An expose of bad businesses and their unethical practices

I have become ambivalent about the ethics of labor disputes. Once, in my youth (long ago) I understood that the downtrodden union members were trying hard to gain some recognition, rights, and pay from the evil coal barons, etc., etc. Then there came a point where the pendulum had swung a bit too far the other way. Auto companies were going broke and the striking auto workers were making $35 an hour.

Now we have The Writer’s Strike. It probably is not true, but what first comes to my mind is that a bunch of rich Hollywood writers are out on strike against a bunch of rich Hollywood studios. Ditto New York. They are fighting over digital property rights, and the right to support other strikers, and (oh, yeah) the amount of money writers make to write.

They are not fighting about a living wage. They are not fighting about working conditions. They are not fighting about a cost of living increase. They are taking about issues that could involve billions of dollars as technology changes the way Hollywood and New York produce entertainment. This is not the Great Coal Strike of 1902. The change that drops off the negotiating table would feed a lot of poor families of four.

And, from what I can see, there is enough spin involved to make a fighter pilot dizzy. Most of that spin is being added by teams of professional negotiators. Some is obviously coming from the studios. Probably, there is some spin from the writers, as well. As you read the news on the strike, it becomes apparent that there is even some downright lying going on. Frankly, it makes it a little hard to care, or to root for one of two sides that you can see gouging and biting in the clinches.

It is difficult to see that there is any Good Business involved in this strike. It looks more like mutual greed inlaid with prevarication. My natural tendency is to pull for the creative people, but they do not seem any more intent on upholding Clean Business Ethics than the studios are. I fear that these are simply the types of ethics that are featured in modern labor disputes and it is clear that none of them are clearly good. For me, the Writer’s Strike is a tossup between Bad Business and Business As Usual, which is to say, “Bad Business.”