RAT article on SAG strike

From: Pacific News Service <pacificnews@pacificnews.org>
Subject: [LAAMN-LOCAL] Labor Renaissance In L.A.
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http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/6.09/000508-lalabor.html

Pacific News Service

Jinn Magazine

May 8, 2000

Los Angeles brings to mind mansions, movies, riots,
megadeals, stars -- not, usually, labor militant and
triumphant. Yet in recent weeks two unions representing the
lower end of the employment scale have won signal victories,
and members of a third union, who can rank among the
country's highest paid workers when they get work, look like
they're ready to pick up the signs and march, too. PNS
commentator Kathleen Sharp is an award-winning business
journalist from Los Angeles.

Labor Renaissance In L.A. Portends A Long, Hot Summer

By Kathleen Sharp

LOS ANGELES -- This city, often derided as fragmented and
isolated, is suddenly a bastion of union solidarity.

First sign of a labor renaissance was the massive janitors'
strike -- some 3,000 members of the Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) Local 1877 carrying mops and
brooms across the city's skyscraper-lined canyons.

What was surprising was the pin-striped executives raising
their pale fists in brotherly salute on their way to
Dilbert-like jobs.

Indeed, it was hard not to cheer on the janitors, who only
wanted a $1 an hour more to lift their $7-an-hour wages
above subsistence level -- especially since they scrub
floors for some of the country's biggest property owners.

In the end, janitors got 70 cents an hour downtown (30 cents
for those in less unionized spots), plus 60 cents each year
for two years, and a $500 bonus. Top base wage will be $9.30
an hour -- the biggest gain in 20 years. The janitors'
success inspired sister unions in Silicon Valley, Seattle,
Cleveland and Chicago and other cities.

Three days later, although it was hardly noted, another
group of low-wage workers scored a victory -- Hotel
Employees and Restaurant Employees (HERE) Local 11 struck a
deal with a large concessionaire at the spanking new Staples
Center downtown.

This involved some 450 food-stand attendants -- paid $8.57
an hour for a four-hour shift, less than $35 a day, with no

increments to $12.50 over the next four years as well as
health insurance, paid vacations, and pension contributions.

Ogden had been dragging its feet for weeks -- until Democrat
Party leaders, thinking ahead to this summer's Democratic
National Convention at the Staples Center, pressured the
company to settle.

Clearly, money and institutional heft no longer guarantee an
automatic victory. These two unions scored because of a
blossoming self-awareness of their raw muscle and enormous
mass.

Immigrant labor has always been the target of exploitation.
In Los Angeles, however, it may be that the perennial
sunshine casts a particularly harsh light on the growing
economic imbalance -- it's hard not to notice the mansions
in the hills have grown larger while the working poor work
longer.

Yet this sea change extends beyond color or race. The
strikers on the west side of town -- about 1,500 members of
the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of

Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) -- are mostly white. On
May 1, they flooded Wilshire Boulevard with demands for
better pay.

SAG wants a share of the money now flowing from foreign TV
and cable TV commercials. In the early 1980s, SAG agreed to
accept a flat rate, roughly $1,000, for a cable commercial
that played often over the course of 13 weeks. With network
TV commercials, actors earned on a pay-per-use formula -- an
ad airing a few times a day on network TV can net an actor
$40,000 over 13 weeks.

When SAG negotiated these terms, 90 percent of US TV viewers
watched network TV, but cable now accounts for nearly half
the viewing audience. It's also awash in advertising dollars
--$2.3 billion in the first three months of this year,
nearly double the 1997 level, and projected to reach an
astounding $9.7 billion this year.

Actors want a percentage but advertisers have not budged.
They've offered a 60-percent raise -- and want to use a flat
rate on network TV as well. In addition, there are the
woolly questions raised by the Internet. Negotiations
between the actors and admen have stalled since late April
and federal mediators can't seem to bring the two sides
together.

Clearly, it's going to be a long, hot summer in this city.
Other Hollywood union contracts expire over the next 12
months, and issues of pay equity are at the top of every
union's list. Rank-and-file workers are growing angry over
the disparity between stars -- some now routinely getting
$20 million per picture -- and behind-the-camera talent.

Meanwhile, worker bees find fewer jobs as studios and
producers shoot in Canada, Australia and Europe, which offer
tax incentives and lower labor costs. In 1998, producers
took $10 billion from the U.S., according to a study
sponsored by SAG and the well-heeled Directors Guild of
America -- and most of that came out of the pockets of
make-up artists, set-builders, lighting technicians.

As one propmaker said, "The producers are making more and
more money every year and they're cutting out the small
guy."

And that may be the story behind L.A.'s unrest. In an era of
unprecedented national wealth, when the list of millionaires
would burst out of a broom closet, when stock indexes climb
higher than stadium stairs, people in one of the world's
richest regions are paid stagnant, if not shrinking,
dollars.

It's gotten so that the burly Teamsters refuse to cross SAG
picket lines, school teachers are rising up for better wages
as are metro bus drivers, hotel maids, and bellmen. No
matter their ethnicity or industry sector, the message is
steady and clear -- those that have must begin to share.

--

Pacific News Service, 660 Market Street, Room 210,
San Francisco, CA 94104, tel: (415) 438-4755.
Jinn Magazine: <http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/>
Email: <pacificnews@pacificnews.org>

Copyright (c) 2000 Pacific News Service. All Rights Reserved.

Please do not reprint our stories without our permission.
This article is available for reprint. For rates and
information, call (415) 438-4755 or e-mail
<pacificnews@pacificnews.org>

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