Major League Baseball writers and other content producers have voted to join the Writers Guild of America East.
The WGA said Wednesday that 127 employees of MLB Advanced Media — the content creators for the league’s official website and popular app — are now represented by the New York-based guild for collective bargaining. The American Arbitration Assn. administered an election after a majority of the group signed union cards.
The move marks the first time workers of a professional sports league have formed a WGA bargaining unit.
“The Guild is excited to welcome more workers from the sports industry into the labor movement,” Writers Guild of America East President Tom Fontana said in a statement. “This bargaining unit now has earned a seat at the table with Major League Baseball to negotiate a fair first union contract.”
In a statement, the league said it did not stand in the way of the organizing efforts.
“MLB worked cooperatively and in good faith to identify the appropriate bargaining unit and to respect the rights of the affected employees to decide whether to unionize,” the league said. “We look forward to working with the WGAE as their new representative.”
Neither side disclosed what workplace matters prompted the group to organize.
The unit produces content for the league’s digital offerings in English, Spanish and Japanese.
The effort comes as baseball executives are embroiled in tumultuous contract negotiations with its big league players. The collective bargaining agreement with the Major League Baseball Players Assn. expires Dec. 1, and team owners could lock out players after that deadline if no deal is reached.
Beirne said that Argentina “came out firing” in Dublin as they chased a first away win over Ireland, something that came as no surprise to the Irish pack.
“We weathered the storm and got into how we wanted to play the game,” said Beirne.
“What was pleasing about that was some of those tries were proper team tries and everyone was involved with them. That was the biggest takeaway from the game that.”
But, like Farrell, the second row believes there is more to come at the attacking end of the pitch.
“We probably came away a little bit frustrated because we felt we didn’t capitalise on a lot of the territory at the end of the game and the chances we had.
“That shows how good a performance it was to come away feeling like that.”
After a bruising opener, Farrell will be forced to assess his squad ahead of Fiji’s visit to Dublin on 14 November.
After that, world champions South Africa will be a stern test before the finals weekend in London to round out the international window.
He had offered Craig Casey a chance to impress at scrum-half as first-choice Jamison Gibson-Park returns to full fitness, and he impressed after a slow start.
Ulster back row Nick Timoney also put in a big performance, while Prendergast’s showing at fly-half was also largely positive as he put his stamp on the 10 jersey.
When asked if the performances gave him food for thought for selections for the rest of the window, Farrell said: “Definitely, 100%.
“That’s exactly what you are after going into next week.
“Having some good competition, we’ve had it for 10 days in training so how they performed highlights how they have been training.
“Whatever side we pick next week, they’ll be competing to play the following week.”
The coach who helped guide Jannik Sinner to five Grand Slam titles and the world number one spot is to leave the player’s camp at the end of the year.
Australian Darren Cahill, 61, joined the Italian’s team in June 2022 when Sinner was just outside the world’s top 10 and had never progressed beyond the quarter-finals of a Grand Slam tournament.
But, together with Italian coach Simone Vagnozzi, Cahill has helped Sinner to go on to win five Slams and occupy the world number one spot for 95 weeks.
Injury has meant the 25-year-old has not played since winning Wimbledon for the second year in a row in July, which led to Alexander Zverev recently overtaking him at the top of the rankings.
He is set to return to action at the Six Kings Slam tournament in Saudi Arabia next month.
Swede Magnus Norman, the long-time coach of recently retired Stan Wawrinka, will join Sinner’s team for next season.
“Darren has been an incredibly important part of my journey,” Sinner said.
“Together with Simone and the whole team, we have achieved things I dreamed of growing up.
“He has helped me grow both as a player and as a person, and his guidance will stay with me throughout my career.”
“Working with Jannik has been a special honour and privilege,” Cahill said.
SACRAMENTO — In his first news conference since being elected governor, Xavier Becerra remained noncommittal on taxes, energy and healthcare policy — even refusing to commit to reversing cuts to Medi-Cal coverage for undocumented immigrants, a campaign pledge.
But he asserted that he was already working with legislative counterparts on how to provide critical services and lower the cost of living.
“I can’t make a commitment without knowing what exactly I’m facing,” Becerra said of reversing cuts to Medi-Cal. “I don’t think any voter, any taxpayer, any Californian wants to have a governor who’s still acting like a politician” on the campaign trail.
The governor-elect, speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon inside the state Capitol, had just concluded a meeting with Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas and Senate President Pro-Tempore Monique Limón. The three Democrats appeared side by side in a display of unity between two branches of government with a sometimes-prickly relationship.
