Deal reached apparently.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/24/business/wga-strike-ends-reaches-deal

Totally worth trying to hold out studios, nicely done.

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The stock prices for Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have dropped, and analysts have estimated that studios will forgo as much as $1.6 billion in global ticket sales for movies that were initially scheduled for release this fall but were pushed to next year because of the actors' strike.

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aTmAg said:

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MBAR said:

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aTmAg said:

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Nobody said otherwise. The free market doesn't keep people from making sub-optimal decisions. People have every right to be as stupid as they want.

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The idea that unionizing is a bad personal decision is a tough one to substantiate with data; especially when you expand the scope globally.

And people here have definitely implied that unions are anti ethical to the free market if not outright stated as such.

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Anytime people act without coercion, they are doing so within the free market. The people here are implying that unions are coercing employers into deals they don't want, and they do have a point. Whether or not it's enough to say it's antithetical to free market is not what matters, since unions' detrimental effects to society exist regardless of how we categorize that.

In the short term, unions screw over employers and customers and/or members of their own union. 99% of the time, it's the former. So at BEST, unions are selfishly screwing over everybody else for their own gain. Including future workers who can't get jobs anymore because the unions made their positions unaffordable. Even in the 1% case where the total labor cost was the same as before, workers with low seniority get screwed over by those with high seniority.

In the long term, unions also screw themselves, as they force their employers to be less competitive, unable to expand, and often out of business altogether. That's a big reason American manufacturing has been lost to foreign competitors over the decades. That's a lot of labor (including formerly union labor) that is now out of the job. Hell if it wasn't for government bailouts, even more of our manufacturers would have gone out of business. At least then their union contracts would have been voided and lazy ass union workers replaced.

My employer suffered a strike a few years ago, and a crap ton of positions got replaced by a contractor that we can easily fire. Suddenly you saw a bunch of union morons see the error in their ways.

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Unions are one end of the extreme, maximum pay with minimum output.
The other end of that extreme is maximum output with minimum pay.

At the extremes, someone is being taken advantage of. Win-win solution is in the middle where output and pay are aligned and not at the extremes. Companies need to be profitable without burning out employees. At the extremes you get either suffering employees or suffering bottom line. At the extremes both the employer and the employees lose in the long run.

If somebody is underpaying for maximum output, then another employer can easily steal their employees by offering more. That would keep happening until an equilibrium is reached where both employees and employers are properly compensated.

The free market already provides the optimal mechanism for this.

aTmAg said:

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If somebody is underpaying for maximum output, then another employer can easily steal their employees by offering more. That would keep happening until an equilibrium is reached where both employees and employers are properly compensated.

The free market already provides the optimal mechanism for this.

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Great idea until employers collude to make sure this doesn't happen.

Is 30 years considered sustainable? Seems like those films did ok during that time period and weren't too affected by underperforming workers.

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The lawsuit was filed in 2014 by Robert Nitsch, a former DreamWorks Animation senior character effects artist; David Wentworth, a former ImageMovers Digital production engineer; and Georgia Cano, a digital artist who held jobs at Rhythm & Hues, Walt Disney Feature Animation, and ImageMovers Digital. The legal filing says that each of the plaintiffs plan to seek service awards that would amount to $100,000 for the entire litigation.

The workers contend that the roots of the anti-poaching agreements go back to the mid-1980s, when George Lucas and Ed Catmull, the president of Steve Jobs' newly formed company Pixar, agreed to not raid each other's employees.

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https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/disney-settlement-wage-fixing-anti-poaching-animation-1201975084/

I get the arguments against unions, but the argument that everything just works fine in capitalism also ignores some big problems.

i'm going to miss the sweet propaganda drip drip drip this thread provided

aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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If somebody is underpaying for maximum output, then another employer can easily steal their employees by offering more. That would keep happening until an equilibrium is reached where both employees and employers are properly compensated.

The free market already provides the optimal mechanism for this.

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Great idea until employers collude to make sure this doesn't happen.

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I assume you hold the same thoughts for workers colluding as well?

And cartels never last. Eventually, the urge to easily steal market share from competitors is too great and they break.

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I think all negotiations should be in the open as much as possible. Salary transparency is great for workers.

