Our conventional “history” of labor unions focuses on the violent conflicts and corruption, from Haymarket to Hoffa.
As I read about the history of printing, one constant emerges. Guilds have been around for 500 years in highly skilled trades, from masons to printers to silversmiths. The original purpose of a guild was a bank for skills. The guild covered all of life, training apprentices, protecting the skills of journeymen, caring for retirees. It was a medieval development that continued medieval SECURE employment into the Endarkenment era of sweatshop slavery.
The actors who are protesting AI are solidly within the guild tradition. They recognize that outsourcing the simpler roles to AI will eliminate the training side of the profession. Apprentices need to spend time doing routine tasks. That’s how you reach mastery. AI is already stealing the skills of masters without recompense. And AI can effortlessly age or de-age an actor, destroying roles for older actors. All three stages are involved.
When unions expanded to unskilled coal mining and assembly line work, the tradition was conflated and confused in the public mind. Those workers need protection from predatory capitalists, but they don’t really need training, and their skills aren’t copyrightable. Unskilled unions had nothing but money in mind, so their leaders were corrupted by bribes from the capitalists.
Polistra's Mill 