The trees could provide the pickets with much-needed shelter from the California sungas—if it weren’t for the fact that they have been heavily pruned. Some strikers and local politicians see the measure as targeting them.
— Universal, get your act together We don’t want to see any more of this murky nonsense, says Konstantine Anthony, member of the actors’ union Sag-Aftra and mayor for the Democrats in nearby Burbank.
Anthony says that she investigated whether the politicians in Los Angeles had decided to prune the ficus trees – but found nothing.
— Normally they are pruned in October and the exact same kind of tree 60 meters away is not trimmed. But they don’t offer shade to pickets, right?, she says.
A spokesperson for Universal says, however, that the pruning was done without ulterior motives and that they will now try to offer shade to the strikers in another way.