If you are going to call people out for not using their name doesn’t it behest you to provide your name as well. Otherwise isn’t it hypocrisy. I once again, against everything that I have learned from those such as you, go out on the limb once again and use my name. And to what end? You do not have the spine to do the same. Don’t call people out, lest you can meet the standards you set.

Who is pontificating from the moral cheap seats now? Apparently you have a fine view. Please don’t focus your binocs on my butt. I have been working hard on it, but I really love those McDonalds Swiss Angus Burgers…

I made a poor attempt at humor to make my position known. But, alas, I think that my statements were misconstrued. I am not asking for another list. I am not asking for more flogging.

I have no interest in any additional lists or blacklisting. No matter how severe the infraction. I want this chapter closed and to move forward within a WGA whose leadership is fair and open. Who handles situations with responsibility and care. The strike is over. Let it, and all its foul moments, STAY over.

Let’s get back to making great television and films and free ourselves from the bitterness of a difficult time - that if we do not step as far away from as possible from the bitter feelings it seeded in so many, will taint our work, our persons, and our souls. If we can not rise above this, then the strike was the greatest waste of all time and have taken a toll that is far more damaging than a bank statement. The victory was mediocre at best, to waste what energy and momentum that is left on a witch hunt would be a travesty.

Forget the fi-cores, forget the scabs. Forget revenge. Don’t lose yourself in that quagmire. Just write. And write well. That should be the only goal. And what a great goal that is.

respectfully,
Xena

Like you, I respect the well-articulated opinions of others even if I disagree with them. And speaking of which, I believe you are incorrect about one point in your last post. You wrote that there were other violations of strike rules but the leadership chose only to name the fi-core names. I’m assuming you mean scabs.

Those names _will_ be made public when the scabs’ cases have been formally adjudicated. But it would be wildly inappropriate to announce who is merely being investigated, because the accusations may turn out to be baseless.

The way it’s been explained to me is the Strike Rules Compliance Committee or whatever it’s called has preliminarily investigated and found that there was enough evidence to look into certain alleged infractions further. Kind of like an indictment. At some point, and this may be going on now, I don’t know, there will be a procedure — jury of one’s peers, the whole nine — to decide once and for all if the people did scab. A verdict.

It would be seriously irresponsible for the Guild to reveal the names of alleged scabs before the process is finished — because they may not be “found guilty” in the end.

But when the process is over, the names of scabs will be revealed. And I hope that news sends a cold shudder through the bowels of every person who scabbed.

And I agree with you, it’s a lot more important to reveal scabs’ names — people who actually broke primary rules as well as acted unethically — than it is to reveal fi-core people’s names.

I deserve to know who let me and my 10,000 fellow writers down during the strike. I don’t ever want to work for or hire those cretins.

And we all know that there were other (and many) violations of various caliber that occurred during the strike, and that leadership was aware of many of them but chose to turn a blind eye, then after the strike named only those who went fi-core as the offenders. Should we all now compile lists of all the people we know of that worked on or secretly completed assignments during the strike and submit them to the WGA and publish those names as well? It wouldn’t matter - It would never happen. Because the WGA just wouldn’t have the balls to mess with many of those members.

As far as having an impact on the strike, the writers who allowed/contributed to stockpiling alone hurt significantly more than those “puny few.” And it was more self-serving and duplicitous. But I never want to see that list, either.

All said and done, I respect that you stand up for what you believe in, even if we don’t remotely share the same beliefs.

Your hate for the writers that chose to go fi-core is either blinding your objectivity in this matter or you simply don’t have any good sense. If so many members object to this letter being written on their behalf, IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN THE BEST INTEREST OF ALL GUILD MEMBERS (even if you dont consider fi-core as members - which legally they are). Furthermore, do you not see the huge potential for lawsuits??? Defending lawsuits with WGA dues for a completely unecessary and irresponsible action is NOT IN ALL MEMBERS BEST INTEREST. Even if a single lawsuit is never filed, it is hugley irresponsible of leadership to subject the entire membership to the potential liability when it was compleetly unecessary.

(and please stop suggesteing the leadership would be hiding anything by not sending this letter. the names were already available, and as i suggested if they felt it so important they could have posted the names without the letter (which is the real problem - not the naming of names). and since you are so set on providing membership with all the information… why didnt the leadership make the names available as soon as writers went fi-core? why did they “hide” the information from you until now???

“…ask yourself this: Did the leadership handle this issue effectively and responsibly and in the best interest of ALL its members including you?”

Effectively? Evidently not, given some people’s reaction to the tone of the email. Responsibly? Absolutely. To engage in a cover-up of these names would have been typical Hollywood, business-as-usual, the powerful people skate. (A lot of these fi-core people are head writers and showrunners, remember.) Instead, the leadership took the tougher stand – of revealing information and letting the chips fall where they may. And obviously a bunch of chips are being flung back in their faces, so I guess the system works!

In the best interests of all members? Yes. In my opinion, it is in the best interests of all members to have this information. Despise the fi-core people or defend them, information is good. Hiding information is bad.

And as discussed above in my post to Intrigued, fi-core people are no longer Guild members, having formally objected to membership. They have employment rights under the MBA, not membership rights. So the Guild had no responsibility to protect them or cover up for them. The responsibility lay in informing the actual membership as fully as possible of pertinent facts, and they did that.

“The guild is responsible for protecting ALL members, not only did the email grossly fail to protect a group of members it intentionally singaled [sic] them out and suggested that certain members take negative actions against other members.”

For the record, financial core status people are not members of the WGA. They have explicitly objected to membership and are “’Financial Core’ Status non-members.” See the WGA, west Non-Member “Financial Core” Status Policy Statement dated Jan. 1, 1999, ss. 2.1 and 4.1 (www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/who_we_are/fc_policy.doc). They have employment rights under the MBA, not membership rights.

