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Comment by whimsicalism | Hacker News Reader

Writers who have no aspiration of writing in America? WGA blacklists you if you scab

... but imagine that Disney, Warner Bros, literally ever major studio did that all at once. The WGA would have to blacklist them all - which would almost be certain implosion.

They don't blacklist the studios, they blacklist the writers.

In that case, though it would be very extreme, the studios could theoretically announce that there are enough writers in the world that the WGA is no longer necessary - they'll just hire writers from Britain, France, Germany, wherever. They could also spin it as a good thing - greater diversity in film! And they can hire some cheap American non-WGA writers to Americanize the humor or references wherever needed.

That would, of course, break the WGA. The WGA's existence depends on major movie studios needing them. If the movie studios decide to adapt in a way that the WGA is unnecessary... they're dead, and no writer will stick with them, everyone will scab. The WGA would have to beg SAG-AFTRA and the DGA to strike on their behalf, but that would cause... lawsuits; lots of lawsuits; because is it legal for one union to strike to save another union?

If the labor dynamic were as one-sided as you seem to be making it out to be, WGA would have been broken a long time ago.

Turns out people like watching things written by the best writers - and plenty of studios would defect if they got to be the only studio with access to most of the best television writers in the West.

> WGA blacklists you if you scab

Someone unaffiliated with the WGA takes a job and then is ostracized? That sounds pretty evil, and it puts me firmly on the side of Hollywood.

You are not unaffiliated with the WGA if you are scabbing WGA covered work at a WGA shop.

This honestly sounds more like a cartel than a union.

Well, it is how unions have functioned in the states for a long time. Worker unions don't work very well if you do nothing to combat free rider costs.

And it’s why unions have been losing collective bargaining power over the last couple decades.

The world is different now. Economy is global, people are trying to make a living doing something that makes them happy. Not everyone is a union member, and it’s absolutely ridiculous to extort a young professional from taking a career defining opportunity because a certain, very entitled group decides they want it even better.

Unions striking is within their right. Go for it. But it’s absolutely unacceptable to start blacklisting non-union people who don’t fall in line because the union doesn’t happen to have as much bargaining power as they would have liked.

Freedom of choice is fundamental and I have a choice as to who I work with. That I can use that power to coordinate with my peers for better pay does not transform a refusal to work with scabs into a coercive act.

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