Real-World Labor Issues Too Much for MTV

Thursday, March 18th, 2004

MTV’s “The Real World” was coming to Philadelphia in just three short weeks. Then the unions started picketing. From Yahoo! News – Real-World Labor Issues Too Much for MTV:

Bunim/Murray Productions said Tuesday it had given up plans to tape the 15th season of ‘The Real World’ in Philadelphia. Taping had been set to begin in three weeks.

The production company had angered labor unions by hiring a nonunion company to renovate the former Seamen’s Church Institute in Old City, where it planned to have seven strangers live together and have their lives videotaped. Members of the building trades unions picketed outside the building.

[...]

“I’ve got kids looking at me like I killed Santa Claus,” Pat Gillespie, president of the powerful Building Trades Council, said Wednesday. “Look, they come into our town and make a decision to avoid union workers. Whether they were prepared for what would happen, it was a conscious decision that they made.”

So the unions cut off their nose to spite their face, and MTV wasn’t prepared for what would happen?

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