In my opinion, the WGA did protect all its members by letting us know the facts. It just didn’t protect those few who abjured membership. Nor should it have.

And we’re just never going to agree about the tone of the email. I thought it was entirely appropriate; obviously a lot of people disagree.

Obviously, that’s unfortunate if the soaps are indeed blocking staffers who struck from returning to their jobs, and the Guild can and should take action about that.There is language in the deal that prohibited that kind of retaliation, so if this is happening, I’m sure Tony Segall is on top of it.

But I have no idea why you think that that means it’s a good idea for the Guild to encourage a witch-hunt of the writers who went fi-core. How does publishing the list of names help the writers who were fired get their jobs back?

Nobody should have been put in the position to “feel sorry for the fi-core people.” But that’s where a lot of people find themselves at this point. That’s the situation the guild created itself by its own actions. The letter had more than a “tone.” The letter was a threat to the writers who went fi-core and any writer considering it in the future. It was an “agree with us or else” tactic. And I know a lot of soap writers, and most got their jobs back. I don’t know what your description of “many” is.

I do think that it’s 100 percent wrong that ANY writer that went on strike didn’t get their job back or that the fi-core writers got any preference. But this is a bigger issue. This is an issue of responsible leadership. And that letter was terribly irresponsible. As you mentioned in an earlier post, a lot of the writers who went fi-core were already disclosed. The guild issuing an email with a blatant threat attached to the list of names was just plain wrong. On many levels. And what are the “important facts” that the guild had kept from its membership? That it condones blacklisting and enjoys the use of petty adjectives?

Put aside the issue of whether you agree with the decision to go fi-core, I know that it’s difficult to do in a post strike situation when so many suffered - but put that aside and just ask yourself this: Did the leadership handle this issue effectively and responsibly and in the best interest of ALL its members including you? No. It did not. It opened the guild up to labor actions and lawsuits and took a huge public smear. It re-opened the wounds that were beginning to heal after the strike. It shed a horrible light on Verrone and Winship, which trickles down to all guild members. And if that letter was intended to increase a positive feeling of solidarity within the guild it failed miserably. And finally, if the guild had taken the issues of soap writers more seriously pre-strike, I’m willing to bet the fall-out wouldn’t have happened to begin with but they were hung out to dry before the strike, and now after the strike.

I think you completely miss the point. I think you are confusing people’s disdain for the WGA leadership’s actions with feeling sorry for the fi-core writers. You are correct that people can take issue with the tone of the email, it was unprofessional at best and illegal at worst and totally unecessary. The guild is responsible for protecting ALL members, not only did the email grossly fail to protect a group of members it intentionally singaled them out and suggested that certain members take negative actions against other members. If leadership found it necessary to name names, it would have been a much better course of action to post a list of fi-core members on its website without the letter directing members how to respond to those writers. But as the letter states there were a “puny few”, why bother at all? By definition, puny would suggest that those few writers that went fi-core are not worth discussing. If those writers warranted a formal 5 paragaph letter and the time draft and distribute it from the guild’s leadership, maybe they should have called them the “significant” few. It was just simply a bad idea for the guild’s leadership to do something like this, now if the letter were to come from a “regular” member and not union leadership it would have been a different situation.

Everybody still feel bad for the poor fi-core people?

Look, one can take issue with the tone of the WGA email — and obviously it struck a bad note with many people — but if the Guild had chosen to cover up those fi-core names and keep important facts from its own membership, that would have been a much shittier thing to do.

1) It was posted on the WGA’s public website!
2) Once the WGA issued the email to members’ personal email addresses it became “public” as a legal matter. Legally for an email to considered private and/or property of an entity the email cannot be distributed to outside sources. (i.e any sent to address that doesn’t end in @wga.org is legally considered public distribution)

But legally, whether the email was intended to be made public is irrelevant. If this letter were never made public, it is the action of leadership to encourage members of the union to treat other members of the union as 2nd class citizens which is the only legal issue. Did they have a legal right to do it?

Having used my name on this board, I understand why a lot of people don’t. Things can get pretty vicious. I took a lot of shit on this site during the strike. And do you know why? Because I urged people to use their names to show the strength of their statements/resolve and lack of fear of the AMPTP. I thought I was being pro-writer. I was trying to be. It ended up using your name made you the target of WRITERS. I got my feelings over it then wrote some silly, emotional posts to defend myself that I now find embarrassing.

p.s., what does the “C” stand for?

What the WGA leadership did was to protect the integrity of the guild during a strike action. The ghost of Jimmy Hoffa is applauding the WGA leadership for having the balls to stand up for something and risk a public beating on behalf of UNION WORKERS!

The NLRB is a joke when it comes to actions taken by a guild during a strike. They know in the heat of battle things happen.

The NLRB really only governs over faulty elections so they will not be encourage to pursuit this case on behalf of the AMPTP. If they did do such an asinine thing as to fine the WGA leadership for the letter and outing the names it would only play into the hands of the AMPTP. The AMPTP has everything to gain if they can convince the SAG members to go Fi-Core as leverage to not pay any DVD increases. Trust me my brothers and sister that is the true intent behind the AMPTP actions.

Today, I paid my SAG dues so I am in good standing with all three of my unions - WGA, AFTRA & SAG.

Tomorrow I’m working on NCIS and will enjoy my catered lunch just like the rest of my fellow SAG actors.

Long live UNIONS!

Fuck off SCABS!

Comment by Anonymous — April 22, 2008 @ 11:29 pm

Speakling of naming names… glad to see you feel so strongly about this that you refused to put your name on it. How’s the pontificating from the moral cheap seats?