White-collar Sweatshops.

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Many of the freelancers who create your favorite TV shows have been toiling in white-collar sweatshops.

Organized labor's latest victories are coming in a field where no one expected unions to make gains: freelance writers and producers in nonfiction television. The Writers Guild of America, East, has won two notoriously difficult National Labor Relations Board elections in favor of creating unions at ITV Studios and Atlas Media, companies that contract workers for popular TV shows such as "Dr. G: Medical Examiner" and "The First 48."

With another election pending, for workers who help create "Cash Cab" and PBS's "History Detectives," it appears the Guild is having success doing the impossible.

And that's a big lesson, because freelancers are a large, and growing, part of the workforce. “More than 25 percent of all working Americans are, whether they want to be or not, temporary laborers, and that number will surely rise in the coming years,” wrote Richard Greenwald for In These Times. That means that they survive from job to job, contract to contract, often with no idea where their next paycheck is coming from—and certainly no pension fund, 401K or benefits.

“The main thing we can learn from this campaign is that it can be done, freelance employees can organize, freelance employees can win benefits,” says Justin Molito, director of organizing at the Writers Guild.

More . . .

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