“You guys should get used to this,” Becerra said, pointing thumbs at the lawmakers on either side of him. “We’ve got lots to do, and the public made it very clear we should be focused on jobs one, two and three, and that is: cost of living, cost of living, cost of living. Letting California families know we want them to stay, we want them to thrive. We want them to retire in California.”
Becerra has provided few specifics about his plans to ease inflationary pressures. Asked whether he would consider cutting income tax rates for low- and middle-income Californians, he responded that “everything should be on the table.”
“You’re probably going to be hearing me say that a lot, whether it’s on energy, whether it’s on revenue tax policy, whether it’s on healthcare,” he said. “Why should we take anything off the table? We will explore it. At the end of the day, what should stay on is what’s smart and makes sense.”
Although he did not support the billionaire wealth tax on Tuesday’s ballot, Becerra has said repeatedly that he thinks the state’s wealthiest should contribute their fair share.
As a trained lawyer who spent more than 25 years in Congress, Becerra has earned a reputation as a thoughtful politician who takes time to mull over decisions.
Rivas and Limón were equally noncommittal when asked about Becerra’s proposal to provide low-income people with two daily hours of free electricity, which he calls “power hour.”
“Could there be some alignment on this idea of power hour?” Rivas asked. “Possibly, but specific to this proposal, I don’t know enough about it.”
“There’s an opportunity here to look both short-term and long-term” at energy issues, Limón added.
California’s three most powerful elected leaders — for the first time, all Latino — in their private meeting discussed healthcare, energy costs, artificial intelligence and implementing funding from an $11.25-billion housing bond voters approved Tuesday. Becerra, the state’s first directly elected Latino governor, took several questions in Spanish.
The top Democrats will decide how to divvy up hundreds of billions of dollars in the state’s budget beginning early next year.
The state expanded Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented residents over several years, but the costs proved higher than anticipated. In an October 2025 report, the Legislative Analyst’s Office estimated program expansions cost the general fund $10 billion annually, “more than double the initial estimates.”
However, thousands of undocumented immigrants disenrolled from the program last year after President Trump took office.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and lawmakers imposed enrollment freezes and $30 monthly premiums for working-age undocumented adults, which take effect next year.
Becerra’s campaign website says he would “direct state agencies to protect access to essential, medically appropriate health services from federal restrictions, including reproductive care and healthcare for immigrant communities.”
Shortly before the news conference, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass conceded the race to challenger Nithya Raman. Becerra offered congratulations and said he would soon be in touch with the mayor-elect.
“I hope I can change the relationship with local government,” Becerra said, adding that he wants his administration to work closely with mayors and county supervisors around the state. “I know local government fears sometimes that Sacramento doesn’t pay attention to them and shortchanges them.”
On the Capitol grounds earlier in the day, Republican nominee Steve Hilton, whom Becerra defeated, said he hoped his opponent “can and will bring the change that people want to see in California.”
“There’s a desperation among regular working people in California,” Hilton said, his voice shaking with emotion. “Whatever they do in the next four years, I really hope they understand that Californians are at breaking point.”
Voters in the Northern California city of Vallejo passed a ballot measure adopting binding arbitration with its public employee unions more than 50 years ago, following a bitter police strike.
The goal was labor peace. Under binding arbitration, an independent referee is brought in when negotiators hit an impasse. The final decision on wages, benefits and working conditions is taken out of the hands of the local elected officials and placed squarely with the arbitrator.
With Measure A on the Nov. 3 ballot, Los Angeles County voters have a chance to do much the same thing here.
The measure is being pushed by unions representing county firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and other public safety employees who by law cannot go out on strike, and who say binding arbitration adds balance to the negotiation process by taking away the unilateral authority held by the county Board of Supervisors.
No formal opposition to Measure A has been submitted. But in his summary of the potential impact this year, county chief executive Joe Nicchita shared news stories showing how binding arbitration has played out in other jurisdictions, including Vallejo.
In 2007, a mediator determined that despite fiscal travails, Vallejo couldn’t reduce the size of its fire department. Eight months later, with little budgetary wiggle room, the city declared bankruptcy.
Vallejo had been the first California municipality to adopt binding arbitration. In 2010, the voters decided to ditch it.
Supervisor Holly Mitchell voiced concerns about Measure A when the board discussed placing it on the ballot this year.
“Arbitrators aren’t elected,” she said. “They’re not required to weigh countywide trade-offs like homeless services, like healthcare, capital improvements, all those things.”
