#Unions

[angryraptor13]

This is why EVERYBODY needs a union.

OMG. Somebody said it out loud.

Disney is absolutely not the only studio doing this though.

It seems to have become standard practice across movies and series everywhere.

Anything that doesn't do it is like a breath of sunlight and fresh air inside a dank musty cave.

It's part of the 'fix it in post-production' epidemic sweeping through the studios. Fix it in post is often used as a time/money-saving measure - and is absolutely part of the same mess that the WGA is fighting against currently.

Rather than fixing things on-set - audio, lighting, something in-frame that shouldn't be, etc. (which is all handled by unionized crew) - they leave it for the CG folks (not unionized) to edit later.

(on ridiculously tight schedules that leave them scrambling, cutting corners, and working inhumane hours)

See also: that part where scripts aren't finished, because the studio won't fully staff the writers room, and won't pay to have writers on-set for day-of-filming script questions and fixes (which could resolve issues such as 'what kind of lighting do we need here?')

Anyway, all this shit we, as audiences, keep complaining about - bad lighting, bad sound, wonky visual effects, over-usage of not-great CGI, stilted acting on green-screen sets, scripts that seem not-quite-finished, costumes that look like they're cheap and flimsy, terrible hair and makeup, films and series that aren't as polished as they could be...

Plus the complaints we have about streaming services and their shenanigans...

All of that is enmeshed in the extreme capitalism that has taken over everything, including entertainment, to the point that studios are abusing their workforce and churning out material that - at best just doesn't live up to its potential - at worst, is just unwatchable shit.

[seadeepspaceontheside]

I have seen little to no support for the strike from fellow Canadians about the current Canadian Postal workers who are out there protesting for better work conditions. Canadian Postal workers =/= Canada post. Currently workers are striking for pay that has been stagnated as well as benefits being halted. Some of the things I want to debunk with all anti-worker talk about the strike. 1) "Our tax dollars pay for them! They should just go back to work! They are losing money!" False! They aren't GOVERNMENT JOBS they are a CROWN CORPORATION, they are still structured and operated as a legal corporation. The head people are still CEOS who get paid millions in bonuses as the corporation fails or makes bad decisions such as buying new vehicles that make workers feel unsafe, can't fit in urban areas, cost so much more! 2) "They don't provide a useful service its only flyers" "what about my cheque!" It can't be both, you can't claim Canada Post workers are useless for spam mail while also touting small businesses are failing, people needing their pay, and delivering where other courier services wont! Currently Canadian Postal workers will deliver benefit checks and child support on volunteer. 3)"Why are they striking now when its busiest??" They are striking now because it will affect you to care, its moot point to strike when there is little to no leverage against. THATS THE POINT OF ANY PROTEST! Show solidarity with the workers, if you have issues and want the strike to end complain to the company to work with the union (who have been asking for a resolution for years before wanting to strike) RAISE AWARENESS FOR IT.

[sturionic]

Activism is not cold-calling.

Activism is not cold-calling, and this is critically important to understand.

I'm seeing a lot of posts on here about 'building bridges' and 'finding community,' and then (extremely valid) response posts saying "BUT HOW??" And I'm going to explain something that can be very counter-intuitive: there is strategy involved in community.

As a longtime volunteer labour organizer, I’ve taken and taught many trainings on the strategy of talking. Something that surprises a lot of people is the very first thing you do in a union campaign. You sit down with your organizing committee, take out pen and paper, and literally map it out. You draw a physical map of the workplace: where are the entrances, exits, break rooms, supervisor offices. Essentially, ‘where is it safe to have a union conversation.’ Then you draw another physical chart of your coworkers. You sort out who is union-friendly, openly hostile to unions, or somewhere in the middle, and then you plan out very deliberately and carefully who talks to whom and in what order.

Consider: If Vocally Leftist Jane walks up to Conservative David and says "hey what do you think about unions," David is going to shut down immediately. He's not inclined to listen to Jane. But if Jane talks to Moderate Jason and brings him into the fold, then Jason is a far more effective strategic choice to talk to David, and David may actually hear him out without an instant reaction.

