O Canada — put down your pens!
Well, the Hollywood strike is, like the subprime loan disaster, another American-spawned debacle spreading inexorably around the world.
In this instance, Canadian scriptwriters have been told by their union, the WGC (we’re betting you can figure out the acronym on your own) not to accept
work from American producers who may want to “outsource” some scriptwriting work.
As the crisply-named Guy Dixon reports in the Toronto Globe and Mail, the WGC issued a statement saying “Their fight is our fight,” speaking of their impoverished cousins, with the weak currency, to the south. The WGC statement went on to say “the issues the WGA is addressing will affect every professional artist seeking compensation for their work in the digital age.”
As Dixon delineates it in the Globe: “Under Canadian rules, writers who belong to both the Canadian and American guilds and who live in the U.S. have to abide by the American strike rules. Dual members of both unions who reside in Canada can work for Canadian productions, but a WGC member in Canada cannot accept work from U.S. producers.”
Then again, with the dollar plunging, they’d probably only want to work for an American if he or she could afford to pay in a currency that’s actually stable or worth something
right now–like Canada’s surging Loonie (worth nearly a buck ten last time we looked, and an upcoming factor in what will make international outsourcing too expensive for Hollywood, very soon), or Euros, or Yuan.
