- This topic has 23 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 17 years, 2 months ago by .
-
Posts
-
Why don’t you play outside? You’re missing out. ;P
Wherever the writers go, there will be new talent that will eventually step in. Yes, there are things I would miss, but TV never has played a huge part in my life. I’d rather read. Too much TV saps my creativity.
Rusti wrote:Why don’t you play outside? You’re missing out.
West Texas. Home of sun-related skin cancer, sand burrs, Texas needle-grass, scorpions, rattlesnakes, fire-ants, poisonous spiders, hornets, bob-cats, tornadoes, ice storms, lack of sidewalks, and a proliferation of astoundingly incompetent automobile drivers.
Of course, even back in England I didn’t do a fat lot of going outside to play other than on my bicycle. Sort of proves your point, I guess: clearly I am missing out.
We have a lot of the same in Southern Illinois, save for the sand, scorpions and fire ants. Instead of needle grass we’ve got poison ivy, oak and sumac.
But when we were kids, an hour of TV a day was what we got during summer, and we were either booted outdoors to get filthy in the dirt, or sent to the ‘art drawer’ to find other things to do. I still do this stuff, but it mostly involves fetch with the dog or working on graphics on the computer. Less water in both instances.
I’m just sayin’ regardless of ‘what’s out there’, being outdoors is exercise, creativity and fresh air. The television will still be there when you get back inside. 😉 Think of the rash of reruns as an opportunity to explore and let Hollywood work itself out.
The Castle [Dave wrote:“]
Greater Basilisk wrote:Um, if you’re working for a company, you’re not independant by my definition.
Ah. I had not known that in order to be a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, you have to be or have been employed by a company that is recognised by the Guild. But I don’t think you have to have been continuously employed by the SAME company. In other words, you may have a contract to do work for a season of TV shows one year, then work on a movie the next year. But yes, a freelance writer can’t join the Union except as an associate member.
However, this begs the question I was asking.
If you are an artist of some kind (I regard writing to be an art form), working to produce something that is bought and distributed by a company, and that company opens up a new distribution network but doesn’t pay you for sales made through that network, do you quit your art and take up a new line of work, figure the company has every right to make money from your work without sharing any of it with you, or what?
One problem with allowing your company to open up new markets without the need to pay you is that they will actively move away from the markets where they DO have to pay you.
That’s true. And what you do in that situation depends entirely on whether you’re more interested in keeping relatively comfortable with a job that you have, earning less than you might, or whether you’re willing to take a risk and leave for independence. There’s also the lawsuit option if you have money (though personally I find that suing, especially over the sums common in the States, is generally by whiners against workers and rarely justified either). The bottom line is that life isn’t fair. If you want something bettered – or done in any way – do it yourself to the best of your ability. Striking isn’t doing it yourself. It’s doing nothing while you wait for the situation to fix itself.
Greater Basilisk wrote:yourself to the best of your ability. Striking isn’t doing it yourself. It’s doing nothing while you wait for the situation to fix itself.
I must say that I wholeheartedly disagree with that statement. Striking is using the power of numbers and the fact that the companies NEED you just as much as you NEED them. The civil war is an example of this very same thing. In fact many wars are fought over unequal symbiosis.
Also striking is just as risky as becoming independent because there are many people that will gladly take your jobs for less than what you want…but often they aren’t as qualified or as good as you were.
The unions were created for a reason. Work like everything else obeys the principles of supply and demand. Unfortunately in many places in America due to the flood of immigration to this country the demand far outraces the supply. Thus causing lots of competition for work. Suffice it to say that it would be in the interest of the business to have everyone working three jobs none of them providing health care and if they asked for a raise they would be fired and replaced by someone else. Most business owners are not that cruel. But if one business starts doing it and then out profits all its competitors you better believe their competitors would start doing the same thing to survive.
The world isn’t fair, that’s why we should be.
I would help but I am just to tired to get out of bed today~
Engaged to a WeaselIt’s because of unions and striking workers that the US has five day work weeks instead of seven, and why people generally don’t have to work more than 8 hours per day, and get a decent hourly wage instead of $1 per day like some other countries. Unions also make companies comply with safety regulations instead of losing limbs in machines while the assembly lines just keep working. People have died to get us these conditions.
