Tag: unionization

Notes: A’s and Vegas, Nashville, and front office unionization

More on the A’s and Las Vegas, the next step in expansion, and a look at the why and what of front office unionization.

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one. Sign up to receive articles like this one in your inbox here.

The A’s are likely going to play baseball in Las Vegas as soon as their lease with the city of Oakland is up following the 2024 season, but then again, maybe they won’t. All of that is pretty unsettled at the moment, with all kinds of negotiations for public subsidies and tax dollars still occurring, which will happen for at least another month until Vegas’ current legislative session ends. “The A’s move to Las Vegas” is probably the most-likely scenario, but there’s also “the A’s stay in Oakland, sell, and current owner John Fisher takes over an expansion team that will go to Vegas instead” as well as “the A’s and Las Vegas don’t agree on anything in time but Oakland won’t renew the lease, leaving the A’s to play their games in a Triple-A stadium while they argue over public funding for years, again.”

Continue reading “Notes: A’s and Vegas, Nashville, and front office unionization”

WWE might have finally pushed their workers too far

This article is free for anyone to read, but please consider becoming a Patreon subscriber to allow me to keep writing posts like this one.

World Wrestling Entertainment has long trampled on workers’ rights without anyone in the labor movement so much as lifting a finger in opposition. Their classification of workers as independent contractors isn’t new by any means, and neither is the lack of benefits for their performers, but WWE was basically left alone to do what they wished in this regard for decades. Now, though, they might have pushed too far, as the Screen Actors Guild is finally taking notice, and promising to begin protecting WWE’s independent contractors.

What brought on this sudden change in approach? That would be the firing of Zelina Vega, real name Thea Trinidad, for her refusal to hand over the keys to her Twitch account to WWE. Per a new edict from the world’s largest wrestling company, the third-party streaming accounts hosted by services like Twitch were actually under the jurisdiction of WWE: the plan, going forward, was to control those accounts, negotiate advertising partnerships themselves, and then divvy up the money generated by those platforms between WWE and the performers themselves. This is, in short, theft, as explained earlier this year:

Continue reading “WWE might have finally pushed their workers too far”