Will SAG/AFTRA merger squeeze union democracy?

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

It seems you can have too much democracy in a union, at least if published reports are to be believed. The pro-AFTRA blog SAG Watch is reporting that SAG leaders will not allow or at least will strongly discourage the issuance of a minority report on the proposal to merge with AFTRA when the SAG board votes on the proposal this weekend. This, despite the clear advantage to both sides of allowing a healthy debate to take place in order to foresee all the potential implications of the complicated proposal.

This report comes after other reports that the newly merged SAG-AFTRA union would eliminate the direct election by the rank and file membership of some top leaders. This kind of direct election has been the norm in SAG for many years. It has some problems because it encourages support for well known figures but it also ties leaders to the membership as a whole. AFTRA uses an intermediary convention which only meets every other year to elect top officers.

The new union will have a much wider array of members who are engaged in very different activities for very different kinds of employers. That diversity when combined with weaker rank and file control over top leaders typically reinforces the power of professional union staff – sometimes referred to derisively as “bureaucrats” – who can easily lose touch with those they are hired to serve.

SAGWatch – Observing the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA » Blog Archive » If All Goes to Form.

SAG/AFTRA merger details emerge – global solidarity rule to erode

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

SAG critics of merger with AFTRA appear to have been right about their concern that the merger deal being negotiated now behind closed doors by union leaders and staff would undermine longstanding SAG work rules.

Jonathan Handel at The Hollywood Reporter is reporting today that “Global Rule 1″ will not be extended to the hundreds of AFTRA members who work in non-union shops like CNBC and CNN. Historically, SAG has insisted that its members not work in non-union shops but AFTRA, which SAG critics say is a weaker union, have never enforced that kind of across the board principle. To avoid appearing as if they are simply a labor association and not a real union, AFTRA calls such non-union work places “non jurisdictional.”

Of course, this is just semantics. AFTRA engages in this game to avoid violating its own “Rule One No Contract/No Work” concept which blocks union members from working for employers where AFTRA has “jurisdiction.”

AFTRA actually failed in a ten year effort to organize CNBC, for example, as Handel mentions. So clearly AFTRA considers CNBC part of its jurisdiction, as it should. But AFTRA members who continue to work there face no penalty and can freely accept either union or non-union work.

So AFTRA has not been able to organize important parts of the media industry and at the same time it has been unable or unwilling to require that its members avoid working in scab shops.

In stark contrast, SAG has often been aggressive in enforcing union solidarity. Perhaps the most visible example was the imposition of penalties on celebrities like Tiger Woods who crossed union picket lines during the 2000 commercials strike. It should be noted, however, that SAG’s rule applies to principal actors but apparently does not extend to background actors, a large group of the Guild’s membership that were absorbed into SAG when it took over the ailing Screen Extras Guild years ago.

Since it has already been widely reported that the SAG and AFTRA pension and health care plans will continue to operate independently after merger, and now a key SAG solidarity principle will not be extended to AFTRA, it looks as if the strategy behind this merger is to actually do as little merging as possible in order to insure passage. That may also explain the rumoured lame proposed name for the new organization: “SAG-AFTRA.”

Key SAG Rule to Survive Merger (Exclusive) – The Hollywood Reporter.

Hollywood piracy defeat should force rethink of SAG/AFTRA merger

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

The stunning defeat of Hollywood in the recent battle over anti-piracy legislation is slowly beginning to register with the entertainment industry. Despite being this country’s most important export industry, Hollywood was unable to carry the day for legislation that protects an important cash cow for the US economy.

What happened here and why is it important for the unions in the entertainment industry, particularly SAG?

The key is that Silicon Valley and the telecom world are destroying the old vertical business structures of Hollywood. After decades in which aggregation was the key to success, now disaggregation is the key. There are now dozens of ways to produce and distribute entertainment content. Big capital now flows through hedge funds and venture funds to create these pipelines.

And these disaggregated players are now a political force as well despite the anarchy of their business model. The blackouts by Wikipedia and Google were only the most visible tip of the iceberg. It is not an accident that Obama has visited the Valley a half dozen times in the last couple of years, including stops at Facebook and private dinners with big tech players.

Meanwhile SAG and AFTRA leaders argue that the key is merger – in other words, aggregation in a world of disaggregation. One of the major arguments that merger zealots make is that a new merged union of journalists, musicians and actors will be better situated to deal with, wait for it, large media conglomerates like Fox and NBC Universal. But these are the same groups that just got beat, badly, by a wide ranging network of small and big, private and public, for profit and non profit, technology companies.

