The fat WGA election packet arrived in the mail yesterday. I haven’t opened it yet. I’m dreading going through all the election material and reading all the statements. I haven’t made up my mind yet how to vote. This one isn’t easy. My friend Mark Evanier does a great job summing up the election over on his terrific blog.
If you’re not a WGA member, you’re missing out on the fun of seeing a
batch of articulate, dedicated people who essentially agree on almost
all the key issues waging a bloody battle against one another. Every
one of them is in favor of strengthening the guild, increasing
minimums, protecting and rebuilding the health insurance and pension
funds, extending WGA jurisdiction to non-covered areas like animation
and reality programming, etc. Still, in the guild, we never like to let
the fact that we’re all on the same side keep us from having a nice,
divisive fight……To the extent there is a difference of issues between the teams, it’s
that the "New WGA" crew wants to drastically increase the amount of
money the WGA spends on organizing efforts, getting non-guild TV shows
and movies under the guild umbrella, along with new technologies. The
"Common Sense" candidates endorse the goal but not the strategy,
arguing that the "New WGA" guys are looking at a very expensive
organizing model that might work for non-creative unions but won’t work
for writers.
Like Mark, I’m unlikely to vote for one of the slates but will pick individual candidates I agree with (he calls it the "Chinese Food" approach).