SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America West are among more than 20 labor organizations lobbying for passage of a bill pending in the California legislature that would make striking workers in t…
SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America West are among more than 20 labor organizations lobbying for passage of a bill pending in the California legislature that would make striking workers in t…
Isn’t it the union’s job to have a fund for that? It’s been a long strike, but it’s been 15 years since the last writers strike, surely they amassed a good war chest for the strike.
Strikes are historically short affairs and even then historically your strike fund contributions aren’t as high as 1/15th of your pay. That’s closer to the whole of your union dues (UAW was iirc an hour and a half a month when I was in it for everything). Union dues aren’t just strike fund, it’s wages for leadership too. Your leadership members work so many hours for the boss but another so many hours for the union and their pay is split between the two.
Then it’s unlikely that your strike fund is in a serious investment holding account. Those require you to hold your money in them for a certain amount of time or they’re volatile. You need to be ready to strike at a moment’s notice because the boss can fuck you over that fast. The point of this is to say that it’s unlikely it’s keeping up with inflation much less the rising rents of California and New York.
In an industrial union for example it’s unheard of to strike for that long because both sides are burning money during a strike. The difference is that here it’s tech companies who have an ideological opposition to unions and are willing to burn money left and right to not negotiate fairly with labor.
That’s a lot of words absolving union leadership of mismanagement. You can easily diversify accounts, you don’t need 100% of a strike fund in aggressive growth stocks or a savings account, you can have the majority in funds it takes a few weeks to convert to cash. This covers the incredibly rare surprise strike. A healthy strike fund is itself a weapon in a strike.
It’s not like the union should be surprised it’s taking a while, the last strike was also over 100 days. It also has nothing to do with tech companies willing to burn money. Long strikes for the entertainment industry are largely due to the production companies having completed products to make income for the first few months. Union leaders should understand the business they represent and act accordingly, the same rules won’t work for a steel mill and a movie producer.