What happened to all that “writer solidarity” and such? Guess all that strongarming isn’t turning out so well…

An unfair labor practices complaint filed against Hollywood studios is a bid to force them back to the negotiating table with striking writers, guild leaders said.

But a studio alliance responded with disdain to the claim it illegally broke off talks, as alleged in Thursday’s filing by the Writers Guild of America with the National Labor Relations Board.

The “baseless, desperate NLRB complaint is just the latest indication that the WGA’s negotiating strategy has achieved nothing for working writers,” the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said in a statement.

Negotiations in the six-week strike collapsed Dec. 7 when the alliance refused to bargain further unless the union dropped proposals that included the authority to unionize writers on reality shows and animation projects.

The labor board did not immediately return a call to its Los Angeles office.

I have no dog in this fight either way, but the fact that they’re trying to get the NLRB involved, in my mind, means they’re weakening. They didn’t have much of an argument to begin with and this strikes me as the last desperate moves of a union dying to prove it’s still relevant to its members.

And, while the union postures and postures and postures, writers are still out of work. Five bucks says that the folks in charge of the union, however, are still getting paid, which is the problem with unions to begin with. They exist solely for the preservation of themselves. Anything additional is a happy little bonus.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Ironic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.