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I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said.

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Now you know how the rest of us feel when reading your responses.

I don't know what you're referring to with worker collusion.

fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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If somebody is underpaying for maximum output, then another employer can easily steal their employees by offering more. That would keep happening until an equilibrium is reached where both employees and employers are properly compensated.

The free market already provides the optimal mechanism for this.

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Great idea until employers collude to make sure this doesn't happen.

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I assume you hold the same thoughts for workers colluding as well?

And cartels never last. Eventually, the urge to easily steal market share from competitors is too great and they break.

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I think all negotiations should be in the open as much as possible. Salary transparency is great for workers.

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I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said.

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Now you know how the rest of us feel when reading your responses.

I don't know what you're referring to with worker collusion.

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A union, by definition, is worker collusion.

aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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aTmAg said:

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If somebody is underpaying for maximum output, then another employer can easily steal their employees by offering more. That would keep happening until an equilibrium is reached where both employees and employers are properly compensated.

The free market already provides the optimal mechanism for this.

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Great idea until employers collude to make sure this doesn't happen.

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I assume you hold the same thoughts for workers colluding as well?

And cartels never last. Eventually, the urge to easily steal market share from competitors is too great and they break.

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I think all negotiations should be in the open as much as possible. Salary transparency is great for workers.

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I'm not sure what that has to do with what I said.

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Now you know how the rest of us feel when reading your responses.

I don't know what you're referring to with worker collusion.

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A union, by definition, is worker collusion.

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It's not, actually, by definition.

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the act of doing something secret or illegal with another person, company, etc. in order to deceive people

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Not in the mood to play your changing definitions game today, have a good one.

fig96 said:

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Not in the mood to play your changing definitions game today, have a good one.

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You can't see how employees banding together to get overpaid is the same as employers banding together to underpay? You are going to pretend "changing definitions" is the reason you are avoiding this discussion?

aTmAg said:

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fig96 said:

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Not in the mood to play your changing definitions game today, have a good one.

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You can't see how employees banding together to get overpaid is the same as employers banding together to underpay? You are going to pretend "changing definitions" is the reason you are avoiding this discussion?

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I have no reason to pretend to avoid a discussion with you. I simply have no desire to do so.

I went to feed my kid lunch and play with them rather than attempt to discuss a topic with someone who constantly changes definitions and moves goalposts, inserts strawmen, and can't recognize the difference between companies privately colluding to fix wages (actually colluding by the definition of the word, not your variable one) vs an entity entering into a public contract on behalf of a group of workers.

Bye.

aTmAg said:

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MBAR said:

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aTmAg said:

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Nobody said otherwise. The free market doesn't keep people from making sub-optimal decisions. People have every right to be as stupid as they want.

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The idea that unionizing is a bad personal decision is a tough one to substantiate with data; especially when you expand the scope globally.

And people here have definitely implied that unions are anti ethical to the free market if not outright stated as such.

---

Anytime people act without coercion, they are doing so within the free market. The people here are implying that unions are coercing employers into deals they don't want, and they do have a point. Whether or not it's enough to say it's antithetical to free market is not what matters, since unions' detrimental effects to society exist regardless of how we categorize that.

In the short term, unions screw over employers and customers and/or members of their own union. 99% of the time, it's the former. So at BEST, unions are selfishly screwing over everybody else for their own gain. Including future workers who can't get jobs anymore because the unions made their positions unaffordable. Even in the 1% case where the total labor cost was the same as before, workers with low seniority get screwed over by those with high seniority.

In the long term, unions also screw themselves, as they force their employers to be less competitive, unable to expand, and often out of business altogether. That's a big reason American manufacturing has been lost to foreign competitors over the decades. That's a lot of labor (including formerly union labor) that is now out of the job. Hell if it wasn't for government bailouts, even more of our manufacturers would have gone out of business. At least then their union contracts would have been voided and lazy ass union workers replaced.

My employer suffered a strike a few years ago, and a crap ton of positions got replaced by a contractor that we can easily fire. Suddenly you saw a bunch of union morons see the error in their ways.

