Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1500026
UNION BUSTER: Elon Musk threatened to take away workers' stock options if they unionized. P H O T O : A P I M AG E S SEE PAGE 56 19 S U M M E R Q 2 I S S U E G E T T I N G O R G A N I Z E D seeking timely justice. To be clear, this isn't only an issue of a sluggish NLRB, and the hard-working civil servants who work for the Board do the best they can. The NLRB is understaffed and overburdened, with caseloads having spiked in recent years. But even in matters that skirt entirely the bureaucracy of the NLRB (contract negotiations or grievances and arbitrations, for instance), any affair in which workers are chiefly reliant upon law- yers or even union officials to effect change on their behalf can drag on at such length that whatever justice is eventually achieved is undercut by its deferral. A few years ago, I was contacted by an editor confused about why the unscripted show they were working on wasn't covered under a union agreement, even though the production company in question was a term signatory. A bit of research revealed that the production company had created a shell company in order to try to avoid its contractual obligations. I talked to several members of the post crew, letting folks know that their employer was in material breach of their contract and that we could seek a remedy through the grievance pro- cedure, unless they collectively wanted to force the issue by taking direct action. This particular crew didn't have a lot of appetite for taking matters into their own hands, so the IATSE filed a formal grievance through its legal counsel. It was a fairly straightfor- ward case, but, even so, it took very nearly a year to reach a settlement, and many more months before the company actually followed through on payment of retroac- tive health and pension contributions they agreed to under the settlement. I've presented a grim picture of elusive justice, justice pushed and postponed, ever receding with the distant horizon. And it's true that I have limited faith in pursuing fixes through bureaucratic channels. But that doesn't mean that there's no hope. Perhaps you followed the news earlier this year about the editorial crew of "Sat- urday Night Live." Most of the show's crafts have long been covered by union contracts, and the bulk of post-production employees working on NBCUniversal shows broadcast out of 30 Rockefeller Center are in the jurisdiction of National Alliance of Broad- cast Employees and Technicians (NABET) contracts. But a gap in NABET's jurisdiction had rendered the film editorial crew that puts together the show's pre-shot sketches — a bunch of about 20 freelance employees in various classifications — effectively orphaned for some time. Their pay was well below industry standards, and they hoped to improve other aspects of their jobs, as well. So last October, at the start of the current season of the show, they decided to