Latest news with #JulieBush
Yahoo
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Suspended Writers Guild West Member Reacts to Strike Discipline Vote: 'This Was Never, Ever a Clear-Cut Case'
On Friday, the results of a Writers Guild of America West vote over discipline for members accused of breaking strike rules signaled a divided union, at least on this issue. In the cases of three writers, disciplinary measures initially decided by the union's board were upheld, but by tight margins (between 52 and nearly 55 percent). A fourth writer's 'public censure' sentence over a Facebook post considered offensive was overturned in favor of an alternative action, months after the union publicly admonished the member, with 62 percent voting to throw out the punishment. More from The Hollywood Reporter Trump Finds His Class War Wedge Issue in Hollywood: Movie Tariffs What Donald Trump Is Really After With Movie Tariffs Teamsters Cheer Trump's Movie Tariffs, Rip Studios For "Fleeing" America Julie Bush, a union member for roughly 15 years since she got her card through Sons of Anarchy, was one of the members whose discipline was confirmed by the proceedings on Friday. On May 22, weeks after the 2023 writers' strike began, Bush sent a non-signatory company a revision of a pilot she had written. Writers are forbidden by the union's Working Rule 8 from working with non-signatory companies, but Bush says the company had promised it would eventually become a signatory and she was working with the union to make that happen. Once the work stoppage began, strike rules dictated that union members couldn't work for struck companies, which the company wasn't at that point. Bush has said she 'deeply regret[s]' sending the script, which created 'confusion and hurt regarding guild rules;' the union called it 'scab writing.' Eventually, a five-member trial committee and the union's board didn't find Bush guilty of breaking strike rules. Instead, Bush was disciplined for engaging in conduct 'prejudicial to the welfare of the guild' (an infringement of an article in the union's constitution) and of writing for a non-signatory company. She was sentenced by the board to a suspension until 2026 and was permanently forbidden for holding non-elected office in the union, a harsher punishment than the one that the trial committee initially recommended. Now, members have voted to ratify that temporary exile. In an interview, Bush discussed why she decided to file an appeal in the first place, her feelings about the close results and why she's planning on reporting recent proceedings to the Department of Labor and National Labor Relations Board. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to the WGA West for comment. What is your initial reaction to today's results? I'm obviously disappointed. The guild [has been] my main community since I first got to L.A. with a dream, and I continue to love these people and the guild. I had received so many wonderful messages that I guess I sort of fooled myself into thinking that I would prevail. So I'm pretty upset right now, I'll be honest. And I'm surprised and upset and disappointed. But the way that the Guild has evolved in recent years, they've sort of become this kind of top-down, authoritarian structure where no dissent will be brooked. Everybody has to march one way. And so in a way, I shouldn't be surprised at all. I really do feel like that's what this is all about, and I feel like that's what drove this outcome. I'm wondering if you can respond to the vote tally that the Writers Guild provided, because in your case and others the results were close. In my case, the actual vote was 745 in favor of upholding and 686 in favor of restoring the trial committee's decision. That's the difference of just 59 votes. I have never in all my years in the guild — that's 10 years as a full, current, active member — seen a guild vote come in at less than 90 percent one direction. This is almost a literal 50-50 tie. So I just told Van Robichaux, who was the wonderful guild member who represented me through this entire ordeal for free, in an act of incredible solidarity, 'I hope that you are very proud of what you have done here.' Because this is a great act of David and Goliath here that he and I undertook. So I believe that this marks a turning point. I believe that guild members are ready for a change, and I think that that's what this vote is signaling. Why did you decided to appeal the ruling in your case — what thinking went into that? When they were first making noise about charging me, I couldn't believe it because I knew that it was questionable, very debatable whether I had broken any rules. I knew from the start that I had not broken any strike rules, and that was actually confirmed by the trial committee, and I knew that it was debatable and questionable whether I had even broken Working Rule 8. And so the fact that the SRCC [Strike Rules Compliance Committee] even indicted me to the board, that the board recommended me to the trial committee, at each step, I was surprised because I didn't think I had broken any rules and I honestly believe that each of those groups didn't understand the rules clearly. I think that this was a case of these groups being just so eager to find any scapegoat so that they could take somebody to the membership to be like, 'See, see, we got somebody.' This was just never, ever a clear-cut case of me doing anything wrong, ever. Can you explain the 'alternative action' that you proposed as your punishment and why you felt that was appropriate? What the board came up with in their new appeals process that they completely invented, which was not part of the [guild] constitution, they said to me, 'You need to propose your own alternative action that the members will vote on.' And so I said, okay, so I'm going to participate in this new imaginary, made-up process, under protest, because I was afraid that if I didn't participate that I would then waive my right to appeal. So I submitted the specific language of my alternative action. I was very careful with how I worded it because as writer, we understand that the wording of language, particularly in something this heated, is very important. In my memory, the way I worded it was something like, 'Restore the decision of the trial committee: A private letter of censure and three-year ban from serving as a captain.' That was the exact punishment that the trial committee handed down to me. The problem is that when I actually saw the ballot that the election department submitted to the membership to vote on, they stripped that important context from the language of my alternative action [that this was the original punishment proposed by the trial committee]. So then they just had it saying, 'Julie Bush's alternative action is private letter of censure and three-year ban on serving as captain.' And then I actually saw members debating it in the private WGA Facebook group, and they were actually saying, 'Why did she want to be a captain so badly if she doesn't even understand the rules?' And the entire point is that's not the punishment I made up for myself; that's the punishment the trial committee assigned for me. So the election department stripping away that language, it actually makes a big difference. Has your view on the guild changed since undergoing this process? Yes, definitely. I used to be one of those people that completely 100 percent backs the board, whatever the board says, I'm your soldier. And I just don't feel that way anymore. I've just really come to realize that they don't necessarily know what they're doing and that they don't even know the rules that well, and that while they purport to be experts in these matters, they're just not, and they don't even know the laws that well. What are your next steps following today's result? We're going directly to the Department of Labor and the NLRB. I'm going to send them everything I have and sort of let them determine exactly what to call what's happened here. Anything else you'd like to add? The message I just want to convey is I have wanted to be a writer my entire life; this is my identity. This experience has been absolutely devastating for me. Getting into the guild was one of the best things that happened to me my entire life, and I can't believe this has happened to me. It's been absolutely devastating, horrifying, crushing. It will take me years to get over this, if ever. