Saturday, January 5, 2008

Dave Strikes One for the WGA

9 comments:

Matt said...

god, i love letterman.

Mef said...

he's the best.

on an unrelated note: now if someone could just explain 'fi-core' to me.

there's no way we have that in canada, right?

Dave said...

i thought fi-core was the opposite of soft-sci...

DMc said...

I have no idea. But I have a hard time believing that anyone in this strike who goes fi-core won't be exposed and ostracized once the thing's over. I mean you do have to essentially resign from the WGA -- so it's public. Would you hire someone who did that?

Anonymous said...

Vas ees dees? Madness! From the Jay Leno story on Deadline Hollywood:

'Financial core status is a legal compromise. It is permissible to require union “membership” as a prerequisite for work. But if there is such a requirement, a person is allowed to choose to pay the dues but not participate in or be bound by any union rules. Such a person is the beneficiary of any collective bargaining agreements, of course.'

Fooey on that.

Mef said...

yeah i read the definition i just don't understand it. i don't understand the legal reasons behind it. it seems to defeat the purpose of unions.

i was wondering if that exists in canada. it seems very odd to me and it's something i'd never heard of until three weeks ago.

oh well.

Ed McNamara said...

I'm no lawyer, but I think that fi-core status effectively allows a union to represent all employees in bargaining, even those who may disagree with being represented. It's not a WGA thing, but a union thing in the US. There's likely a Canadian equivalent, but it may be called something else.

Mef said...

ok thanks ed.
hate to show my ignorance.
still seems a little odd but it least now i see the rationale.

mark

Diane Kristine Wild said...

mef, the reasoning I heard was that because most unions participate in political activities - donating to a political party or charitable cause, for example - the Supreme Court ruled people couldn't be forced to participate just because they had to join the union to work in the industry. So financial core was the way to let people only pay the part of the dues that goes to collective bargaining, be represented by the union but not get a vote.

I'm not sure if we have anything similar in Canada.