IMPORTANT CAVEAT: If Conservative David turns out to be Alt-Right David, and could be dangerous to follow organizers, we write him off. We are not trying to reach Alt-Right David. We are trying to reach Conservative David, who may actually be persuaded to find solidarity with other employees as fellow workers. Jason is a safe scout to find out which one he is. It does no one any good if Leftist Jane (or even Moderate Jane who is a visible minority) talks to Alt-Right David and puts herself on his radar. Not only has she done nothing to convince Alt-Right David to join a union - she's probably actively turned him against the idea - but now she's also in danger and the entire campaign is at risk. NOBODY WANTS THIS. Jane was NOT a hero for doing this. The organizing committee was foolish and enacted a terrible strategy to everyone's detriment.

Where you can make a difference is with people who will listen to you. You having a conversation with your well-meaning but clueless Centrist Democrat Auntie, and maybe gently helping her understand some things the media has been glossing over, is way more strategically useful than you marching up to MAGA Neighbour You've Met Once and trying to "build community" or "understand" them. They don't care. They're impervious, dangerous, and cruel. But maybe your beloved auntie will think about what you said, and then talk to her friend Anna who IDs as "fiscally conservative" but didn't vote because she can't bring herself to get on board with Trump. Then perhaps Anna talks to her brother Nic who has MAGA leanings but isn't all the way there yet. Proto-MAGA Nic would not have listened to you, nor would he have listened to Centrist Democrat Auntie, but he might absorb some of what his sister is saying.

This is not a cop-out or an echo chamber. This is you spending your time and energy strategically and safely. You are not a useful activist to anyone if you’re dead. Anyone who is telling you to hurl yourself directly at MAGA assholes like cannon fodder has no understanding of the strategy behind community building, and you should feel comfortable writing them off.

Last point: If you are tired, emotionally devastated, and/or in danger: take a break. This post is for people who would feel better jumping into action, not for people who are too overwhelmed to even think about it right now. You are worth so much even if you’re not actively Doing Activism, and your rest is worth more than “a break period so you can recharge and Do More Activism.” We all deserve the individual dignity of being worthy of comfort, rest & safety just on the basis of being human, outside of whatever we're doing for others' benefit. To deny ourselves that dignity is to devalue ourselves, and that’s the absolute last thing any of us should be doing right now.

[politijohn]

Source

This is pretty cool

[kali-tmblr]

Nobody EVER rocked harder or was more metal than Joe Hill the songwriter and labor activist. He turned the pro-union speeches and pamphlets into witheringly pointed songs that live on to this day, and he inspired many people to take up liberal causes. He was hated by many Establishment types, but especially by the Mormons of Utah. When he was eventually executed on trumped-up charges, he asked that his body be cremated and his ashes divided and sent to union halls in every state -- except of course for Utah, where he wouldn't be caught dead. His wishes were carried out and his ashes were mailed around the country, but one of the envelopes was torn upon by a automated letter-sorting machine and the Post Office realized what they were. They confiscated his ashes and didn't return them until 1988. The remaining ashes have since been scattered at union memorials all over the world.

"Casey Jones" is great, but for caustic social commentary it's hard to beat "The Preacher and the Slave" which gave us the phrase "pie in the sky".

Long-haired preachers come out every night

Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right

But when asked about something to eat

They will answer in voices so sweet

CHORUS:

You will eat, bye and bye

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die (that’s a lie)

And the starvation army they play

And they sing and they clap and they pray

Till they get all your coin on the drum

Then they tell you when you’re on the bum

Holy rollers and jumpers come out

They holler, they jump, and they shout

Give your money to Jesus they say

He will cure all diseases today

If you fight hard for children and wife

Try to get something good in this life

You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell

When you die you will sure go to hell

Workingmen (folk) of all countries unite

Side by side we for freedom will fight

When the world and its wealth we have gained

To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain

LAST CHORUS:

You will eat, bye and bye

When you’ve learned how to cook and to fry

Chop some wood, twill do you good

And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye (that’s no lie)

I love old union songs because it's like this fucking asshole was a scab so we fucking threw him in the river and he broke his spine and when he went to heaven he was scabbing on the angels so they fired him down to heaven and the devil was like you have to work in hell for being a dirty scab

[aroaceofdiamonds]

SAG-AFTRA IS STRIKING AGAIN

This time, for video games.

