Hollywood's Writers' Strike

[Alex]

Originally Posted by innerSpaceman

Um, there are ALWAYS people willing to take any job for less money. That rush to the bottom will leave ALL of us STARVING.

With unskilled labor, perhaps. But not so much with skilled labor. There will always be someone willing to write TV shows for less money than the people who are currently doing it. However, at some point the studios will not be able to find anybody capable of writing TV shows for the money they're offering. And then they'll increase their offer.

That's how the jobs got to be reasonably high paying in the first place. That's why I'm really not a big fan of unions for skilled workers (for unskilled or minimally skilled labor I still see an important role) and is why I essentially said "**** off" the one time I worked somewhere that had talk of organizing project managers (I'm perfectly comfortable negotiating my own wages/benefits/employment on my own efforts and merits).

But, like I said, Hollywood as an entity decided guild unions were the way to go, so this is how the game gets played. If you create a secondary business dependent on the participation of the guild unions, strikes like these have to be part of your business plan as sucky as it may be.