The board voted 4-0 to place binding arbitration on the Nov. 3 ballot, with Mitchell abstaining. Supporters say there are sufficient protections to prevent the county from experiencing the financial tribulations that Vallejo and other cities suffered in part because of binding arbitration.
“This process opens up the books, allows the parties to come together and base decisions on facts rather than political preferences, and it also shows whether there are actually resources to meet the demands that are coming,” Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, an architect of the measure, said in an interview.
Horvath previously noted that just six of the 21 jurisdictions in California that have instituted binding arbitration, including two counties, have had to resort to it.
If a majority of county voters approves Charter Amendment A, it will cover 14 bargaining units representing some 16,500 county workers, among them lifeguards and deputy medical examiners. It would not apply to bargaining units whose workers can strike.
In the current system, if the sides are unable to reach an agreement, the supervisors can impose a final offer that the unions must accept. While contract negotiations are frequently contentious, historically the supervisors mandating final terms is rare; The Times previously reported that it has happened only twice since 2001.
Under the proposed measure, contract negotiations would begin as they do now, with the presumption that both sides bargain in good faith. However, if agreement proves impossible and an impasse is declared, a three-member arbitration panel would take over.
In that case, the county and the union each would select one member, with the sides together choosing the third person, who would serve as the panel’s chair. The arbitrators would hold hearings and weigh evidence related to employment elements such as wages and hours. In the end, the binding ruling would be made public.
Derek Hsieh, executive director of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, said the current process began with a group of labor unions launching a signature-gathering drive to put binding arbitration before voters. That led to working with the supervisors and the county chief executive, who, Hsieh said, wanted to ensure there were certain safeguards.
Hsieh said binding arbitration would represent an important and balanced change.
“Currently, the employer has near unilateral control over what the contract provisions are,” he said.
He added that the threat of going before arbitrators would spur both county and union negotiators to reach an agreement before someone else takes over, and that it would prevent either side from pushing a “wild proposal” that arbitrators would quickly reject.
Dave Gillotte, president of the International Assn. of Firefighters Local 1014, which represents more than 3,000 L.A. County Fire Department employees, agrees that the very threat of winding up in binding arbitration would encourage negotiating teams to cut a deal.
“Binding arbitration really brings about leverage to move both parties to work hard to get a contract done, where we don’t have that now,” Gillotte said.
The practice of using binding arbitration to resolve union and government disputes has been around for decades.
“These are routine laws that are part of the labor relations framework,” said Justin McBride of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.
The strong union support for binding arbitration would seem to suggest that the process favors organized labor over elected local governments. McBride said academic studies don’t support that premise, and that neither side overwhelmingly comes out on top.
He pointed to a 2010 study from Cornell University that examined decades of negotiation outcomes in New York. One finding was that after a few years, the number of cases that wound up in arbitration declined, indicating that the sides learned to work together.
“Everyone gets a deal, and just like in a lot of contracts maybe both parties aren’t 100% with it, but that’s kind of the nature of collective bargaining,” McBride said.
Still, there have been instances in which decisions by independent arbitrators contributed to a municipality’s economic challenges, and elected officials were unable to unwind the rulings.
In her interview with The Times, Horvath said arbitrators would be expected to make decisions that consider the county’s fiscal situation.
“That’s what this is designed to do,” she said.
While no formal opponents to Measure A are listed on the ballot, some progressive groups aren’t on board. The voter guides for community organization L.A. Forward and prison abolition proponents La Defensa both urge a “no” vote. The inclusion of the Sheriff’s Department influenced that decision.
“We believe law enforcement special interest groups should not be treated as labor or given more leverage in negotiations,” La Defensa wrote in its guide. “More money and more power for the Sheriff’s Department is the crux of our opposition. By bundling deputies with firefighters and lifeguards, Measure A weaponizes a process we would otherwise support.”
Labor unions and other supporters are digging deep. The unions representing sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and other employee groups reported raising $7.7 million through mid-October to campaign in favor of Measure A, according to financial disclosure reports.
No campaign funds have been reported in opposition to Measure A.
As Puerto Rico continues to grapple with the long aftermath of Hurricane Maria — from an unreliable electrical grid to ongoing water shortages — the need for stories that see the island as more than a backdrop feels especially urgent.
That’s part of what makes “Hurricane Seasons,” an intimate new independent film about a Puerto Rican family returning home, feel so timely. The film, which screens Sunday at the Newport Beach Film Festival, stars comedian Aida Rodriguez as Glori, a Brooklyn-based artist and community-center worker. She returns to Puerto Rico to help her sister (Justina Machado) care for their terminally ill mother (Priscilla Lopez).
