Hard Ball and the Award Shows

I miss the Golden Globes. The fans miss seeing their favorite stars win awards for their favorite movies and tv shows. The Writers' Guild Awards have also been downgraded to a news event. All the writers who were nominated deserve their moment in the spotlight. And the Academy Awards... That's threatened too. Added to all the economic difficulties created by the strike, why not just let the awards be a bright spot and let us enjoy all of their pomp and circumstance?

Because we have to play hard ball. We have to do that because the corporations are difficult employers. But more importantly, we have to play a tough-minded game because our industry suffers from a structural imbalance.

In most industries, labor gets to negotiate with a single voice. The individual corporations aren't allowed to collude. In the entertainment business, the opposite is true. The studios speak as one, while the directors, actors, writers, teamsters, and craft unions have been segregated into competing entities.

What's more, the contracts for the different unions don't come up for renewal at the same time. The media congloms won't allow their workers that kind of power. If writers are on strike, everyone else can keep working so the studios can continue on with their businesses, albeit with inconveniences.

Imagine what would happen if all the contracts came up at the same time. Perhaps then we'd have a 7 hour strike the way the auto industry did last year.

But back to reality.

In Hollywood, labor doesn't have that kind of structural power, and the calendar is our enemy. Which brings me back to the Golden Globes and Academy Awards. Nobody wants to take the award shows off the air. Just as nobody wants to make life more difficult for the talk show hosts. For that matter, nobody wants to create economic hardship by striking. But if the corporations propose an unreasonable deal and they won't negotiate with any sincerity, there are only two choices: accept what they offer or take actions that cause them economic pain. That's all they understand, the bottom line.

If we don't like the deal they're offering, we have to play hard ball. The challenge is to do so in a way that is in keeping with our values and keeps public opinion on our side. If we won't allow waivers for these shows, we have to explain why. We can never lose sight of the public's strong support for the strike. We can't be indifferent to the consequences of our struggle. We can't be emotional or capricious. We need to make well-calculated tactical moves. We have to play smart hard ball.