Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/942009
63 Q1 2018 / CINEMONTAGE of 292 workers voted to be represented by the Washington, DC-based NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America. A staff organizing committee of 44 Times journalists had called for workers to unionize after years of corporate turnovers, advertising declines and cutbacks that have reduced the newspaper's staff from more than 1,000 in the late 1990s to fewer than 400 now. Organizers said they will bargain for job protections, salary increases and equal pay. ROSE MARIE: WHEN I PUBLICLY SHAMED MY HARASSER Actress Rose Marie, who became a radio star as a toddler in the 1920s and a television star on the hit sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show in the 1960s, died in late December in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, writes Alison Peterson in The New York Times. She was 94. Originally known by her stage name, Baby Rose Marie, Rose Marie Mazzetta is probably best remembered for her Dick Van Dyke Show role as Sally Rogers, one of three comedy writers — the others being Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) and Buddy Sorrell (Morey Amsterdam). They worked for the fictional series-within-a-series, "The Alan Brady Show" (Brady was portrayed by Carl Reiner, the series' creator and writer). One inspiration for the Sally Rogers role was said to be Selma Diamond, who wrote for Sid Caesar in the 1950s. Rose Marie was not unmoved by the #MeToo saga swirling around Hollywood. "I started in this business when I was three," wrote Rose Marie in The Hollywood Reporter. "From the beginning, I was co-starring or headlining with the major male and female acts of the day, and all of them treated me wonderfully and respected me and my talent. I believe because of how I began, I always walked into a job or an audition assured of my talent and expected to be treated like a lady and an equal. "With one exception, I always was. That one exception taught me what was happening to other women in the business. It occurred when I was about to wrap filming on the 1954 musical Top Banana. The producer of the film came up to me after I'd run through the song called 'I Fought Every Step of the Way,' which had boxing references, and said that he could show me a few positions. He wasn't referring to boxing. "I laughed it off, but he said he was serious and that the picture could be mine. Well, in front of everyone onstage, I said, 'You son of a bitch, you couldn't get it up if a flag went by.' Needless to say, that didn't go over well with him, and all my musical numbers were cut from the film. I had no idea that his reaction to my refusal would be so bad." NLRB OVERTURNS OBAMA'S PRO-LABOR DECISIONS It didn't take long for the National Labor Relations Board to act on the advice of Peter Robb, its new general counsel, and upset multiple precedents put in place by the prior Democratic majority board, writes Parker Poe for JD Supra in early January. In a series of 3-2 decisions, the new Trump-era NLRB majority threw out cases that frustrated employers, while signaling its intention to make other changes that would restore interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act going back to the George W. Bush era. If upheld, these decisions will have a significant impact on unionized and non-unionized employers. On December 14, the NLRB overturned its 2015 Browning-Ferris decision, which considered two companies to be joint employers and liable for each other's labor practices if one company exercises the right to control the practices of the other. This decision will likely end the NLRB's attempts, for example, to hold a franchisor liable for labor law violations by its franchisee unless there is evidence that the franchisor controls those practices. Interestingly, even under the revised standard, the board majority concluded that the employer in the Hy-Brand test case did exercise the required control to be deemed a joint employer. IAN McKELLEN ON 'WRONGFUL' ACCUSATIONS Academy Award-nominated actor and advocate for equality Sir Ian McKellen recently took issue with the numerous sexual harassment allegations running through the industry, saying that wrongful accusations can have an impact, writes Dino-Ray Ramos in Deadline Hollywood. McKellen remembered that earlier in his career, many women would have sex for acting roles. During a talk at Oxford Union, according to The Daily Mail, McKellen acknowledged victims for coming forward about sexual harassment, saying "It's sometimes very difficult for victims to do that." He added, "I hope we're going through a period that will help to eradicate it altogether." He then went on to share his own experiences from the early 1960s. "The director of the theatre I was working at showed me some photographs he got from women who were wanting jobs," he said. "Some of them had LABOR MAT TERS Rose Marie with Dick Van Dyke, center, and Morey Amsterdam from The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 1960s. CBS-TV