Some key information:

They are striking so all performers will have protection against AI

The struck companies are those signed to the Interactive Media Agreement

The listed companies by SAG-AFTRA include Activision Productions Inc, Blindlight LLC, Disney Character Voices Inc, Electronic Arts Productions Inc, Formosa Interactive LLC, Insomniac Games Inc, Llama Productions LLC, Take 2 Productions Inc, VoiceWorks Productions Inc and WB Games Inc. Though this may not be everyone.

Important things from the FAQ:

Some games from struck companies are non-struck (due to the Collective Bargaining Agreement still being in effect)

Localisations will be affected if covered under the Interactive Localization Agreement

Actors who are part of SAG-AFTRA cannot work for non-union or independent/low-budged productions during the strike unless they are signed to an Interim Interactive Media Agreement, Interim Interactive Localization Agreement or a Tiered-Budget Independent Interactive Media Agreement

Similarly to the previous strike, struck work cannot be promoted. This includes accepting awards for performances in struck games. This does NOT include hosting/performing a skit at an awards show and San Diego Comic Con (the latter due to the close proximity to the calling of the strike)

As implied by the point above, SAG-AFTRA performers cannot partake in panels related to struck games or companies, including finished games produced by struck companies

The best way to check if a game is struck is to use the search tool provided by SAG-AFTRA

Most importantly: You are NOT being asked to stop playing video games, as highlighted in the FAQ for creators and streamers. This does NOT cross the picket line. Though please do talk about the strike and show your solidarity

I expect to see the same amount of support from y'all that we saw in the last strike. Just because it's video games doesn't mean performers deserve any less support and protection.

Also please reblog with any additions (with sources - we are NOT here to spread misinformation)! And please correct me if anything listed here is incorrect.

SOURCES:

Video Game Strike FAQs | SAG-AFTRA (sagaftra.org)

SAG-AFTRA Members Who Work on Video Games Go on Strike | SAG-AFTRA (sagaftra.org)

[avocadosalad]

[hashtagloveloses]

NEW UNION JUST DROPPED

LET'S GOOOOOOO

[dezlet]

There's a fifth--the MOVE Bombings in Philadelphia

which brings the number of US citizens bombing other US Citizens up to 3/5. (MOVE was a philly based organization a lot like the Black Panthers)

it is absolutely BONKERS to me, the number of people in the united states i have talked to who have never even heard of the battle of blair mountain. how the largest labor uprising in our history manages to skirt by so many leftists unknown is just downright astonishing. the largest labor uprising, and the largest armed uprising, period, since the civil war.

did yall even hear me?

THE LARGEST ARMED UPRISING!! besides the civil!!! fucking!! war!!! was fought in 1921 in the name of LABOR RIGHTS AND UNIONS by TEN THOUSAND RIGHTEOUSLY PISSED, STRIKING COAL MINERS

these absolute fucking LEGENDS marching out the hollers of west virginia, wearing their red bandanas and wielding their papaw's shotguns pointed at the lawmen. waging war against the fucking UNITED. STATES. MILITARY!!! for their right to work safely and be paid fairly!!!

and people just like. don't know about that? put some fucking respect on west virginia!!! and fellow appalachians, yall best just own it when ignorant people call you a fucking redneck cause our ancestors did that shit and they did it for us

[kropotkindersurprise]

July 8, 2024 - Thousands of Samsung workers have declared an indefinite strike in South Korea, demanding better pay and benefits. [video]

[macleod]

UPS has reached an agreement with the Teamsters union to equip its iconic brown delivery trucks with air conditioning for the first time for new units.

The agreement, announced by UPS on Tuesday, comes as the delivery giant and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiate the terms of a new contract for more than 330,000 U.S. employees. (source)

Unions work, unionize.

[dispatchesfromtheclasswar]

LEVEL UP!

[mckitterick]

perhaps it's high time for writers to not just unionize, but also to form publishing cooperatives. self-publishing is a steep project that requires a lot of skills not all writers possess or want to learn, but I know several authors who've joined up with others to share the burden via small, independent press cooperatives

it's time to give Big Publishing a little competition from the creators ourselves. perhaps that'll help address the slow encroachment of "AI" into the creative domain

Harpercollins wants authors to sign away AI training rights

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/18/rights-without-power/#careful-what-you-wish-for

Rights don't give you power. People with power can claim rights. Giving a "right" to someone powerless just transfers it to someone more powerful than them. Nowhere is this more visible than in copyright fights, where creative workers are given new rights that are immediately hoovered up by their bosses.

