http://youtu.be/YsQgsQJmmgQ
Joan Rivers is not a nice a person according to a spokesperson for the Writers Guild of America. Melodie Shaw, field representative and organizer for The Writers Guild of America West, said that Rivers verbally abused the writers on E’s Fashion Police after they approached her about joining a union. Shaw said this during an interview airing Friday on Pacifica Radio’s David Feldman Show.
Shaw said the Fashion Police writers were earning $610 a week without health insurance. In 2013 they decided it was time to go union after two other E comedy programs, hosted by Chelsea Handler and Joel McHale, joined the WGA (Writers Guild of America). Shaw said those two programs went union, “in no small measure due to Handler and McHale supporting their writers every step of the way.”
Shaw said Rivers, a member of the WGA for several decades, “turned on her writers” during a meeting “hurling expletives” and then storming out when they told her they couldn’t live on $610 a week without health insurance.
In response to Rivers’ failure to assist them in joining the WGA, Fashion Police writers approached the union on their own, and then staged a walkout. Shaw said Rivers, a WGA member, continued to work despite the walkout which is a violation of union rules. This prompted the WGA to schedule a disciplinary hearing to determine whether they would revoke Rivers’ union membership. In October of 2013, right before her hearing was to be held, an apologetic Rivers contacted the WGA and promised she would support her writers and help them get a union contract. Shaw said that based on those assurances the WGA immediately cancelled Rivers’ disciplinary hearing.
Fashion Police writers voted unanimously to join the union in December of 2013. Under federal law Fashion Police was then required to negotiate with the WGA. Shaw said since that vote Rivers has not negotiated in good faith, rarely returning calls from the union and offering her writers a contract way below union standards. Shaw said Rivers even went so low as to tell the press that her writers were “schmucks” and “idiots” for organizing.
When asked if Rivers had been kicked out of the Writers Guild, Shaw said not yet because the WGA is still hoping they can cut a deal with E’s Fashion Police.
Shaw was a guest on the David Feldman Show broadcast nationwide on Pacifica Radio and available as a podcast on iTunes. Feldman said he invited Shaw on his program after watching Rivers grow hostile and storm off the set during a CNN interview earlier in the week after the host asked if she was “mean.”
“It seems to me,” said Feldman, “that how you treat your employees is a pretty good barometer of whether or not you’re cruel. $610 a week with no health insurance? That seems pretty cruel to me.”
Feldman began the interview by asking Shaw if Joan Rivers was mean. Shaw responded, “Yes.”
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