Originally published at: Writer's Guild hands out leaflets outside Apple store detailing what it might do to support writers | Boing Boing
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I was thinking that a retail store was a weird place to do this (which it is), but then I thought, where else could you picket Apple? Their HQ is a literal fortress that’s not on public streets, and their TV business happens entirely online.
I guess at least Apple is an old-fashioned enough business that they have a presence in physical space at all. If you want to picket Netflix or Sony or whoever, there’s literally no space in which to have that interaction, other than artificial media spaces which are only visible to someone who’s already engaged on one side or another.
The equivalent of an old-school picket would require the WGA to somehow hack your TV to show union messages in front of Netflix shows.
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All the streamers have buildings in which they are picketing in front of… I do not see Apple on that list, but Netflix is there in the list.
Apple+ programming such as Severance and Loot have already had their shooting schedules disrupted by the strike.
Whatever it takes to get the writers a better living situation.
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I have a friend who works at Netflix, and they have a normal office building in Los Angeles with all the other media companies.
Regarding these leaflets, comparing to Apple’s overall revenue is slightly disingenuous since Apple TV+ only accounts for 2% of revenue and the business unit is not currently profitable. I’m all for the strike and writers should get everything they ask for, but comparing their demand against the $260bn number is dubious.
Again, I am fully supportive of WGA and Apple should pay them everything they ask for. Please don’t dogpile on me for pointing out the one bit of disingenuousness in their leaflet.
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See above…
Two percent of $260B is still a pretty big number. If the OP’s number is correct (“WGA’s demands would come out to roughly $17M a year”), then that’s just a third of one percent of TV+'s revenue. (Someone might wanna check my math, tho.)
More than anything, WGA is just trying to raise awareness. Retail traffic is a great tactic to this end.
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Exactly why they should used the real number, not the disingenuous one. They didn’t have to be disingenuous and still would have made their point. Movements always undermine themselves when they do wrong things for right reasons.
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