In a defiant clarion call for continued solidarity and endurance as the Writers Guild’s strike enters its second month, WGA negotiating committee co-chair Chris Keyser says in a new video that the guild’s fight for a fair contract is not one that’s being fought for writers alone, but for the entire labor movement. “When you walk in circles in front of every studio in town,” he tells the guild’s members in the clip (watch it below), “you are carrying with you a cause that is larger than just us and this business, though just us and this business would have been enough.
We are marching for labor, and labor is watching us. “We have, it turns out to our great fortune, something very precious: we have a strong union in a heavily unionized industry.
We have what many workers in this country do not. If we succeed, we will make it easier – not easy – but easier, for others to succeed after us.
If we falter, if we fail, if it is the companies’ power that wins the day, not ours, then we will have failed for everyone. We will have made it harder for everyone.” Keyser, a former president of the WGA West, says that the strike, which began May 2, has been “highly accomplished in inflicting pain on the companies,” and vowed that the WGA will continue with the strike even if the Directors Guild and SAG-AFTRA reach their own separate deals with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
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