Why is the WGA Negotiating with the AMPTP?

In The Huffington Post, Robert J. Elisberg wrote a great article:Writers Guild Strike Primer: Part 8, The Big Question.

In it he asks, "Why is it the AMPTP who is negotiating with the Writers Guild of America???" This isn't an idle question. It gets right to the heart of the matter and one of the biggest problems in the entertainment industry today: media consolidation. It is not good for what we read, hear, and watch. And, in this case, it is downright illegal.

Illegal? How so? One word: collusions. The AMPTP represents around 350 member film companies that are normally competitors with each other. They compete for stars. They compete for scripts. They compete for box office. They compete for everything. And yet, every three years they come together as business partners and give the AMPTP the authority to negotiate contracts with the WGA, SAG, the DGA, the Teamsters, IATSE, and every other union that represents entertainment workers.

Here is an excellent scenario from the article:

Imagine the auto industry for a moment.

The AMPTP is like if General Motors, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota, Honda and Nissan all got together, decided the terms they would offer employees, and then negotiated as a single body against one isolated division of U.S. auto workers at a time. Divide and conquer. Take it or leave it.

It's not that it would be massively illegal. It's that it would be unconscionable. No one in the aghast free world would stand for it.

No one would stand for it is right. But yet we stand for it in the entertainment industry. Entertainment workers might not produce hard goods like cars and steel, but they deserve the simple protections that anti-trust laws give to those working in such industries.

Disney, Sony, General Electric, Time-Warner, and News Corp. are not only negotiating in bad faith. They are negotiating illegally, and it must stop. Perhaps a call to your local Congress Critter will help.