Writers' Strike

Seems like sort of an ironic title, don't you think? We had an interesting discussion in class yesterday about the Hollywood writers strike and the Broadway stagehands strike as well. I'm firmly on the side of the union here, at least in the writers strike. It seems like there's plenty of money to go around here, but residual payments are what level the income streams of people in a fickle business, and I'm not inclined to believe anything the studio heads say.

My feeling about unions were shaped by my cable TV years, when I was on the negotiating team for several contracts. Some of them were easy, some were nasty (sabotaging equipment and that kind of stuff, no violence). But my strongest memory was the negotiation in Portsmouth, Ohio. I was working with a regional manager named Walter, who lives in Johnstown, Pennsylvania by choice. Portsmouth is a small city, about 20,000 people, on the Ohio River, not too far from the appropriately named Ashland, Kentucky.

To get to Portsmouth you fly into Huntington, West Virginia, about 50 miles down the river. Huntington is in coal mining country and is very, very hilly. Since there's no flat ground, they chopped the top off one of the larger hills and created an area large enough to land jets. It was always a little frightening flying in there, because the hill ended right after the runway did, kind of like landing on an aircraft carrier, except with wooded hillsides instead of water. Portsmouth itself is known (not when I was there) for having one of the worst pigeon problems in the country. There were so many pigeons in the downtown area that the mayor had speakers installed over which they blasted the noises that hawks and eagles make when they're swooping down to nab a tasty squab for dinner. I never found out if that worked or not.

During the negotiation, I got to see the union rep ask good old Walter if we could improve our wage offer to the lowest paid workers by 10 cents an hour, I think it was from $5.50 to $5.60. Walter would look down at his papers, then look the guy in the eye and say, no, we can't afford it. And here I am thinking, these guys work to keep the business running and they live in this crappy town and we can't budge a lousy 10 cents an hour for the dozen lowest paid employees? I knew then that I wasn't cut out to be a management negotiator. So I'm an MBA who doesn't trust big business. What can I say?