When their matriarch convinces the family to embark on a bucket-list road trip around the island, old family secrets surface as the 2019 protests following Hurricane Maria unfold around them. Directed by Nicole Gomez Fisher and written by Xavier Ortiz — with Rodriguez also serving as a producer — the film is both a story of a multigenerational family and a love letter to Puerto Rico.
For Rodriguez, who is best known as a stand-up comedian, “Hurricane Seasons” also marked a return to a part of her artistic identity that existed long before comedy — her love of acting. But she admits that stepping back into acting, especially as the film’s protagonist, wasn’t an easy transition.
Aida Rodriguez, left, and Priscilla Lopez in a scene from “Hurricane Seasons,” directed by Nicole Gomez-Fisher.
(Laura T Magruder)
“It was terrifying. It was very scary because as a stand-up comedian, I work very hard at trying to obtain my most authentic self so that I can share it with everybody — to be my truest self, my truest Aida,” she says. “And when you loan yourself to a character and the art form of acting, you’re loaning yourself to that character and bringing yourself to that character, of course, because that is why they choose you. But you are telling a story from the perspective of another person.”
Rodriguez had pursued acting before going into stand-up comedy. Upon moving to Los Angeles, she quickly booked acting work, signed with an agency and began taking classes.
But comedy eventually taught her to do almost the opposite of what acting required.
“When I started doing standup, the direction and the notes were always like: ‘Release any character you have in mind and just access yourself,’” she says. “So it was a battle for me. Coming back to becoming an actor and giving the character Glori what Glori deserved — and allowing Glori to live, and Aida to sit in the back — became something important for me to do.”
She adds that it took a lot of work with coaches and classes for her to relax into acting again, allowing Aida the comedian to rest while focusing on what this role required of her.
The film’s protagonist, Glori, is a Brooklyn-born-and-raised Puerto Rican woman whose connection to the island runs deep, despite her living stateside. This is something Rodriguez, who is half Puerto Rican and half Dominican, born and raised in the States, also personally relates to.
That tension — between where you live, where your family comes from, and who gets to decide whether you are “Puerto Rican enough” — is one of the film’s central themes and one reason the script resonated with Rodriguez.
“My testimony through my art has always been finding unity, solidarity, power and connection with other people,” she says. “I think that the story of growing up in the States and connecting to the island is a universal story that most people, regardless of where they come from, experience. [There’s this] idea that you’re never American enough nor whatever you are — in this case Puerto Rican enough — because there’s always a judge and jury on both sides.”
Rodriguez sees those tensions as a consequence of a much larger and complex history. She believes so much of the judgment on both sides is a lingering effect of colonization.
“For me, that was one of the most attractive things about the script — [it] was being able to engage in a conversation about what being Puerto Rican really is,” she says. “Is it based on colonial standards? Or is it based on maintaining our cultural richness and our legacy, that is handed down to us regardless of where we are?”
That question takes on even more weight today as Puerto Rico sits in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which Rodriguez believes shifted the relationship between Puerto Ricans on the island and those living stateside.
“There was a shift, because there are wounds from both places,” she says. “There are wounds from the people on the island that stayed and stuck it out. [They want to ask] the ones who left, ‘why do you get to claim this, if you’re not here sticking it out with us?’ Then the people who leave feel like, ‘we had to do this, so that we can not only survive, but send money back to the island.”
Rodriguez explains that, in many ways, the aftermath of the hurricane sparked arguments on both sides that were necessary to begin healing the tension. She believes it highlighted issues that Puerto Ricans, as part of a diaspora, could no longer ignore; it also highlighted an island and a community that Americans outside of the Latine community paid little to no attention to.
“It took a hurricane for people to know what Puerto Ricans were,” she says. “I think there was a cultural shift and there was a conversation that needed to be had, about what happens on the island. And what that means to those of us who are not there.”
That conversation serves as the meat and bones of “Hurricane Seasons,” in which Puerto Rico isn’t simply a location. It’s an integral presence in the story. Rodriguez, Ortiz and Gomez Fisher all agreed that filming most of the movie on the island was essential, not only creatively but also economically and culturally.
“The other thing that was very important about taking the movie back to Puerto Rico was to invest in Puerto Rico and to stimulate some sort of revenues for the island and that the crew was a Puerto Rican crew,” she says. “The DP [director of photography] was a Puerto Rican DP — all people that live on the island.”
It was important to them that if they were going to tell a story about Puerto Rico that was also shot in Puerto Rico, that Puerto Ricans on the island actually benefited from the production.
