As of Thursday, Hollywood is officially closed for business. The national board of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, “unanimously voted to issue a strike order against the studios and streamers,” the guild announced at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher stressed that what’s happening in the entertainment industry is happening across labor, calling it the result of “when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run.” She added that she was “shocked by the way that the people we have been in business with are treating us” and that the studios and streamers can’t “change the business model as much as it has changed and not expect the contract to change, too.”
For being a group of people whose salaries supposedly depend on both decision-making and reading the room to give people what they want, it’s truly amazing how terrible these bosses have been on both fronts.
Drescher is right: It’s not just actors who are affected by the shift in the entertainment industry. The 160,000 performers in SAG-AFTRA will be joining the members of the Writers Guild of America on the picket lines in one of the largest labor actions the country has seen in years. The WGA first walked away from talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, or AMPTP, in May. That group includes the likes of Disney, Netflix, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. (It also represents NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.)
Drescher’s outrage also reflects how necessary the protections the guilds are seeking are, especially given how much studio executives have been gambling — and losing — over the last decade. We’ve seen big-budget productions shelved for tax breaks, shows and movies wiped off of streaming platforms to prevent having to pay residuals, and untold million wasted on flops. Meanwhile, studio executives like Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav and Disney’s Bob Iger rake in massive salaries.
Despite this track record and the major issues at stakes in the WGA negotiations, “the actors’ uncharacteristic resolve in recent weeks caught senior executives and producers off guard” in negotiations, The New York Times reported. For being a group of people whose salaries supposedly depend on both decision-making and reading the room to give people what they want, it’s truly amazing how terrible these bosses have been on both fronts.
In a letter sent after talks collapsed, Drescher told SAG-AFTRA members that the AMPTP “remains unwilling to offer a fair deal on the key issues that you told us are important to you.” It’s telling that many of the actors’ concerns are the same ones that bedevil writers. The biggest issue is the rise of streaming platforms and the corresponding plunge in residuals that writers and actors receive compared to what they get for reruns airing on television. There are also major concerns about the future use of artificial intelligence to replace voice actors, writers and even dancers.
Drescher also correctly stressed that the issues on the table extend far beyond Hollywood. Labor has racked up a number of wins in the post-pandemic era; workers have taken advantage of a glut of openings to negotiate better wages. But the pendulum is starting to swing away from workers again as layoffs and inflation have hampered the leverage employees have enjoyed and companies increasingly turn to automation or AI to save costs.
Luckily for the unions, the companies on the other side of the table have decided that cartoonish displays of villainy will be what win the day. Deadline reported this week that the AMPTP is determined to “break the WGA,” as one studio executive put it, and wait out the writers strike through the summer and deep into the fall:
“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it “a cruel but necessary evil.”
DEADLINE
Meanwhile, Iger told CNBC on Thursday that there’s a “level of expectations” that writers and actors have “that is just not realistic.” (Again, Iger will make up to $27 million this year alone.) He went on to lament that the strike “will have a very, very damaging effect on the whole business, and unfortunately, there’s huge collateral damage. ... It’s a shame, it is really a shame.”
That’s the kind of thing you say about a natural disaster, not a crisis you played an active part in creating. But it’s not surprising that the studios want to shift the burden of guilt for the hardship onto the people who don’t run the companies worth billions of dollars.
Fortunately for the actors, we’re seeing a tremendous amount of solidarity so far that cuts across unions. Labor groups across Hollywood issued a statement of support for SAG-AFTRA, including: the Teamsters; the Directors Guild, which ratified a contract with the AMPTP last month; the WGA East and West; the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which last threatened to strike in 2021; and Hollywood Basic Crafts, a coalition of unions whose members include workers like plumbers, electricians and plasterers.
Fortunately for the actors, we’re seeing a tremendous amount of solidarity so far that cuts across unions.
Even more troubling for the studios and streamers is the cross-class solidarity on display. “If our leadership is saying that the deal isn’t fair, then we’ve got to hold strong until we get a deal that’s fair for working actors. It’s the difference between having health care and not for a lot of actors, and we’ve got to do what’s right by them,” Matt Damon said on the red carpet for the premiere of “Oppenheimer” in London on Thursday.
Damon isn’t the only member whose production company will be affected even further now that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are on strike. Yet almost 98% of SAG-AFTRA members voted to authorize this strike. That means some of the biggest actors, who command millions of dollars per project, are willing to stand alongside the people who are hustling to scrape by every year.
There are few unions with more wealthy and powerful members than SAG-AFTRA, members who will be key in holding the line against the AMPTP’s determination to starve out the protesters who have blockaded their studio gates. What happens next over the course of the Hollywood shutdown will be a major indicator for the health and well-being of the labor movement more broadly. Because if these people can’t weather the worst that big business can bring to bear against those who dare demand a fair share of the profits their work has created, what hope do the rest of us have?
CORRECTION (July 14, 2023, 10:51 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated recent actions of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The union averted a strike in 2021 by reaching a deal with studios; it did not go on strike last year.