Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1151081
65 Q3 2019 / CINEMONTAGE The WGA's stance was to hold out for the elimination of packaging fees and sue the agencies to invalidate these fees. The guild's suit was brought in April, but was delayed by a judge, calling the underlying legal theories "complex." Many of the WGA leadership face a late summer election. The guild leadership's change in direction may reflect pushback by members. "We will not counter on revenue sharing," WGA West President David Goodman told members, "because any percentage we respond with, even 98 percent, suggests the answer is somewhere in the middle, and it is not." More than two months after thousands of writers left their agents when talks broke down over a new franchise agreement — overturning longstanding business practices in Hollywood and leading to a contentious lawsuit — the WGA has pivoted and plans to negotiate with individual agencies, writes Erik Hayden in The Hollywood Reporter. Fundamental to the dispute between the major talent agencies and writers is the practice of packaging fees, in which agents are paid directly by a studio for attaching actors and/or a director to a writer's pitch, according to Hayden. The WGA has argued that it seeks to end the practice altogether, while the agencies have upped their offer to cut scribes in on the practice, proposing 2 percent of such fees. On June 7, at the start of negotiations with the guild that day, Creative Artists Agency Co-Chairman Bryan Lourd described the increased offer as "specifically designed to benefit the large group of writers who contribute to packaged shows but do not have backend/ownership positions. Our proposal benefits the working writer," he said. UAW'S FAILED CHATTANOOGA CAMPAIGN Volkswagen employees voted 833 to 776 to reject unionization in June, writes Jamie McGee in The Tennessean. The automaker employs about 1,700 workers and 3,200 temporary workers at its Chattanooga plant. "The United Auto Workers just suffered its second major defeat at Volkswagen," writes labor journalist Chris Brooks in Jacobin, for which he interviewed retired autoworker Stephan Krull in late June. Krull is an IG Metall activist from Volkswagen's flagship plant in Wolfsburg, Germany, where he served for many years on the plant's works council. He and Brooks discussed why the UAW's German allies were unsuccessful in reining in American management and what the anti- union turn in the US factory means for the German social model. Under German laws, writes Brooks, employees have a right to "co-determine" the companies they work in through the election of employee representatives to "works councils" and the company's board. Works councils allow white- and blue-collar, non-managerial workers to have non-confrontational meetings with management in which they make collective decisions regarding their immediate workplace. Workers' representatives also make up half of the employer's board, even of massive global corporations like the Volkswagen Group, which is the world's largest automaker. The UAW modeled its campaign on its German allies' in the Global Works Council and IG Metall, the largest union in Germany, in the hope of using the German model of "social partnership" in the United States. In Chattanooga, that didn't work. The UAW has run two plant-wide elections, one in 2014 and another in 2019, adds Brooks. Both failed. "Is co-determination and the German model of social partnership a failure?" Brooks asked Krull. "On the one hand, social partnership has always been an illusion," responded Krull. "Power relations in capitalism do not allow for real labor-management partnerships; the owners continue to decide what, when, where and how much is produced. "On the other hand, there was a class compromise following the defeat of capital-sponsored fascism in Germany and the systemic struggle between socialism and capitalism, between East Germany and West Germany. "The social partnership illusion is now bursting because the rivalry between these two economic systems no longer exists. Capital is less dependent than before on compromises and concessions. The result is that co-determination is being eroded for workers, and management simply chooses to forgo co-operation with LABOR MAT TERS UAW Local 24 workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, rally unsuccessfully for unionization at their Volkswagen plant in June. Courtesy of UAW.org