Couldnât get the link to the side-by-side of the WGA offer, the AMPTP counter offer from May, and the final deal, because itâs a document to download and too many pictures to take for this post that probably wouldnât be legible, but itâs in this tweet (click the link below the tweet to go to said tweet):
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Donât forget,the fight isnât over for SAG-AFTRA and next year, contracts are up again for IATSE, including The Animation Guild.
If youâre a fan of movies, film, and animation, keep helping the guilds fight the good fight!
Also, please support the other unions that are out their now fighting their own fights including Amazon workers, Local 11 in LA, and Flight Attendants!
And of course, big thanks to strike hero Drew Carey for paying for probably THOUSANDS of meals for striking writers in LA these past five months.
Congratulations WGA and Pre-WGA for your amazing wins with this contract!
Standing on the picket line is a cute gesture, but letâs not forget how he prohibited the rail workers from striking for safe minimum staffing and the ability to take sick days.
Also, this âcute gestureâ is something no US President has done.
Fuck off with yourself now.
Obligatory Biden not perfect disclaimer blah blah blah (do you people still expect to get perfect politicians??? apparently I guess)
But.
Going to a picket line is actually a huge deal. There is a reason no other president has done it.
Brief explainer:
A picket is not a protest. They have different goals and they are viewed differently under the law. A protest is meant to disrupt and to draw attention to an issue. A picket is meant to stop scabs from entering a workplace to replace the workers picketing outside.
This means that, historically, pickets were often very violent. When people in the 1920s wanted to stop you from entering a factory, they did not confine their tactics to angry yelling. This is why the courts treat pickets differently, and they do not enjoy the kind of broad free speech protections that protests have.
Biden standing on a picket line is huge in a number of ways. Itâs a statement by a sitting president that no one should go to work at that workplace, for one, which kind of wild in and of itself when you think of it. Who the fuck is gonna scab when you have to walk past a picket line that includes the fucking president.
Itâs also granting a kind of implicit sanction to picketing as an activity that it has never historically gotten. Picketing is one of those things that even the FDR administration was a little wary of. The law tends to approach it as something that is techhhhhnically allowed and we canât stop youâŠbut itâs something that needs to be reined in, controlled, corralled.
And like, is this the most radical thing a president has ever done? No. Is it going to magically fix everything related to organized labor? Absolutely not. Is Biden the most pro-union president ever? No again because FDR existed. But he is the most pro-union president of my lifetime.
And as someone who knows a lot of labor history, having a sitting president on a picket line is honestly kind of breaking my brain a little.
Other things that the Biden administration is doing or has facilitated (by getting non corporate hacks into critical positions for example) which are not getting talked about:
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