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 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Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Writers Guild West Strike Discipline Largely Upheld In Close Member Vote
Did the Writers Guild of America West board of directors go too far in disciplining members that allegedly broke the rules of its 2023 strike? Or did it appropriately respond to actions that threatened the union and its members? Union members answered that question with a mixed response on Thursday in a vote that upheld three out of four punishments. Discipline was upheld after very tight results in the case of Julie Bush (745 to 686), Edward Drake (769 to 652) and Roma Roth (778 to 639). Doyle's punishment was overturned and an alternative action taken after members voted 915 to 557. More from The Hollywood Reporter Trump Finds His Class War Wedge Issue in Hollywood: Movie Tariffs What Donald Trump Is Really After With Movie Tariffs Teamsters Cheer Trump's Movie Tariffs, Rip Studios For "Fleeing" America Out of seven writers disciplined for allegedly breaking the WGA's strike rules, Bush, Drake, Doyle and Roth had all chosen to appeal their punishments. The punishments handed down to the three other disciplined writers remains unknown. The board of the labor organization had previously expelled two of the writers — Drake and Roth — while suspending Bush until 2026 and banning her from occupying non-elected office in the guild. Doyle was publicly censured for posting an image on social media considered racist. The vote concludes a highly charged period for the famously hard-charging guild. In their appeals materials, the accused writers called into question the methods practiced by the union to police its own and raised charges that the guild had violated its own constitution, even federal labor law. But the union's member leaders have maintained that they meted out appropriate punishments. In the last few days, board members Nicole Yorkin and Rob Forman have encouraged union members to uphold the body's rulings, with Forman saying the board 'acted fairly.' In his message, Forman called for writers to 'reject the disciplined members' excuses for hurting the Guild by turning their backs on their fellow writers during the strike.' WGA team captain Tyler Ruggeri in a separate email to the WGA members for whom he is a resource also encouraged them to uphold the board's initial disciplinary action. 'These measures might seem difficult or uncomfortable to vote on, but the bottom line is that the members were found in violation and are exercising their right to an appeal,' he said, in between reporting on other WGA business. Unions can determine the specifics of how they want conduct internal disciplinary procedures, within limit. The Landrum Griffin Act, also known as the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, requires unions in disciplinary proceedings to provide members with written, specific charges, an appropriate amount of time to assemble their defense and a 'full and fair hearing.' Meanwhile, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions has demonstrated that, under the National Labor Relations Act, an individual union 'has the power to protect against the erosion of its status through reasonable discipline of members who violate rules and regulations governing membership,' says Fordham School of Law professor James Brudney, who specializes in labor and employment law. That remains true for discipline of a member who violated a rule against working during a strike. In these sorts of situations, unions often walk a fine line between attempting not to alienate their own members with punishments that could be perceived as overly harsh while also protecting their interests. If enough members break strike rules or cross picket lines, the union's leverage with employers to negotiate and enforce contracts would be severely eroded. Generally, unions 'shouldn't, and they typically don't, go wild, but they do have a lot of latitude,' says University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Labor and Employment Relations professor Robert Bruno. 'Keep in mind, the union's a private organization. It's not a government entity.' Over the course of the appeals process, arguments that the union had taken liberties with this process came to the fore. A letter written by the chair of an internal trial committee in Roth's case emerged, alleging that a guild attorney had inappropriately tipped the scales of that group's decision on a suitable punishment. That chair, former public defender Jill Goldsmith, removed herself from the committee. A minority opinion in Doyle's case, written by an unnamed member of his trial committee, also became public. Its writer claimed that the WGA West board and a union lawyer had 'chosen to intentionally misrepresent and weaponize provisions of our Constitution in an attempt to send a message and punish a member of the guild.' And Bush raised the issue of the WGA West board recently changing its process for disciplinary appeals. In a letter to the WGA West board posted April 30, Bush called for a general membership meeting, which the union's constitution designated as a forum for appeals. In February, the union's board adopted new rules for appeals allowing for an online vote. 'I reserve the right to escalate these issues to the Department of Labor if not resolved in a timely manner,' Bush wrote. In a response, Writers Guild West general counsel Sean Graham denied her request and said the board had adopted the new procedures as a practical matter. 'The Board concluded that it would be ineffective to hold an annual membership meeting to resolve the appeals due to the inability to achieve a quorum, which is defined as 10% of the Current Active membership of the Guild (approximately 1,100 members).' At the last membership meeting, in 2019, he said, fewer than 30 members attended, so the online vote allowed for more members to be able to participate. Documents were released to members about the proceedings before the appeals vote commenced on May 6, shining a light on an often private process previously undergone by major figures like Jay Leno and Joan Rivers. The timing of the vote is significant, considering that the Writers Guild of America is about a year away from returning to the bargaining table with major studios and streamers. The union will be looking to keep members activated, engaged and united in order to present a strong front to employers in 2026. 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