And in that victory Silicon Valley won the hearts and minds of millions of consumers who buy into the – inaccurate but persuasive – story that the Valley brings people more choice and cheaper alternatives for entertainment content.

An analysis by Reuters on the debacle for Hollywood contained the following quite revealing assessment of the clumsy bureaucratic response by the congloms:

Some Hollywood executives acknowledge their own flat-footedness in trying to marshal public opinion as opposition mounted. While technology companies brandished the power of the Internet, Hollywood relied on old-media weapons such as television commercials and a billboard in New York’s Times Square. It proved to be too little, too late.

One entertainment-company lawyer complained that opposing arguments were often inaccurate but spread like wildfire anyway on the Internet, leaving supporters scrambling to correct the information without the benefit of a strong online network.

“We do some of that (online) stuff, but it has to go through a committee of 14 people,” he said. “The other side doesn’t have conference calls. They just put stuff out there.”

A merger of SAG and AFTRA, in other words, is a solution to last decade’s war not a credible response to the battles that actors (and journalists and musicians) will face for the next generation.

Some time ago, I proposed an alternative to the merger of SAG and AFTRA. Now it seems prescient and so I put it on the table again. Instead of merger, instead of the time consuming, overwhelmingly complex and expensive process of forcing under one roof very different cultural and political organizations, the entertainment and media industry unions need to form a strategic leadership council.

This council would be formed by rank and file elected representatives who base themselves in both New York and Hollywood with a small professional staff that has as its purpose the generation of concrete ideas for improving the bargaining power of the industry workforce. It would include IATSE, the IBT and CWA as well as the guilds. It should have a seat at the table of the AFL-CIO executive council as well.

Such a council would only be as strong as its ability to develop new ideas for horizontal action across the guilds and crafts as opposed to bureaucratic, staff dominated vertical efforts. This horizontal approach could include coordinated bargaining, attempts to build direct relationships outside of collective bargaining with Silicon Valley, efforts to make a public argument about labor’s role in the industry that is not controlled by the AMPTP.

Over time, as success builds trust and confidence, new organizational structures could emerge. But there is no magic in mergers and SAG is now on a path for a bloody internal fight that will only harden factional lines. Even if merger gets past the 60% hurdle those hardened battle lines will be brought into AFTRA. Those journalists and musicians not familiar with SAG culture will be alienated. A weak and ineffectual union is a distinct possibility.

A council approach, on the other hand, is democratic, transparent, controlled by rank and file members and allows a great deal of flexibility and creativity to take hold. When you go up against Silicon Valley that is a very powerful weapon.

Hollywood regroups after losing battle over anti-piracy bills – latimes.com

All capitalism is “crony” capitalism

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

Republicans are in a panic. One wing of their own leadership is engaged in a full throated attack on Mitt Romney’s private equity background. Their argument is more articulate and aggressive than anything the left has come up with, which one has to admit is a bit embarrassing.

Now, however, mainstream Republicans are responding by trying to defend Mitt’s version of capitalism as against that of Barack Obama.

Well, the argument that Obama engages in a kind of “crony” capitalism is certainly right. He cuts deals with anyone he can to keep the system alive. He bribed the UAW leadership so successfully they were willing to help cut auto workers wages in half! He then pumped billions into the dying banking industry instead of nationalizing the banks and making sure that they served their role in providing needed finance for a deeply troubled economy. Now we are mired in a seemingly endless economic crisis akin to the BP oil spill. Let’s not even raise the Solyndra problem, where Obama insisted on touting a troubled startup in the face of stark warnings from the company’s own auditors.

But the idea that private equity is not a crony game is absurd. Of course it is. After all, why is Silicon Valley located in Silicon Valley? So that the cronyism that makes capitalism possible can succeed. It’s not what you know that counts, but who you know. And it helps if you live in reasonable proximity to the action.

By definition, all capitalism is crony capitalism. It is not transparent, it is not subject to democratic accountability, it is not subject to genuine oversight by society as a whole.

Consider one small example: A few years ago, Cal/PERS, the giant public sector pension fund controlled largely by public sector unions, had to be sued by a journalists’ advocacy group before it would reveal the fees it paid to private equity funds.

Why such resistance? Because Cal/PERS feared it would be excluded from cutting edge high tech investment opportunities if it exposed its buddies in Silicon Valley. Even the Wall Street Journal admitted: “The clubby venture-capital business has a long tradition of keeping information close to the vest.”

