Unions are a NECESSARY feedback system in capitalism. A union is a bank for human skills, exerting bullypower against the Share Value banks. We lost unions 40 years ago along with all the other countervectors. UNLIKE the other losses, I can’t blame Wall Street. Unions fouled their own nests by helping Wall Street to offshore industry. They didn’t NEED to destroy their own purpose.
Some smaller unions are recovering the old skill bank soul, especially in ‘creative’ areas like entertainment and journalism. They’ve been trying to fight the private equity centralizers for a while, and now they’re proving more effective in fighting Altman. They’re enforcing the licensing and payment arrangements that legislation misses.
Via Nieman, the small local newspaper in State College was subsumed under McClatchy several years ago. McClatchy decided to write articles with LLM, placing the machine-written article under the byline of a local reporter.
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Currently, 74 established newsroom units represented by The NewsGuild-CWA, the largest news worker union in the country, include some AI language in their union contracts. … McClatchy’s unionized newsrooms, especially those with ratified contracts, have had greater leverage and control over how the CSA tool is used.
“Unionized newsrooms are the ones where McClatchy’s AI slop gets a clear label. In non-union newsrooms, the AI slop may be carrying a real human reporter’s byline.”
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So the reporters at Centre Daily Times formed a branch of the union and negotiated a contract. Now they can be PROUD of products bearing their name.
Polistra's Mill 