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Coercion? What? "Selfishly screwing over everybody else" is literally the name of the game in capitalism! The whole idea around the free market is that you do what you do for yourself and the market governs whether or not that is OK. But when people collectively bargain and pool their leverage its somehow an affront to this and you get to declare its "coercion"?

Its amazing how you describe any situation where someone assigns value in a place YOU don't want it to be as some form of "screwed". If the free market is indeed this great arbiter, why are you so against the results when people actually pool their leverage to get better results for themselves?

Union workers in this country get far more benefits than non union workers and that includes greater pay so I'm not sure that "union morons" is accurate but you're welcome to ignore actual data and instead go by an anecdote than makes you feel better.

And far more government bailouts have been used on paying for golden parachutes for a non unionized banking industry that acted in a criminal manner than on manufacturing and its not even close.

Its always amazing to me when people in this country who enjoy a 5 day work week, basic workplace safety, and the 40 hour work week (just to name a few of the benefits we all enjoy largely due to unions of the past) will sit here and complain about other workers collectively bargaining and not just rolling over for the man. Just ridiculous that some of you want to tell other people what they are worth and what they should work for.

So if we could move past the 1920s economics arguments here, maybe someone could say what the final deal was, what things can come back without actors, and when we would see those things?

Unions are not necessarily against the free market. Workers banding together and refusing to work is no different than consumers banding together to boycott a product. Where unions go against the free market is when laws are made to require businesses to use them, or require employees to be a part of them. If an employee is free to leave a union at anyone and still work, you would see a lot less corruption in unions. Or if a business could by pass union for labor. If all your workers just decide your a ****ty boss and refuse to with for you, that's the free market.

I've noticed that aTmAg guy gets in a lot of lengthy debates that are side tracks to the main thread topic on here. That is all.

Haven't seen the details but it sounds like the WGA got pretty much exactly what they asked for.

I don't know the exact relation of this strike to the actors, but the reports I'm seeing expect that to follow suit within the week and we'll be back in business.

MBAR said:

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aTmAg said:

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MBAR said:

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aTmAg said:

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Nobody said otherwise. The free market doesn't keep people from making sub-optimal decisions. People have every right to be as stupid as they want.

---

The idea that unionizing is a bad personal decision is a tough one to substantiate with data; especially when you expand the scope globally.

And people here have definitely implied that unions are anti ethical to the free market if not outright stated as such.

---

Anytime people act without coercion, they are doing so within the free market. The people here are implying that unions are coercing employers into deals they don't want, and they do have a point. Whether or not it's enough to say it's antithetical to free market is not what matters, since unions' detrimental effects to society exist regardless of how we categorize that.

In the short term, unions screw over employers and customers and/or members of their own union. 99% of the time, it's the former. So at BEST, unions are selfishly screwing over everybody else for their own gain. Including future workers who can't get jobs anymore because the unions made their positions unaffordable. Even in the 1% case where the total labor cost was the same as before, workers with low seniority get screwed over by those with high seniority.

In the long term, unions also screw themselves, as they force their employers to be less competitive, unable to expand, and often out of business altogether. That's a big reason American manufacturing has been lost to foreign competitors over the decades. That's a lot of labor (including formerly union labor) that is now out of the job. Hell if it wasn't for government bailouts, even more of our manufacturers would have gone out of business. At least then their union contracts would have been voided and lazy ass union workers replaced.

My employer suffered a strike a few years ago, and a crap ton of positions got replaced by a contractor that we can easily fire. Suddenly you saw a bunch of union morons see the error in their ways.

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Coercion? What? "Selfishly screwing over everybody else" is literally the name of the game in capitalism! The whole idea around the free market is that you do what you do for yourself and the market governs whether or not that is OK. But when people collectively bargain and pool their leverage its somehow an affront to this and you get to declare its "coercion"?

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Absolutely. Do you know why strikers historically picketed by the factories they worked at, rather than more public places? Because they wanted to intimidate scabs. They inflicted violence on anybody who went against them, and even enlisted the mafia to help them. That is coercion by any measure.

Quote:

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Its amazing how you describe any situation where someone assigns value in a place YOU don't want it to be as some form of "screwed". If the free market is indeed this great arbiter, why are you so against the results when people actually pool their leverage to get better results for themselves?

