The Writers Guild of America is taking on the Hollywood bosses and a strike that is now entering its third week.

Writers are fed up with producers making their work more uncertain, intense, and lower paying,

and the strike touches on an issue of existential concern to all workers, artificial intelligence. We need a new system.

We need a new society.

We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago,

but is not only realizable, but an imperative necessity. We are very excited to have Professor Richard Wolfe join us for a regular weekly segment where we discuss the biggest stories relating to the economy, the state of the working class, and the crimes of big business.

I'm Walter Smolerick, filling in for Brian Becker.

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Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many books,

the latest being The Sickness is the System.

When capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself,

you can check out all of his work at rd.wulf.com.

Well, Professor Wolfe, let's start off by just getting the basics down.

What is the significance of this writer's strike, the Hollywood Writers' Strike?

What does it mean for the economy?

What does it mean for the broader working class?

Well, I think it's a very important strike.

It's part of a rising tide of labor militancy that's been going on.

It's a little different from the Amazon and Starbucks kinds of initiative

because it isn't low-paid workers, it isn't people working in the unspeakable conditions

of an Amazon warehouse, for example, that are beyond words

...