Regarding Scabs

As most of you who read this blog are doubtless aware, the Writers Guild of America is currently on strike due to the unwillingness of the major Hollywood production studios to give the writers a fair contract. While I will most likely be writing more about the various components of the strike in future entries, today's post is devoted to that most repugnant of creatures — the scab.

In order to understand the full wretchedness of the scab, we must begin with the fundament premise that unions raise the standard of living across the board. When a union wins a major victory, it places pressure on employers of non-union workers to increase pay and benefits for their employees as well, lest they leave for union jobs. Do you enjoy your weekends? Your forty-hour work weeks? They are two of an infinite number of protections secured for workers - union or not - by organized labor movements.

Scabs are union-breakers, pure and simple. Their willingness to work more for less damages the ability of all workers (including scabs) to earn a living wage. The greatest irony is that in their shortsighted attempts at personal gain these milquetoasts are working against their own self-interest. Parallel to his namesake, the scab is a transitory, odious thing temporarily covering the bloody corporate underpinnings that cause labor disputes. Like a physical scab, the labor scab will be sloughed off once the body to which it is attached heals.

I could go on, but I'd doubtlessly devolve into sputtering and the excessive use of exclamation points. Instead I'll link a speech written by Jack London in which he analyzes motivational factors inherent in human nature to assert that while scabbing and the smashing in of said scab's head with a tire iron are equally valid animal behaviors, ultimately, the scab deserves it: The Scab.

Regarding the current strike situation, I conclude with the fact that it truly astounds me how people are ready to cast their sympathies alongside the wealthy CEOs who could give a fig's ass about them, proffering the cheap rationale that Hollywood writers are already rich and overpaid (they're not). As if Les Moonves and Nick Counter are just poor working schmucks barely making ends meet!

Complicit in your own oppression much?