American entrepreneur, philanthropist and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang joined Chris Jericho on “Talk Is Jericho“. Over the months, Andrew Yang has been very critical of WWE various issues and this was no exception as he was very up front about his feelings.
Andrew Yang about why he first took notice,
“Someone sent me the WWE Contract, it’s is very very long. It’s a very long contract. The amount of control that the wwe has is incredibly high. It has made them or saved them tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars over the life of the company and that money came directly from the pockets of the performers.
I don’t begrudge any one wrestling from signing that deal or any deal . WWE is a quasi-monopoly essentially. You work 4 years in the hopes to do what you love in front of millions of people for a living. No matter what that contract said you’re gonna sign it. You don’t have real bargaining power particularly if you’re just trying to make a living in the business and so this is really a failure of government to look out for talent on this side.”
Andrew Yang on having relationship with current wrestlers,
“I’m friendly now with a number of performers and they message me, that’s how I got this contract and other things. They are sick of the bullshit but there’s no way they can actually raise their hand be like Hey Vince, this is messed up because the power dynamic it’s so uneven. So it’s something I would love to help the talent with because it’s the right thing to do, it’s been overdue for years or decades. At this point this is just the McMahons hoarding wealth. They could afford easily to treat the talent in more fair and legal manner they just choose not to do so.”
Yang on how he could help,
“If we win I’m gonna be in position where I can call up the secretary of labor or in this case it’s the national labor relations board and then bring suit against WWE and say hey I think you’re misclassifying your employees here. We may need to have some brave performer or ex performer come forward and say look here are the practices. I have been contacted by folks who are like look, I believe in this and I’m at a point in my career where they can’t really do anything to me anyway. So, let’s have at this”.
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(H/T Bodyslam for transcript)