It's not clear whether copyright gives anyone the right to control whether their work is used to train an AI model. It's very common for people (including high ranking officials in entertainment companies, and practicing lawyers who don't practice IP law) to overestimate their understanding of copyright in general, and their knowledge of fair use in particular.

Here's a hint: any time someone says "X can never be fair use," they are wrong and don't know what they're talking about (same goes for "X is always fair use"). Likewise, anyone who says, "Fair use is assessed solely by considering the 'four factors.'" That is your iron-clad sign that the speaker does not understand fair use:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/27/nuke-first/#ask-questions-never

But let's say for the sake of argument that training a model on someone's work is a copyright violation, and so training is a licensable activity, and AI companies must get permission from rightsholders before they use their copyrighted works to train a model.

Even if that's not how copyright works today, it's how things could work. No one came down off a mountain with two stone tablets bearing the text of 17 USC chiseled in very, very tiny writing. We totally overhauled copyright in 1976, and again in 1998. There've been several smaller alterations since.

We could easily write a new law that requires licensing for AI training, and it's not hard to imagine that happening, given the current confluence of interests among creative workers (who are worried about AI pitchmen's proclaimed intention to destroy their livelihoods) and entertainment companies (who are suing many AI companies).

Creative workers are an essential element of that coalition. Without those workers as moral standard-bearers, it's hard to imagine the cause getting much traction. No one seriously believes that entertainment execs like Warner CEO David Zaslav actually cares about creative works – this is a guy who happily deletes every copy of an unreleased major film that had superb early notices because it would be worth infinitesimally more as a tax-break than as a work of art:

https://collider.com/coyote-vs-acme-david-zaslav-never-seen/

The activists in this coalition commonly call it "anti AI." But is it? Does David Zaslav – or any of the entertainment execs who are suing AI companies – want to prevent gen AI models from being used in the production of their products? No way – these guys love AI. Zaslav and his fellow movie execs held out against screenwriters demanding control over AI in the writers' room for 148 days, and locked out their actors for another 118 days over the use of AI to replace actors. Studio execs forfeited at least $5 billion in a bid to insist on their right to use AI against workers:

https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/12/06/a-deep-dive-into-the-economic-ripples-of-the-hollywood-strike/

Entertainment businesses love the idea of replacing their workers with AI. Now, that doesn't mean that AI can replace workers: just because your boss can be sold an AI to do your job, it doesn't mean that the AI he buys can actually do your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

So if we get the right to refuse to allow our work to be used to train a model, the "anti AI" coalition will fracture. Workers will (broadly) want to exercise that right to prevent AI models from being trained at all, while our bosses will want to exercise that right to be sure that they're paid for AI training, and that they can steer production of the resulting model to maximize the number of workers than can fire after it's done.

Hypothetically, creative workers could simply say to our bosses, "We will not sell you this right to authorize or refuse AI training that Congress just gave us." But our bosses will then say, "Fine, you're fired. We won't hire you for this movie, or record your album, or publish your book."

Given that there are only five major publishers, four major studios, three major labels, two ad-tech companies and one company that controls the whole ebook and audiobook market, a refusal to deal on the part of a small handful of firms effectively dooms you to obscurity.

As Rebecca Giblin and I write in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism, giving more rights to a creative worker who has no bargaining power is like giving your bullied schoolkid more lunch money. No matter how much lunch money you give that kid, the bullies will take it and your kid will remain hungry. To get your kid lunch, you have to clear the bullies away from the gate. You need to make a structural change:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Or, put another way: people with power can claim rights. But giving powerless people more rights doesn't make them powerful – it just transfers those rights to the people they bargain against.

Or, put a third way: "just because you're on their side, it doesn't follow that they're on your side" (h/t Teresa Nielsen Hayden):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

Last month, Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the history of human civilization, started including a copyright notice in its books advising all comers that they would not permit AI training with the material between the covers:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

At the time, people who don't like AI were very excited about this, even though it was – at the utmost – a purely theatrical gesture. After all, if AI training isn't fair use, then you don't need a notice to turn it into a copyright infringement. If AI training is fair use, it remains fair use even if you add some text to the copyright notice.

