Unions are trash. Theyll Destroy a whole company for firing a shitty worker.
unions are the reason you aren’t paid 2.50 an hour with steel beams about to bust ya head open shut up lol
Unions are why you have 5 day, 40 hour full-time work weeks. Unions are why they have to pay you in actual dollars instead of “company credits” that you can only spend at the company-owned stores. Unions are why there are fucking fire exits at your place of work. Unions are why it’s not okay for your supermarket ground beef to be any percentage human.
You think your company pays you out of the goodness of their hearts? Or even out of “market pressure?” The “job market” is a myth perpetuated by the capitalists. Corporations would pay you nothing if they could get away with it. And you argue “oh, but if they paid me nothing I’d just go to another one.” Wrong. Because to maximize profits, they all want to pay you nothing. Corporations exist to maximize profits while reducing risk for investors. It’s part of their entire function to find ways to cut costs as much as possible, and that includes finding ways to pay you nothing.
Unions are your defense against that. You think all a union does is strike? If you pay union dues, a lot of that is spent on lobbyists in various governments reminding your lawmakers that you have rights as a living human being that a corporation should not be able to stomp all over. Unions hire lawyers so that if you’re fired for bullshit reasons, the union can stand up for you against your boss. They’re called unions because workers are uniting to pool resources so that they can stand up to these corporate overlords with more money than God. Unions exist because you might not have the words, resources, or time to fight workplace injustices all by yourself. That’s the whole fucking point.
And if a business shuts down because a union is striking, it’s because the business was abusing people and didn’t deserve to be in business anyway. Don’t make excuses for the corporations. They already have trillions of dollars and a couple million lawyers to do that for themselves. They don’t need your help.
The erasure of labor history from US history curriculum has caused so much fucking damage to this country.
Bosses: If you don’t like how we do things, don’t work here.
I simply cannot feel sorry for multi-millionaire Scarlett Johansson only earning $20 million instead of $30 million or what the fuck ever because Disney recognised that large parts of the world still can’t safely go to the cinema on account of the deadly pandemic and released Black Widow on Disney+ at the same time as in theatres. But then I also support anyone suing Disney for any reason, so you see my dilemma
The case isn’t really about Scarlett Johansson. It’s about setting precedent for the way actors are paid when content is released on screening services going forward, and Scarlett Johansson is pretty unique in her position of both having a valid case for breach of contract and having a large enough platform, following and wealth that suing Disney won’t completely destroy her and her career.
She offered to renegotiate her contract at the point the decision to release on Disney+ was made, and Disney refused, that is what lead to the case.
The overwhelming majority of actors, even actor’s working for Disney are not millionaires, I know that because I am a jobbing actor, and I earn less in a year then either of my siblings, both of whom have office jobs.
When you get a film or television job, in addition to what you’re paid at the time you also get something that in the UK is called royalty fees, and in the US is called residuals. This occurs when the show or film is shown or licensed on another channel or network, almost always for a set period of time, although Netflix has started buying the rights to small indie films outright.
Royalty checks can be hilariously small. A friend I trained with once got one for £2.07 because their show had just been licensed to be shown on a Thai TV network, but more often they are a lifeline for actors. Most actors work minimum wage jobs in between acting gigs, and when you also have the cost of Headshots, Self Tape equipment, travel to auditions and lost wages whenever you have to take time off to prep and travel to auditions, you understand why equity wages are so high for individual jobs, because that one episode in a soap you got paid £800-£1200 for (minus 10-20% for your agent), could be your wage for 2 months and you would be considered a fairly successful working actor, even if it was your only acting job in that time period.
The case isn’t about a multimillionaire quibbling over how many millions she is being paid, although it’s likely that had Black Widow had a prepandemic release Scarlett Johansson would have been paid closer to 200 million than the 20 million she is being paid. Although Disney is pushing that angle hard so I fully understand why you’ve fallen into their propaganda trap. It is one of the very few opportunities for actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, directors, and all the other hundreds of creatives involved in the filmmaking process to challenge some of the status quo with streaming services and really ask questions about how royalties will work in the future.
There is a reason that the unions are backing the case and that’s because the other way around, breach of contract is a huge deal, there can be penalties of hundreds of thousands of dollars for contract breaches, often on jobs where you are paid a fraction of that, and believe me, Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Universal all persue those payments, and in certain circumstances even go out of their way to blacklist the artist.
If breach of contract is a big deal when actors and other creatives do it, it should be just as big a deal when studios do it, but it isn’t because Capitalism is rarely about rewarding artists and all about bottom line profit.
This case has the potential to really change things and help millions of ordinary, jobbing actors and creatives. I am 100% on Scarlett Johansson’s side with this and any reasonable person who cares about the well-being of artists should be too.