“It’s not cool to go to Puerto Rico and shoot a movie and bring in your own people from the States, and the people in Puerto Rico have to be inconvenienced with their roads being blocked and things shut down and an influx of Americans that come there to be disrespectful and them not making anything out of it,” Rodriguez says.
This commitment shows in the protest scenes. Rather than using background actors, the film features real Puerto Rican residents, including a local activist and singer.
“It didn’t feel rehearsed. It didn’t feel fake,” she says. “I just think that the feelings and the passion and the rage and the sense of urgency is still there.”
Ortiz’s commitment to specificity extended to the family casting, intentionally matching the actors to the real-life relatives they are based on.
“It wasn’t performative. It was actually real because that’s what all of our families look like,” she says. “Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, we just have that diversity because of all the stuff that’s happened in the past.”
Glori’s character also represents a refreshing departure from the way Latina women are often portrayed onscreen. She is a mother, a daughter, a community center worker, an artist — and a woman with a complicated romantic and family history. She is beautiful and desirable, but her sexuality isn’t the defining characteristic of her existence — something we don’t see enough when it comes to Latina roles.
“For me, I didn’t have to step outside of myself for the role, which was really refreshing because every audition that I ever get, I do have to step out of myself because when people write Latinas in Hollywood, they tend to write them one way,” says Rodriguez. “They look a certain way, they talk a certain way, and that’s not the reality of what being Latino, especially in America, is like.”
Rodriguez could freely inhabit a Latina character without feeling as though she had to perform her Puerto Rican-ness for the audience.
“I didn’t feel like I had to perform my Latinidad. I could just exist in it,” she says.
Rodriguez adds she’s ready for a Hollywood that wants Latina actors to have the same range of characterization that white actors have long been afforded. She’s open to seeing Latinas being everything in TV and film, where can they exist in a world in which they can just be people who just happen to be Latinas.
“I really do look for a day when we can just be people and not just be the funny, spicy friend,” she adds. “Some Latinas are not spicy. Some Latinas are nerds, and some Latinas are quirky, and some of them are goofy and some of them are clumsy. And just like everybody gets to see the spectrum of whiteness with all the different kinds of characters, I would love to see that for our people. For all people of color, actually. I think it’s important to see us all as full human beings, and that means that we can be anything.”
The film’s multigenerational story touches on the cultural inheritance passed between mothers, daughters and grandmothers — whether through old traditions or ordinary rituals. It’s something audiences, regardless of background, can likely relate to.
“The most important message that I’ve kept from my [foremothers] was never to lose my sense of Puerto Rico; that, even if I don’t live in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico lives in me,” she says. So much of that inheritance lives in the little things she remembers about her Puerto Rican grandmother, she says, from the té de tilo she’d make for an upset stomach; the recao that grew on her grandmother’s balcony because she didn’t have a backyard; or the azabache she still wears to this day for spiritual protection. They are the same small traditions she has passed on to her kids.
“My daughter makes better arroz con gandules than all of us,” Rodriguez says. “And her recipe is true to what my grandmother’s recipe was. That will continue to live on, until we are able to go back to our island and live in peace.”
That freedom is one reason Rodriguez believes independent film is so important for stories like “Hurricane Seasons.” Without a studio machine making decisions based primarily on commercial expectations, filmmakers have more room to tell a story on their own terms.
“Once the studio gets involved, they start thinking about dollars, which they got to make money, but they prioritize the dollars,” Rodriguez says. “And I think that’s why a lot of these big projects that they spend a lot of money on have failed because they don’t honor the storytelling. They don’t honor the authenticity of the world, the authenticity of the stories.”
Her hope is that “Hurricane Seasons” encourages more people to tell their own stories — especially Puerto Ricans.
“Puerto Ricans are not a joke; we’re not a punchline. You don’t get to tell us we don’t speak correct Spanish and make fun of our songs. Then, years later, appropriate our culture and become big time doing what we do, using our terms and our colloquialisms because it brings you capital,” she says. “We are people. We’ve been doing this for a very long time, and our grandmothers and our tias and tios matter, and they’re not [a] costume that you can just put on [to] make money off of it.”
Before we wrapped up the call, Rodriguez paused for a moment when I asked her what Puerto Rico means to her. Then her eyes lit up, and her voice softened as she described why the island means so much to her — and why so many people, even outside of the diaspora, find themselves drawn to it.
“Puerto Rico is a very special place, which is why so many people want to kick us out, so they can move [in],” she says. “But they’ll never have the magic, because the magic is us.”
