It is difficult to overstate the hostility of the Roberts court to organized labor and the rights of American workers. Under John Roberts, who became chief justice in 2005, the court has made it harder for workers to bring suit against employers collectively, limited the power of workers to hold employers responsible for discrimination on […]
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The News The union that represents more than 160,000 film and television actors voted on Monday night to authorize a strike, two days before it is to begin negotiations on a new labor deal with the Hollywood studios. The result from members of the SAG-AFTRA union, with 98 percent authorizing a strike, was expected, and […]
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The union that represents thousands of movie and television directors reached a tentative agreement with the Hollywood studios on a three-year contract early Sunday morning, a deal that ensures labor peace with one major guild as the writers’ strike enters its sixth week. The Directors Guild of America announced in a statement overnight that it […]
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The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that federal labor law did not protect a union from liability for damage that arose during a strike, and that a state court should resolve questions of liability. The majority found that actions during a strike by a local Teamsters union were not even arguably protected by federal law […]
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None of this is unusual. It’s tragic and infuriating and grievous but it is also very, very normal. Using fine print and loopholes and the tectonic grind of the legal process to cheat working people is as American as a Norman Rockwell painting. And while superficially there might not appear to be a direct connection […]
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At 5 a.m. on a recent weekday, a lone figure paced back and forth outside the main entrance to the Fox Studios lot in Los Angeles. Peter Chiarelli, a screenwriter, was walking the picket line. He held a sign reading “Thank You 399,” a message to the local branch of the Teamsters union, whose members […]
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Martyna Majok, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, was revising her musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” after a long day in a developmental workshop when she heard the news: The union representing striking screenwriters was not going to grant a waiver for the Tony Awards, imperiling this year’s telecast. So at three in the morning, she […]
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More than 150 trainee doctors went on strike Monday morning at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, the first physician strike at a hospital in New York City in more than 30 years. Chief among their grievances is the fact that they are generally paid less working at a public hospital in Queens, where they care […]
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Is there a more familiar sign of corporate dominance than the Amazon delivery van? As recently as four years ago, the blue-gray vehicle with the smiley arrow was a relative novelty among fleets of brown and blue-and-white delivery trucks clogging the streets. Today, the Amazon vans are almost inescapable. Between 2020 and 2022, their numbers […]
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This year’s Tony Awards ceremony, which had been in doubt ever since Hollywood’s screenwriters went on strike earlier this month, will proceed as scheduled in an altered form after the writers’ union said Monday night that it would not picket the show. “As they have stood by us, we stand with our fellow workers on […]
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Why It Matters: It’s Broadway’s biggest marketing moment. Broadway producers and industry leaders say that the annual awards show is a vital marketing tool for the industry, and particularly important to the financial health of new musicals. Broadway shows do not have the outsize marketing budgets of Hollywood films or television series, so they need […]
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Already, the W.G.A. strike has affected one awards show — last weekend’s MTV Movie & TV Awards. The host, Drew Barrymore, dropped out in solidarity with the union and the ceremony turned into a pretaped affair after the W.G.A. said it would picket. On Wednesday, with the prospect of hundreds of demonstrators marching on picket […]
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Those same writers may be able to use A.I. tools productively; the WGA is calling for guardrails, not a ban. And the immediate threat of A.I. to writers’ careers may be overstated, as you know if you’ve ever tried to get ChatGPT to tell you a joke. (It’s a big fan of cornball “Why did […]
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Over the last week, media companies conveyed an air of business as usual. On Thursday, HBO hosted a red carpet premiere for a documentary, while the Fox broadcast network announced a survivalist reality show called “Stars on Mars” hosted by William Shatner. “3 … 2 … 1 … LIFT OFF!” the network’s promotional materials read. […]
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LEONARDO MUNOZ / Getty Images The day’s biggest questions answered by the people who actually know WTF they’re talking about. On Tuesday, more than 11,000 film and TV writers went on strike after contract negotiations between their union, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), and the studios and streamers they work for, represented by the Association of […]
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John Koblin contributed reporting. The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. […]
