Posts tagged Pandemic
As Musicians Start Talks With Studios, Hollywood Labor Leaders Lend Support In Picket
January 22, 2024 // The program - which featured music performed by AFM brass musicians and speeches from labor leaders including Teamsters Local 399 secretary-treasurer Lindsay Dougherty, Writers Guild of America West vice president Michele Mulroney and L.A. County Federation of Labor president Yvonne Wheeler - took place hours before the AFM was scheduled to begin negotiations over new Basic Theatrical Motion Picture and Basic Television Motion Picture contracts with the AMPTP in an office just steps away.
Strikes Drop LA Film/TV Production to Near Record Lows
January 22, 2024 // Feature film production also dropped steeply last quarter, with a 57.5% decrease to 323 SD. Most Feature projects in production this summer were smaller, independent productions, among a few moving forward under SAG-AFTRA interim agreements. Three independent Features in production last quarter were associated with the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program; the films Hurricana, Shell and Starstruck together generated a total of 28 SD. Unaffected by the strikes but trending lower due to runway production, filming for web and television Commercials slipped last quarter with a 9.9% YoY drop to 746 SD. Commercials made in LA included automobile ads for BMW, Chevy, Honda, Lincoln, Nissan and Toyota. Retailers such as Best Buy, Walmart and Walgreens also shot spots locally.
VIRGINIA: Fairfax County’s teachers unions fail students. Commentary
January 19, 2024 // But all hope is not lost, even in the face of chronic absenteeism and declining standards in public education. In 2023, 20 states expanded K-12 educational choice options for America’s children and families. If public funds followed children instead of failing institutions during the pandemic, families with fewer resources also could have homeschooled or taken their children to one of the many private schools that didn’t shut their doors on the orders of teachers unions. Just as they are across much of the nation, here in Fairfax County, teachers unions are a substantial obstacle to quality public education — and school choice is the solution.
Opinion: Biden’s Labor Nominee ‘Embodies the Spirit of California,’ and That’s the Problem
January 18, 2024 // If approved, Su won’t be the only half-baked Californian in the Biden White House. Vice President Kamala Harris is (per National Review’s Charlie Cooke) “talented enough to make the inanities uttered by her rival Pete Buttigieg sound substantive, concise, and apprehensible.” Economist David Bahnsen calls California’s Janet Yellen “a career bureaucrat, albeit a hyper-intelligent one, who has spent an adult life devoid of accountability for poor decisions and even poorer ideas.” California’s Xavier Becerra knew nothing about health or human services until Biden made him head of Health and Human Services; during Covid, he did nothing, which, given his résumé, might have been for the best. Becerra’s fathomless ignorance is almost a prerequisite for this administration, where experience might mean owning your failures. The first White House gig of Californian Alejandro Mayorkas, now secretary of homeland security, as Obama’s director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services involved running interference for a scandal-plagued electric-car company run by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham and Terry McAuliffe, cochairman of President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, and chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. I needn’t go on — or should I mention that Biden’s deputy secretary of education is a former San Diego teachers’-union official whose concern for union power exceeds any attachment to student performance? While she was Governor Gavin Newsom’s secretary of labor, Su oversaw the implementation of bad policy and the mismanagement of simple procedures. Any one of her major catastrophes would have been career-enders elsewhere; in California, where the failure of progressive policy is invariably a prompt for more progressive policy, she was instead excused — and then promoted into the Biden
Commentary: Biden’s Independent-Contracting Rule Destroys Worker Independence
January 16, 2024 // A recent regulatory change by the Biden administration is so poorly designed, there’s no telling exactly how many workers will be hurt.
2024 strikes predicted to be less disruptive; but layoffs and unionization continue
January 5, 2024 // US workers will not be exerting the same sort of pay pressures on employers as they did in 2023, with opportunities to strike being much reduced. After a bumper 2023 of strike activity, it claims the bargaining schedule for 2024 does not appear to be facing as many battles ahead.
Unionised employees at Barnes & Noble flagship store stage walk out over economic concerns
January 4, 2024 // According to the union, the employees were protesting "the company’s failure to return on economic portions of the contract amid their highest sales season". They were joined by other union and community members, who supported their walkout "demanding the company bargain in good faith". The majority (97%) of workers at the flagship store voted to join the union on 7th June 2023, and there are now five unionised Barnes & Noble stores across the US, as well as one Barnes & Noble College Booksellers store.
Commentary: Teachers strikes cost students weeks of school in 2023
January 3, 2024 // Betsy DeVos said that the strike-induced school closures "are continuing to exacerbate a problem [the unions] created by the extended lockdowns and shutdowns during COVID." "They're doing it at the expense of the kids they are supposed to be serving," she said. "The unions continue to try to amass more and more political power and extort taxpayers for more and more money and continue to promote a very leftist ideology across the board." DeVos said that lost learning due to missed school days is "devastating for kids [and] families" and noted that closing schools creates difficulties for families beyond the missed time in the classroom. "For those people who have jobs to go to on a daily basis, [they] now have to scramble to try to figure out what to do with the children that are left at home because their schools aren't opening to serve them," she said. "These unions continue to really whipsaw the people around who are supposed to be their customers; they're supposed to be the people they're serving. And yet there's no regard for the impacts on them.
Senate left without voting to confirm Julie Su as labor secretary. She’ll stay on the job though.
December 26, 2023 // “We are going to be very clear — Julie Su will be renominated (as) Secretary of Labor in the new year. That is something that we are committed to,” said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre. Sen. Bill Cassidy, top Republican on the committee that would first have to approve the nomination, remained opposed to Su as secretary. Democrats have a committee majority, and control 51 Senate votes, but have been unable to get enough votes to formally confirm Su. Cassidy, R-La., said in a statement last week that “We need a qualified Secretary of Labor who can impartially enforce the law, properly manage a department, and refrain from partisan activism. Ms. Su failed to show her ability to do any of those three thing “It is clear Ms. Su lacks the necessary votes for confirmation. I urge President Biden to put forward a nominee who is committed to fair enforcement of our nation’s labor laws and is capable of being confirmed in the Senate.”
NYC Commercial Building Workers Authorize Strike
December 22, 2023 // The board is asking workers to kick in on health insurance premiums — a nonstarter according to the union. 32BJ has a self-funded health plan and has worked to keep health insurance costs down. Its members are among the minority of American workers that do not bear any of the cost of their insurance premiums. The board is also proposing a lower pay rate for new hires and other changes it refers to as “enhanced flexibility.” But 32BJ leaders disparage this idea, saying it’s akin to the two-tier wage system auto industry workers overturned this fall.