But far more important was the fact that the less that Penguin Random House pays its authors, the more it can pay its shareholders and executives. PRH didn't say it wouldn't sell the right to train a model to an AI company – they only said that an AI company that wanted to train a model on its books would have to pay PRH first. In other words, just because you're on their side, it doesn't follow that they're on your side.

When I wrote about PRH and its AI warning, I mentioned that I had personally seen one of the big five publishers hold up a book because a creator demanded a clause in their contract saying their work wouldn't be used to train an AI.

There's a good reason you'd want this in your contract; the standard contracting language contains bizarrely overreaching language seeking "rights in all media now know and yet to be devised throughout the universe":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/19/reasonable-agreement/

But the publisher flat-out refused, and the creator fought and fought, and in the end, it became clear that this was a take-it-or-leave-it situation: the publisher would not include a "no AI training" clause in the contract.

One of the big five publishers is Rupert Murdoch's Harpercollins. Murdoch is famously of the opinion that any kind of indexing or archiving of the work he publishes must require a license. He even demanded to be paid to have his newspapers indexed by search engines:

https://www.inquisitr.com/46786/epic-win-news-corp-likely-to-remove-content-from-google

No surprise, then, that Murdoch sued an AI company over training on Newscorp content:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/25/unjust-threat-murdoch-and-artists-align-in-fight-over-ai-content-scraping

But Rupert Murdoch doesn't oppose the material he publishes from being used in AI training, nor is he opposed to the creation and use of models. Murdoch's Harpercollins is now pressuring its authors to sign away their rights to have their works used to train an AI model:

https://bsky.app/profile/kibblesmith.com/post/3laz4ryav3k2w

The deal is not negotiable, and the email demanding that authors opt into it warns that AI might make writers obsolete (remember, even if AI can't do your job, an AI salesman can convince Rupert Murdoch – who is insatiably horny for not paying writers – that an AI is capable of doing your job):

https://www.avclub.com/harpercollins-selling-books-to-ai-language-training

And it's not hard to see why an AI company might want this; after all, if they can lock in an exclusive deal to train a model on Harpercollins' back catalog, their products will exclusively enjoy whatever advantage is to be had in that corpus.

In just a month, we've gone from "publishers won't promise not to train a model on your work" to "publishers are letting an AI company train a model on your work, but will pay you a nonnegotiable pittance for your work." The next step is likely to be, "publishers require you to sign away the right to train a model on your work."

The right to decide who can train a model on your work does you no good unless it comes with the power to exercise that right.

Rather than campaigning for the right to decide who can train a model on our work, we should be campaigning for the power to decide what terms we contract under. The Writers Guild spent 148 days on the picket line, a remarkable show of solidarity.

But the Guild's real achievement was in securing the right to unionize at all – to create a sectoral bargaining unit that could represent all the writers, writing for all the studios. The achievements of our labor forebears, in the teeth of ruthless armed resistance, resulted in the legalization and formalization of unions. Never forget that the unions that exist today were criminal enterprises once upon a time, and the only reason they exist is because people risked prison, violence and murder to organize when doing so was a crime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/11/rip-jane-mcalevey/#organize

The fights were worth fighting. The screenwriters comprehensively won the right to control AI in the writers' room, because they had power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Eva Rinaldi (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rupert_Murdoch_-_Flickr_-_Eva_Rinaldi_Celebrity_and_Live_Music_Photographer.jpg

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

[gingerswagfreckles]

I spoke to my dad who's been on strike a few hours ago, and he said this is absolutely true. The studios were still hoping they could starve out the writers, and didn't expect the general public to be so strongly on the union's side still 5 months in.

He's lived through four WGA strikes, and he says the energy and solidarity he's seen both inside and outside the union has been far beyond what has ever been present before. The internet ate Drew Barrymore alive for scabbing, and within days the studios were back at the negotiating table giving in to almost every demand.

Thanks guys. This really was a team effort ❤️❤️ #eatthefuckingrich

[z34l0t]