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So I went to television, both because I loved it and wanted to be around the funniest people possible, but also because the medium offered stability that journalism never did. Unfortunately, soon after I arrived, I realized the stability I had observed was, like starlight, from many, many years in the past. And unfortunately, on […]
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“Radicalized might be too strong of a word, but the studios, by doing that, made people even more unified,” said Tom Szentgyorgi, whose credits range from “The Mentalist” to “NYPD Blue.” First-day enthusiasm notwithstanding, writers will find it no small task in coming weeks to block a production apparatus that, in the Los Angeles area […]
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Perhaps the worst part of it all is that, despite the right’s perennial wailing, CNN is not in fact a meaningfully left-leaning network. Sure, like other mainstream big-box outlets, it has a liberal tilt. But there ought not be the illusion that the network has served as some bastion for the broader left base—workers, young […]
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Hollywood’s 15 years of labor peace shattered Monday night, as movie and television writers said they would go on strike, bringing many productions to a halt and dealing a blow to an industry that has been rocked in recent years by the pandemic and sweeping technological shifts. The unions representing the writers said in a statement […]
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When the most recent Hollywood strike took place — 16 years ago — the internet had not yet transformed the television and movie businesses. Broadcast networks still commanded colossal audiences, and cable channels were still growing. The superhero boom had begun for movie studios, and DVDs generated $16 billion in annual sales. Since then, galloping technological […]
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When the union representing Hollywood writers laid out its list of objectives for contract negotiations with studios this spring, it included familiar language on compensation, which the writers say has either stagnated or dropped amid an explosion of new shows. But far down, the document added a distinctly 2023 twist. Under a section titled “Professional […]
Read More When the union representing Hollywood writers laid out its list of objectives for contract negotiations with studios this spring, it included familiar language on compensation, which the writers say has either stagnated or dropped amid an explosion of new shows. But far down, the document added a distinctly 2023 twist. Under a section titled “Professional […]
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A frequent knock on the A.F.T. is that it puts teachers before students, a framing neatly encapsulated by a quote attributed to the union’s former president Al Shanker: “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Shanker’s biographer, Richard Kahlenberg, found no record of Shanker’s ever saying this […]
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Writers scrambling to finish scripts. Rival late-night-show hosts and producers convening group calls to discuss contingency plans. Union officials and screenwriters gathering in conference rooms to design picket signs with slogans like “The Future of Writing Is at Stake!” With a Hollywood strike looming, there has been a frantic sprint throughout the entertainment world before […]
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Hollywood is getting ever closer to a shutdown. The unions representing thousands of television and movie writers said on Monday that they had overwhelming support for a strike, giving union leaders the right to call for a walkout when the writers’ contract with the major Hollywood studios expires on May 1. The unions, which are […]
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President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to increase the legal retirement age in France got constitutional approval on Friday, clearing the way for the measure to be gradually introduced in the fall but doing little to quell the seething popular anger against it. In a highly awaited ruling, France’s Constitutional Council, which reviews legislation to ensure it […]
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Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched across France on Thursday on the eve of a crucial ruling over President Emmanuel Macron’s decision to raise the legal age of retirement to 64, from 62, a step that could pave the way for the measure’s final implementation, even if it does little to dispel persistent popular opposition. […]
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As Israel’s protest movement raged from January deep into March, sending tens of thousands of furious citizens to the streets against a plan to overhaul the courts, it seemed clear that something would have to give. But for much of that time, it didn’t seem like that something would be Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The […]
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Israel is in the throes of a grave political crisis that ballooned in recent days to envelop crucial components of society — the military, universities and trade unions — and has caused strains with Israel’s foreign allies, chief among them the United States. For weeks, protesters have taken to the streets to oppose the government’s […]
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The president of Temple University in Philadelphia resigned on Tuesday after a brief and tumultuous tenure plagued by worsening crime around campus, a strike by graduate students and a loss of confidence in his leadership among some faculty. Jason Wingard, who became the university’s first Black president in 2021, sent a statement to the campus […]
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