^^^^^^^^ this. this right here
she has the money for lawyers, let her set the precedent for those who don’t
You know how an elderly lady got third degree burns to a horrifying percentage of her body because MacDonald’s was serving coffee at next-to-boiling temperatures and the lid came off her cup and spilled all over her, and she wanted MacDonald’s to pay for her medical fees which to her were astronomical but to a mega corp like MacDonald’s was a raindrop in the ocean, and instead of just paying the med bills for this woman they went out of their way to deride her and besmirch her and turn the story into “hur dur dumb American didnt know that hot beverages are hot,” and thats the version of events everyone remembers, having been successfully distracted from the truth of the matter by a targetted, vicious, loud propaganda campaign by MacDonald’s?
Well that’s exactly what disney is doing with this “ScarJo is being horribly insensitive about the global pandemic we’re in” and their “we were merely being socially conscientious and kind to let people stream our new movies instead of having to go to the cinemas for them” campaign.
This suit isn’t actually about ScarJo. Quite aside from the fact that it IS a breach of contract to do a dual release and not hand over any of the profits from the streaming release (which she is absolutely entitled to), its actually about every single actor and writer and voice actor and etc that has similar contracts with all production companies, most of whom do not have the resources that ScarJo has.
Disney knows that if ScarJo wins this, they will be forced to equitably distribute income from their streaming service to those who have the right to such things. They do not want that.
They want you to pay your monthly subscription and your $36 early access fee, and they want to pocket all of that money, even though a portion of it should be going to the actors and creators of the film.
They know that if ScarJo wins, they will not be able to hoard as luck money. So they are running a discredit campaign.
“Oh look how heartless ScarJo is, for wanting MORE money even tho she already got $20m, and EVEN THOUGH we’re in a PANDEMIC and there are people DYING. Its so HEARTLESS of her.”
And guess what!! Its working!!!!!! People already aren’t huge fans of ScarJo, for a range of reasons, but mostly, people are falling prey to the propaganda campaign.
Don’t do that. Don’t be the person who thinks an old woman who wants her crazy high medical bills paid because she was handed a poorly secured cup of boiling water is actually just a money grabbing idiot. Don’t be the person who spreads Disney’s “we’re the good guys in this actually” bullshit. Don’t fall for it.
This whole thing is SO much bigger than ScarJo.
Do NOT forget that Disney is also refusing to pay royalties to the writers of the Star Wars Expanded Universe books, claiming that when they bought LucasArts, they gained all the properties but NONE of the responsibilities to the original creators that went with the contracts signed under the company.
ScarJo’s just another example of Disney’s unethical business practices and supporting her in this lawsuit helps the fight for everyone else Disney has screwed over.
what if public libraries were open late every night so that:
- children and teens who cant get home until a later time have a safe, warm, well lit, populated area to socialize, charge devices, rest, etc
- children and teens have a safe place to go to stay away from danger
- people who have jobs that take up most of the day would still have time ANY DAY OF THE WEEK to go use the libraries facilities (printing, computers, etc)
This is exactly what public libraries are trying to achieve - public libraries as a third place is a whole thing - it’s just that the funding isn’t there (yet).
Libraries need and deserve so much funding
I’m going to apologize if this post comes off as sounding very aggressive, but having just been through one of the most stressful experiences of my entire career in libraries:
if you want this, you need to be at your local community government meetings. you need to be talking to your representatives. you need to be out there Lobbying.
Just a few weeks ago, my library, me, my coworkers, we had to write letters, send emails, make phone calls, speak at council meetings, just to beg our aldermen to give us our usual funding. Which they didn’t even give to us last year. Losing last year’s funding forced us to cut staff, hours, and all of our databases. If we’d lost this year’s funding? two positions would have been gone and we would have likely had to close on Saturdays. On Saturdays. The day of the week most of y’all working M-F jobs actually have time to go to the fucking library.
And do you want to know how much money we were asking? We were asking for an increase of approximately 13 cents a person.
13.
Fucking.
Cents.
ACROSS AN ENTIRE YEAR.
No one seems to understand how libraries are funded. It’s not just Free Stuff. It’s your tax dollars being paid back into your community. It’s crowdfunding. The highest cost anyone in my community pays for the library a year is approximately $250. Divide that up. That’s just $4 a week. That’s less than a coffee. It’s the equivalent of purchasing about 10 hardcover books a year. For that price, you could have access to every book that has ever been written, a place to go that’s not a bar, programs for kids, teens, and adults, educated staff that can help you find the answers to your questions, and so much more.
You want these late-night libraries? You want all this stuff? Start fighting for it. Start showing up. Start making phone calls. It’s not going to come out of thin air. Start fighting to erase the idea that taxes = evil. Start fighting to spread the understanding that taxes are what help us build a better society.
Make sure the people who represent you know that you want this. That this is where you want your tax dollars to go. That this is what you want them to support. That you are willing to see your tax bill go up a few more dollars for this.
Because otherwise? None of this is going to happen. Libraries are going to keep cutting their opening hours. Keep cutting staff. Keep cutting programs and databases and collections.
We NEED your support, and we need more than just a post on Tumblr. We need to see people show up and speak out.