Some VC funds retaliated by telling pension funds that they were no longer welcome as limited partners if they also had to disclose their fee structures.

In other words, go along or get lost.

Venture Capitalism not Crony Capitalism.

Mitt’s Attack on Crony Capitalism

Hollywood waves White Flag – Dodd Calls for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Meet

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

Well, it’s about time. But where are SAG and its sister guilds? They should have reached out to the Valley years ago instead of waiting for the Producers to do it. Now, of course, Hollywood is at a serious disadvantage in any such talks having gotten their heads handed to them in the Piracy legislation battle. Once again it is clear that SAG’s head in the sand focus on a time consuming merger with AFTRA has led them to miss the “big picture” (pun intended.)

Dodd Calls for Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Meet – NYTimes.com.

Bill Daley is out, Jarrett still there – Whither Obama White House Now?

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

When Bill Daley first took on the job as White House chief of staff I wondered whether he realized what he was getting himself into. There was little doubt then or now that the real power in the White House is Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s comrade in arms for two decades now, going back to the days when Obama was paling around, as David Remnick confirms, with Bill Ayers in their jointly run education policy effort, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

The latest confirmation of this comes in the form of Jodi Kantor’s new book which contains anecdotes indicating clearly Jarrett’s central role. And, of course, as I have suggested here many times in the past the cement that holds Jarrett and the Obamas so closely together is ideological.

After a year of breaking his tough head against the Barack-Michelle-Valerie troika – and with a few important victories under his belt – Daley has decided to bow out.

Under the circumstances, who can blame him? But the real question is what now? It would appear that the Daley decision – and the President and media reporting makes clear this was Daley’s decision – clearly took the President by surprise. Daley is an important link between the White House and major business figures and that has to include major potential donors to the Obama campaign. So one possibility here is that this resignation could have negative implications for the President’s reelection campaign.

It has also been reported that Daley was a critical player in pushing the Obama team to deal seriously with threats like Osama bin Laden in the face of opposition from Jarrett. Thus the future relationship between the inner circle around Obama and the wider national security team now would appear to be in doubt.

Like a pebble thrown into a still lake, the ripples from this event will spread far. Stay tuned.

William Daley to step down as Obama’s chief of staff – latimes.com .

New book on Obamas stirs controversy….but why?

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Stephen Diamond

You have to wonder about the background and experience of today’s professional politicians.

Take the new book on Michelle Obama by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor, described in detail at the link below. Kantor describes an incident where Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett squares off with then White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs apparently felt blindsided by Jarrett who tore him a new one over a small incident involving the first lady. What appeared to get Gibbs’ goat most was that Jarrett appeared to have acted on her own in defense of Michelle without the first lady’s knowledge. That sent Gibbs over the edge and the f-bombs flew.

But really, how surprised could Gibbs have been? Did he not recall the incident during the campaign itself when he and other white staffers were called together at the Chicago residence of Jarrett to listen to a dressing down delivered by Obama ally Chris Edley, the black dean of Berkeley Law? Did Gibbs really not believe that there was a racial edge to what held the Obama insiders together? And did he not understand that there is no daylight at all between the Obamas and Jarrett?

Of course, readers of this blog are long familiar with the political history of the Obamas, from their apprentice on the south side of Chicago where Obama worked closely with former radicals like Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky who had turned away from their earlier pseudo-marxism for a new form of poisonous racial and identity politics. And, of course, although it is no longer polite to recall this, there was the 20 year record of the Obamas sitting in the pews of Rev. Wright’s black nationalist church in that same south side milieu.

So while the details of the Kantor book help put some nuance on the real nature of the Obamas’ background and race driven approach to politics, you have to wonder at the surprise of the professional political class.

The larger story here, of course, is the collapse of traditional American liberalism. Remarkably if you turn on Fox News you will hear Sarah Palin or Rick Santorum talk endlessly about the problems of the “working class” but liberals fear being tagged “reds” if they use the word. Instead, multiculturalism and identity politics are the order of the day. Of course, these concepts have proved useless in the face of serious economic collapse, not least of all for black and hispanic American who have been hit even harder than whites by the collapse of the financial markets.

If liberals want to deal with these problems they have to stop their flirtation with the dead end racialized politics of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright and get serious.

via Michelle Obama had tense relationship with president’s top advisers, book asserts – The Washington Post.

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