Rep. Katie Porter Says WGA Strike Is “About So Much More” Than Writers As She Joins Culver Studios Picket Line
12.05.2023 - 22:07
/ deadline.com
Rep. Katie Porter joined writers on the picket line at the Culver Studios in Los Angeles on Friday in solidarity with the ongoing WGA strike.
Before addressing the crowd, Porter led them in a chant heard frequently at picket lines across the city over the past two weeks: “What do we want? Fair contracts. When do we want them? Now.”
“You know when we wanted it? Yesterday,” she said, as she took the megaphone. “One of the things I love about this movement is that you guys are in it to stand up to corporate power and set an example for all of your brothers and sisters who are workers, who are unionized, and who are struggling to have labor rights.”
Porter described the current movement as a “powerful, powerful strike” that has “put America on notice that we cannot continue to allow corporations to treat workers like they are disposable.”
“To all of the studio executives and to the AMPTP… You have to honor your workers and do right by them or you’re not doing right by the business and the economy that you’re claiming to be at the top of”: U.S. Representative Katie Porter tells Deadline #WritersStrike pic.twitter.com/daMridDyD4
“What is happening here is happening across the United States and across industries, which is big corporations trying to use industry transformation and technology as a weak sauce excuse to bust unions and hurt workers in order to boost their bottom line,” she said, adding: “And to that, I say ‘Bullsh*t.'”
Speaking with Deadline, Porter reiterated that the WGA strike could have ramifications that extend far beyond the entertainment industry.
“We are seeing across the country, industry after industry, not just in entertainment, that corporations are using innovation and technology as an excuse to bust