Unions are good. They protect the workers from greedy businesses and bring about change in life. Sometimes you have to refuse to do something for a greedy company in order to get the greedy company to pull their heads out and be a little more generous. The striking workers don’t get paid during the time they are striking, so they don’t do it on a whim. It has to be for something worthwhile. I think this cause is worthwhile.
So what if the rest of us can’t watch new episodes of their favorite shows. Boo hoo. We’ll get over it. We’ll find something else to do, or enjoy revisiting the repeats. If they don’t get this policy changed now, they’ll set a precedence that will screw them for the rest of their lives. And it’s not as easy as changing jobs. Not for that type of position. And, besides, that’s like giving in. It’s like saying, “Ok. I’m not going to fight for what’s fair. Instead I’ll just leave and do something other than what I love for a living because standing up for myself is too much work and I may come off as being selfish to people who don’t know me and have never been in my position. I’ll just let the greedy company hire someone else who may not be so good at the job, but they can screw easier.”
No way! 👿
Sorry for the rant, but I’m definitely pro-union. My father was in a union and when he got disabled, they were the only ones who helped my mom and dad so they wouldn’t lose the house. Social security denied them disability benefits and my parents had to threaten to take it to court to get them. In the meantime, the union gave my parents money to live on during that time until they got the ss benefits.
My husband is in a union and had to strike a few years ago because the state wanted to give them a worse and more expensive health care coverage. They fought for better coverage and won.
And now I’m in a union. And I’m very glad to know that I’ll have someone to stand up for me and protect me if I need them to.
Everything has its benefits and disadvantages, I agree. Unions were started on good grounds. But I have no love for them now, for the following reason:
We – our family – are general contractors and real estate managers. So, white collars, bosses – the wealthy capitalists, if you will.
Opa always has at least one building site running, usually more. He hires the builders, the electrical companies, the masons, the lumberers for the project and make sure they do what they’re supposed to do. Well, it has happened that some union or other decides it’s time once again to demand a pay raise. (Striking, thank goodness, is not as common here as in Germany and France, where the train and transport employees are striking for more money right now and making a royal mess of public transport and material shipments.) Anyway, so the unions will go around the building sites in the area, shanghai workers and drag them off to some demo in the city. And I mean shanghai. The workers are content to keep working; the unions decide they should have more pay. The unions go as far as to cut through and destroy electrical and water lines belonging to the companies.
In this case of course, the damage isn’t done to us – the general contractor – but rather to our employees, by the union who runs off with their employees.
Unions like to demand more pay. If it’s from a corporation, I generally wouldn’t have a problem with it, though corporations tend to have all their jobs out the East and those people don’t strike. But when they steal the work time and destroy the goods of small businesses in order to clamor for more money when the great majority of the workers are content with their pay and are not standing in this demo of their own free will… You’ll understand where my dislike of the unions comes from.
Also, it’s easy to demand more money all the time. But a business needs to survive too. More pay means more cost to the business which means they’ll want to raise their prices on goods which means the people buying – the workers – will claim the cost of living has gone, therefore they ened more pay again. It’s devil’s circle.
Folks like to be on the side of the little guy, the poor oppressed worker, and make sure the big bad rich man doesn’t exploit him. Well, okay. There are exploiters. But it’s in ther interest of a company too to keep satsified employees, and well-paid one that will buy their products. (I don’t know; maybe it’s different in the States where the companies are just as happy to export the jobs to China and leave Americans with the options of being waiters or attending expensive law schools.) But here, nobody has any real reason to complain. And with me being on the boss end of the scale instead of the employee end – sort of; though I’m an employee myself, I work directly for the bosses – I view this from the bosses’ perspective, which says that unions aren’t as great as they were back when they started.In a place I worked once the union was notorious for keeping people from gettting fired who really deserved to be fired. They would literally do nothing for the entire 9 hour shift and let the non-union people pull their load…it sucked. 😕
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