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Because idiotic laws and agencies bias the system in their favor. That is anti-free market.

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Union workers in this country get far more benefits than non union workers and that includes greater pay so I'm not sure that "union morons" is accurate but you're welcome to ignore actual data and instead go by an anecdote than makes you feel better.

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The manufacturing history of the United States is hardly anecdotal. Thanks in large part to unions, the US has deteriorated from worlds largest manufacturer, exporter, and creditor to the worlds largest consumer, importer, and debtor. We have lost so much of our manufacturing, that we can't produce enough to sustain ourselves anymore. We have to buy crap from foreign countries that don't suffer from unions. For every overpaid union job, there are many jobs that have been lost.

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And far more government bailouts have been used on paying for golden parachutes for a non unionized banking industry that acted in a criminal manner than on manufacturing and its not even close.

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You are wrong, and clearly have no idea what you are talking about. If it wasn't for government, the vast majority of unions wouldn't even exist anymore.

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Its always amazing to me when people in this country who enjoy a 5 day work week, basic workplace safety, and the 40 hour work week (just to name a few of the benefits we all enjoy largely due to unions of the past) will sit here and complain about other workers collectively bargaining and not just rolling over for the man. Just ridiculous that some of you want to tell other people what they are worth and what they should work for.

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Henry Ford created the 5 day/40 hour work week in 1926 a full 15 years before they ever signed a union contract. And that was over a decade after he DOUBLED their pay. He did so because he was losing money training employees just for them to go elsewhere for a marginally higher salary. That's the free market at work.

And I am not telling people what they are worth, the law of supply and demand is. And that is clearly less than what their union is demanding, otherwise they wouldn't' agree to be in a union in the first place. It's actually pretty simple for most people.

AustinAg2K said:

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Unions are not necessarily against the free market. Workers banding together and refusing to work is no different than consumers banding together to boycott a product. Where unions go against the free market is when laws are made to require businesses to use them, or require employees to be a part of them. If an employee is free to leave a union at anyone and still work, you would see a lot less corruption in unions. Or if a business could by pass union for labor. If all your workers just decide your a ****ty boss and refuse to with for you, that's the free market.

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Unions are absolutely against the free market. Workers banding together and refusing to work is anti-free market just like boycotting a product for non-economic reasons is (usually in response to anti-free market activity by the firm).

And the fact that we even have a NLRB is a travesty and about as anti-free market as it gets.

Henry Ford isn't responsible for the 5 day work week nor the 8 hour work day.

By the time Ford instituted his policy in 1926 there were at least 70 other major manufacturers with a 5 day work week already. The Jewish Sabbath Alliance of America was lobbying for a 5 day work week for both Christians and Jews as early as 1910.

Has far as a 8 hour day goes, hell workers and the labor movement have been pushing for that since the civil war. See the Haymarket Square Riot of 1885.


Writers and actors have decided that the current wages they make are no longer enough. The going rate is no longer enough to secure the services of a writer or actor. Studios can't pay X because no one is willing to work for that amount. So the equilibrium is shifting.

aTmAg said:

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AustinAg2K said:

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Unions are not necessarily against the free market. Workers banding together and refusing to work is no different than consumers banding together to boycott a product. Where unions go against the free market is when laws are made to require businesses to use them, or require employees to be a part of them. If an employee is free to leave a union at anyone and still work, you would see a lot less corruption in unions. Or if a business could by pass union for labor. If all your workers just decide your a ****ty boss and refuse to with for you, that's the free market.

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Unions are absolutely against the free market. Workers banding together and refusing to work is anti-free market just like boycotting a product for non-economic reasons is (usually in response to anti-free market activity by the firm).

And the fact that we even have a NLRB is a travesty and about as anti-free market as it gets.

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I think yo'll find most Economists disagree with you here. Labor unions can make sense in a variety of circumstances and can benefit both business and industry. Unions however carry a heavy political weight which entice politicians and government officials to govern and police in ways that have negative consequences for non-union workers, consumers, and taxpayers. Crony capitalism and especially regulatory capture, works for unions too, and the politicians get to play both sides.

Its not the unions or management themselves that are anti-free market, its the government stepping into labor contracts between consenting adults.