OH SHIT! SAG-AFTRA IS ON STRIKE TOO!
A few points about the AMPTP shitting the bed
How did we get here?
The WGA has been on strike since May 2nd, and since then they have only gained momentum. The AMPTP has not returned to the bargaining table, despite repeated invitations from the WGA to resume talks. The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) went into negotiations on June 7th with an unprecedented 98% approved strike authorization. SAG ultimately granted the AMPTP an extension until July 12th as they approached the original contract expiry date.
Things devolved very quickly when Deadline ran a story in which an anonymous executive said they wanted to “break the WGA”. The candid executive went on to say that they wanted the strike “to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” adding that this would be “a cruel but necessary evil.” On the same day, SAG learned via Variety that executives were requesting another extension and a federal mediator. These two events confirmed what many suspected — that the AMPTP was not negotiating in good faith, and were just trying to stall negotiations so that actors could continue to promote their summer blockbusters.
On July 13th, SAG announced that all 160,000 members were officially on strike. At an emotional press conference, SAG president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland explained that the AMPTP refused to meet the committee’s most basic request. “It was insulting,” said Drescher, later explaining that executives “stayed locked behind doors” during the 12 day extension, and “they continued to cancel our meetings with them”. In the final minutes, the AMPTP president sighed in exasperation, telling the union to “be civilized” while she requested yet another extension.
What are the SAG-AFTRA requests?
Like the WGA, SAG is deeply concerned about AI being used to replace actors. While the AMPTP publicly said that SAG had rejected “a groundbreaking AI proposal”, Crabtree-Ireland explained that the proposal involved paying background owners for 1 day of work, after which corporations would own their likenesses which would be used however the studios wanted, with no additional consent or compensation.
SAG released a comprehensive list of their requests alongside the AMPTP’s responses and, like the WGA’s requests, many issues would cost studios almost nothing to implement. They asked to “increase liquidated damages due to the unacceptable trend of egregiously late payments” — this was rejected. They asked to “increase the penalties for not providing meal breaks, which have not been updated since 1961” — this was rejected. Many, many requests were simply about updating terms that had not changed in 40+ years, these were all rejected.
These requests would also stabilize the income of working actors and allow more members to access health insurance. Currently, only 13% of the 160,000 members make the yearly minimum ($26K) to qualify for health insurance. They requested an “11% general wage increase in year one, 4% in year two, and 4% in year three,” without which “members will be working for lower real wages in 2023 than they earned in 2020”. The AMPTP countered with “5% in year one, 4% in year two, 3.5% in year three” which would not be enough to offset inflation.
‘Hollywood accounting’
The ongoing behavior by studio executives and CEOs have baffled many. After almost a month of the WGA strike, Warner threw a massive party at Cannes to celebrate the studios 100th anniversary, a century of content that was only possible thanks to their writers. The ‘leaked’ negotiating details about a “cruel but necessary evil” galvanized the unions instead of intimidating them. While studios plead poverty to the unions, they brag exponential growth to their shareholders from the exclusive, luxurious Sun Valley resort. Netflix added 5.3M subscribers in 2Q23 thanks to their crackdown on password sharing, and yet every request by the unions to share that streaming revenue has been rejected.
There is a specific term for this paradox. “Hollywood accounting” generally refers to all the creative ways studios will hide profits in order to avoid paying their creatives. They will claim to have suffered terrible losses, and often directors, writers, actors, even producers are forced to sue the studios in order to get paid. Some famous examples of this include Alien (1979), Return of the Jedi (1981), Batman (1992), Coming to America (1988), Forrest Gump (1994), Men in Black (1997), My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–03)! In all of these cases, studios claimed that the films had lost money and thus they could not pay their creatives.
Many times, these cases were settled out of court so that the studios could avoid opening their books to the courts. This long standing practice explains why studios would rather lose billions of dollars during a strike, as they did during the 2007 WGA strike, than share streaming data with the unions. It’s not that they dont have the money, it’s that they dont want anyone to know how much money they really have. And because many of the union’s requests don’t really cost money, the AMPTP’s stonewalling strategy indicates to many that they are not actually about money at all.
So what does the AMPTP actually want?
They want to break the unions.
The AMPTP has flat out refused to offer any transparency about their streaming numbers to any union. This has led many to suspect that revealing the streaming numbers would cause Wall Street investors to lose confidence in the entire platform. WGA member Adam Conover said as much recently to Alex Press in a lengthy article for Jacobin. “Netflix said, ‘For $15 a month, you can cancel your TV subscription and have every show ever made, forever, with no ads.’ That was a lie. We know now that they can’t build a business that way. But all the other companies chased it, and it destroyed a very successful industry.”
The AMPTP would rather break Hollywood’s unions than lose face to Wall Street, however they fundamentally misunderstand their own business. The protections won by the unions in the past not only stabilised what is otherise a volatile career path, but it also created a built-in training program for new talent. Showrunners often start as assistant writers, and lead actors often start off by working in the background. If the AMPTP were to win this fight, they would be sabotaging their own content pipeline.
The union will always win
It is impossible that studios both 1) have the money to pay their CEOs 9 figure salaries and 2) don’t have the money to pay their content creators a living wage. While they cry to the unions about volatile markets and untested mediums (aka streaming), they brag to shareholders about record profits. When they try to intimidate strikers by whining to Deadline, they only reinforce the strength of the unions. Their lies are blatant and obvious, and the only thing keeping them from coming back to the negotiating table is their own egos.
The WGA and SAG strikes have been successful so far thanks to the cooperation of other unions like IATSE (who will be negotiating their own contract next year) coupled with the Teamsters’ refusal to cross any picket line. Hospitality workers continue to strike in California, and recently 340K UPS Teamsters narrowly avoided a strike of their own. All of these unions have been supporting each other’s efforts, because they all understand their collective power.
Disney CEO Bob Iger may call the unions’ demandes “not realistic”, but the strikers insist that this is the only realistic way forward. In that same Jacobin article, Press writes that actors and writers “are well-equipped for a few months on a picket line” because they’ve already had to get second jobs to sustain themselves as writers and actors.
A strike like this is what happens when people have nothing left to lose.
What can you do to help?
The best way to help the strike is to donate to the Entertainment Community Fund. They provide grants to anyone who works in film and television that is affected by the strike. You can also mention this fund when you write/talk about the film industry! Do not take new contracts with struck companies, and maybe hold off on promoting studio movies (yes, including Barbenheimer)! If you live near a picket line, reach out to a strike captain to see if they need some help!
This level of class solidarity hasn’t happened in a very, very long time. Now is the time to hold the line — because nothing scares rich people more than solidarity.
Hold the line.
BC — July 2023
SOURCES
A comprehensive list of SAG-AFTRA proposals and AMPTP responses
Jacobin — Hollywood Is on Strike Against High-Tech Exploitation
Deadline — Hollywood Studios’ WGA Strike Endgame Is To Let Writers Go Broke Before Resuming Talks In Fall
AV Club — Read SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher’s full statement on the actors strike
