Management and labor

Re “Strike still felt by TV workers,” April 28

Having recently moved here from Michigan, a state decimated economically and in a recession for the last several years, I read how the writer’s strike has hurt the movie industry and, most important, the people who make a living in it.

The unions in Michigan are also hurting an entire industry and region as jobs move south to states that don’t require union membership to work.

One day, the rest of America will wake up and realize that unions have outlived their usefulness (federal and state labor and wage laws now protect workers, unlike 80 years ago).

In a global economy, union wages and rules just don’t cut it. When more and more movie industry jobs move to other states, maybe California will wake up and see the writing on the wall.

K. Kenneth Cooper

Marina del Rey

I am astonished that your article extensively documented the difficult aftermath of the writers’ strike on below-the-line workers, yet made no mention of the fact that the deal the Assn. of Motion Picture and Television Producers eventually made was basically the deal that the Writers Guild of America initially asked for before the strike began.

The deal that was supposedly financially untenable for the studios magically became tenable when the profits from the Oscar broadcast were threatened.

How much of this pain would have been averted had the AMPTP made the deal four months earlier?

I am not a member of the WGA, but my strongest memory of the strike comes from the day that I visited the picket line and saw writers opening their own strained checkbooks for below-the-line workers.

Did any members of the AMPTP do anything like this?

Joel Dahl

West Hollywood