Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/832212
86 CINEMONTAGE / Q2 2017 LABOR MAT TERS retaliation as a result of the recent historic unionization vote," according to SAG-AFTRA, as published in Deadline Hollywood. SAG-AFTRA began its organizing drive with NBCUniversal about 15 years ago, arguing that the company uses a double standard by letting its English-language performers unionize while refusing the same right to Spanish-speaking actors. TRUMP PICKS NET NEUTRALITY FOE TO CHAIR FCC In January, Ajit Pai was appointed to the post of Federal Communications Commission chairman by President Donald Trump, succeeding Tom Wheeler, writes Ted Johnson in Variety. Pai, 44, who has been an FCC commissioner since 2012, will not have to face a Senate confirmation this year. But when his term expires at the end of the year, the president will have to renominate him and Pai will face confirmation then. A critic of the FCC's approach to net neutrality rules, Pai said in a speech in December that Trump's election was an "inflection point" that would allow the commission to "shift from playing defense at the FCC to going on offense." Pai and current commissioner Michael O'Rielly openly dissented on some of the most contentious issues before the FCC, including net neutrality, broadband privacy rules and media ownership. Pai could begin to roll back some of Wheeler's agenda, but in some cases he will still have to go through a public review process. In a speech in December, Pai signaled that he would look to reverse regulatory moves. "We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation and job creation," he said. THE SECRET TO SAVING AMERICA'S UNIONS Labor unions in America have come to a critical juncture, writes Dylan Matthews in Vox. In the mid-1950s, a third of Americans were union members. Today, less than 11 percent are, including 6.4 percent of private sector workers. The long decline of union membership explains a large part of the increase in inequality in the US, caused voter turnout among low-income workers to collapse and weakened organized labor's ability to push back against corporate influence in Washington "In 2016, we had the most pro-labor president since the 1960s, the most pro-labor secretary of labor since [FDR's Secretary] Frances Perkins, an economy with shrinking unemployment and rising wages — and yet we lost a quarter-million union members in the United States," says David Rolf, president of SEIU Local 775, a union representing home-care workers in Washington and Montana. "We need to be trying everything." Rolf and others have come to believe that the solution is to look to strategies that work in Europe. Most European countries have far greater levels of union coverage than we do in the US. As of 2013, more than two-thirds of workers in Denmark, Sweden and Finland were union members. In France and Austria, while workers in unions are a minority, significantly, 98 percent are covered by collective bargaining agreements. European unions, and some other unions around the world, have found a brilliant alternative strategy. These unions bargain not at the company level but at the sector level — negotiating for every worker in an entire industry rather than just one company or one workplace. By using this strategy, every company, no matter how many of its employees are in a union, gets the same pay and benefit deal. And by using this strategy, companies have less incentive to discourage union membership. DRUG PRICE TRANSPARENCY URGED IN CA California Democrats, labor unions, health insurers and consumer advocacy groups are offering legislation to shed more light — and more leverage — over prescription drug prices, writes Melanie Mason in The Los Angeles Times. Federal Com- munications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai. Photo by Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/AP Images