basis between themselves and the people who hire them to do
contract work.
The *only* condition I could ever see myself joining a union is if I
have no choice and need the work. I could never join a union with the
"goal" of intimidating a company into doing things that are most
likely not wise from a business position, nor am I at all comfortable
with the idea of abdicating my personal choice to work to a majority
vote.
I haven't worked as an employee for someone else in a long time -- it
feels like another lifetime ago. So I know what it means to not have
the 9-5 and weekly paycheck. I also know that I've chosen my
profession and all the insecurity that comes with not being beholden
to someone else for my income. It is not the responsibility of
someone who hires me to "cover" my down time, as you have twice now
implied is the responsibility of the studio.
My opinion is that you have proven your worth beyond any reasonable
standard and anyone should be happy to have you write them a movie to
make tons of money on, and that you should be able to write your own
ticket WRT to your compensation. But if they decide they want cheaper
writers, what moral right does someone have to intimidate them through
strikes to deny them that choice?
Of course, the WGA has every legal right to do what it is doing. If
it works out well, then good for you. But I won't be surprised to see
another new onslaught of "reality TV" programs and I'm pretty sure the
networks will be just as happy making money off those shows as any
other.
jms...@aol.com
The wga isn't asking for 15, 12 or even 10 percent they want to raise
the amount from 4 cents per DVD...to eight cent.
Kurt Ullman
Josh Hill <usere...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:08:54 GMT, Amy Guskin <ais...@fjordstone.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Yeah, but haven't we read story after story, report after report, that says
> >that they keep employees' hours down below 40/week so they don't have to
> >give
> >them benefits? I don't have _anything_ like a citation on this, but it's
> >all
> >too easy to see how paying employees more than the minimum wage can still
> >work out to poverty and no health insurance, just by putting a teeny bit of
> >thought into it. And if _I_ can think of it, I'm pretty sure the head
> >honchos at Wal-Mart can, too. :-)
>
> I was wondering why they said Wal-Mart cashiers work only 35 hours a
> week. How sleazy!
No law that I know of requires anyone to give any kind of
benefits to anyone just because they work more 35 hours a week. So I am
not sure why this is such a big deal.
Kurt Ullman
Josh Hill <usere...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Right. And for that you can thank the Republicans for blocking the
> universal health care that every other industrialized nation has. Our
> insane health care costs are one of the reasons American factories
> can't compete.
>
Actually it was the Dems still in control when they through Mrs
Clinton Care over the side.
> >Great business model.
>
> For which you can thank the Republicans and their support for
> unbridled globalization. American factory worker earning $20 an hour
> competes with Chinese factory worker earning 15 cents an hour. Result:
> American factory closes. Great business model.
NAFTA was okayed after Bill Clinton made its passage a major
legislative initiative in 1993. More GOP people than Dems voted for it
in the Senate. Of course unbridled globalization came about because of
many other reasons, mostly outside the purview of both GOP and Dems.
Kurt Ullman
"jms...@aol.com" <jms...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> As to this coming labor action, when you go into the store next and
> buy a DVD and a book, look at the two of them and know that the author
> of the book gets a full twelve to fifteen percent of the price...and
> the author of the DVD gets, *at most* four cents per DVD, and most of
> the time literally and absolutely *nothing* for it...and ask yourself,
> "Why the difference?"
>
Not to pick a fight, but most of the time the writer of the DVD
(with the one obvious exception) gets paid for the movie, TV show
whatever and the DVD is largely a secondary market. To my mind, the
better example would be what the author gets for the paperback edition.
How does that compare as a %age of purchase price to what you guys and
gals are getting for DVDs.