/* fivel rothberg */

Members of the Writers Guild of America went on strike.  Pickets lines were held in the two entertainment capitols, NYC and LA.   Protesting members on the news talked about getting the money they deserve from the major broadcasters who essentially use their material for free online.   They’d also like to get a larger cut of DVD sales.  While I can see the logic behind their arguments, I still do not feel especially sympathetic toward them.  Literally, (no pun intended) all of the writers a saw on the picket lines were white.  And, I can’t imagine that these folks are hurting for money like so many other non-unionized and unionized workers out there.  At the same time my instinct tells me to support union efforts.  Yet that I am now questioning if that is the most sensible stance to take.

On Saturday, November 10th, members of Local One, the Broadway Stagehands went on strike.  That makes two significant simultaneous strikes in NYC’s entertainment world.  Again, a vast majority of the Local One Stagehands are white.  In this case they may be working class, yet I have a feeling that it is a fairly closed shop, so to speak.  Every time I’ve passed by the theatre district and watch stagehands run around they have all been white males.

Coincidence? I doubt it.

Where were these union members when the Taxi Workers Alliance went on strike against the City’s unfair, forced GPS and credit card installments into their cabs???  It gets me really pissed that these workers want others to by sympathetic to their cause when they’ve done jack shit for their fellow unions. Think about what those Hollywood writers do.  They’re the ones who write a great deal of the asinine, racist material that graces our TV screens.  They write the crap soap operas, late night comedies and über racist programs like Anderson Cooper 360.*

Meanwhile, cabbies live off of $60 a day or less.  Straight-up poverty wages, especially in this expensive city.  They have to work 12 hour shifts just to make sure they earn back the money they have to spend for the cab rental and gasoline.  On top of that many cabbies work 6 or 7 days a week to stay afloat.   A vast majority of them do not have health insurance for themselves or their families.   Then, the city forces cabbies to have faulty GPS and credit card systems in their vehicles which makes their jobs harder, not easier like the TLC and Mayor Bloomberg would like us to think.

So, where was Local One when the cabbies went on strike?  What were members of the WGA writing about cabbies when they were striking?  Were they making fun of taxi drivers who don’t look or talk like them?

Guess I’ll see if I can get a refund for those Les Mis tickets.   ; – p

*Does anyone else remember a giant billboard on the west side highway that showed a very white Anderson Cooper leading some very black men.  he looked like a journalistic version of Indiana Jones.