The Hollywood Strikes Should Represent a New Chapter in the Labor Movement

The past few months (honestly, the entire year) have been a weird one for me, and while the lack of an article in the past two weeks have been partially a good thing for me (I took a MUCH needed vacation, one that I had a blast at), it has meant that in almost every area of my life, I have been slacking a bit as I have been dealing with my own shit.  This has meant that a few things that I normally would've written an article about have fallen by the wayside, and one of those things is the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes.  I know we're probably past the point at this juncture of people not understanding the strikes, but I also felt that, even late, I needed to say something on the blog in support of the writers and actors who make film and television possible (without these writers & actors, my life would be a much emptier place, and honestly, this blog wouldn't exist), and why the AMPTP has shown themselves to be an unusually cruel villain that even a Hollywood writing course would tell you "lacked nuance."

On the off-chance you don't know, Hollywood is currently on strike, with both the writers and the actors, both of whom are part of unions, demanding better wages, benefits, and protections against AI in their latest negotiations.  While there are a lot of issues at stake here, the biggest come around residuals and AI protection.  AI protection, I think is fairly self-explanatory, but still worth noting as it's important that the WGA/SAG-AFTRA stand tall here.  While AI doesn't appear to have the capability (yet) of replacing writers, we aren't far off from a world where it could, and AI also has the ability to replicate an actors' appearance at this point and be put into a film (look at Peter Cushing being used decades after his death in Rogue One).  Right now, an actor doesn't have any protection against their likeness being used against their will in projects that they haven't already signed off on, and there's no guarantees that a studio couldn't use the likeness in other projects without compensation.  These protections are honestly something the entire labor market should be looking at-AI is a very real threat to almost all industries in the coming decades.

Residuals, for those who are unfamiliar, are something that an actor or a writer gets after they make a movie or a TV show.  An actor or a writer doesn't work with a lot of consistency, particularly in an industry that has moved away from the traditional 22-24 episode seasons that were part of the television landscape for decades.  As a result, one of the ways that actors & writers pay their bills between projects is through residuals.  In the late-1950's, while actors were getting some compensation for reruns of television programs on broadcast networks, they were not getting any money for films that were playing on these channels and reaching millions of people (and getting large amounts of advertising money in the process).  A strike in 1960 meant that actors would get paid for any films they made post-1960 that were played on television networks (this strike would also lead to a pension & health insurance program that still exists to this day).  Subsequent negotiations would get actors better protections for residuals-in 1974, they got residuals for every broadcast of a show (before then, rerun residuals were capped at just a few airings even as series like I Love Lucy and The Dick van Dyke Show would air near constantly on TV), allowing much more cash to go to actors who might be on shows that would run in reruns perpetually like Cheers, Friends, and Law & Order, and in 1980 they would gain residuals for sales of physical media (like VHS, DVD's, & BluRay's) and pay TV (such as on HBO or Starz).

What the actors don't have now, though, is money from streaming.  With the decline of both cable & physical media, most consumers will watch a show or movie on a streaming platform such as Netflix, Hulu, or Disney+.  The streaming numbers are heavily guarded, and are not shared with the public or even most directors or producers.  As a result, there's no way to know other than press releases whether or not millions of people are watching shows that were made by actors or writers, and those artists aren't being compensated for highly-watched series while the CEO's of these major corporations pocket tens of millions off of a contract loophole.  CEO's have essentially made it so that residuals, which were once a huge component in actors & writers being able to make a living even while working from gig-to-gig, are increasingly just pennies by prioritizing streaming platforms which pay these artists little.

Two of the most shocking things about this has been the callousness from the AMPTP and the weird reactions of social media to the call for residuals, specifically.  In the lead-up to whether or not SAG-AFTRA would strike, a studio executive told Deadline (one of several Hollywood trade papers that have basically done William Randolph Hearst proud by spewing pro-AMPTP propaganda, so know that this was leaked on purpose and seen as a genuine strategy), was to drag the WGA strike out long enough "until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses."  This backfired when SAG also joined the strike, led by a fiery President Fran Drescher, and since then the AMPTP has basically resembled a badly-written Bond villain, with figures like Bob Iger & David Zaslav giving public statements that made them seem even worse, and Drescher not shying away from the battle, stating publicly that the AMPTP said they wanted to "pay extras for their face once and then use them as background figures forever via aI" something that feels so unabashedly evil you kind of can't believe it...except it's true.  

Public support is strongly on the side of the unions, and it's honestly changed the conversation about the labor movement, especially within the arts.  The Authors Guild, including noted writers like Margaret Atwood, Nora Roberts, & Michael Chabon, have called out AI companies using their work without permission, with authors like Sarah Silverman & Paul Tremblay suing AI companies for illegally violating their copyrights in creating their products.  Calls from the Authors Guild have been made to the FTC to breakup Amazon's monopoly in the bookselling industry, where they can control the success (or failure) of a specific author through search algorithms on their various platforms.  Marvel Studios Visual Effects artists are moving to unionize, which could theoretically set up other visual effects studios to follow-suit and join IATSE.  Even reality TV stars are floating the idea of having a union, with longtime Real Housewives star Bethenny Frankel leading the charge.

All of this is really heartening, but it does come with a weird amount of pushback online.  I've been following the unions and supporting the artists (I was raised by a union member, and have long backed the labor movement), and it's bizarre how many people's reactions to this is "well, I don't get residuals in my job, why should they?"  This is so weird to me because the knee-jerk reaction to back a multi-billion dollar corporation instead of working people is such a conservative move (Ted Cruz would be so proud), but it's also such a weird reaction.  The statement you should be saying isn't "they shouldn't get it if I don't," it should be "if they get it, so should I."  In a world where the average CEO makes 300x more than their lowest-ranking employee, and so-called "Right to Work" laws have continually chipped away at worker's rights at the expense of corporations, it's worth asking yourself why are you siding with corporations that profit off of your work long after you leave, rather than everyday workers just like you who say they should continue to share in the profits of their work as long as corporations continue to see those dividends.