Rolling Labor Action Thread

Fantastic piece, this

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/01/opinion/wga-hollywood-writers-strike-unions.html

Gift link version of above story.

Thanks for that, Ned.

Here’s another strike:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-31/amazon-workers-walk-out-to-protest-climate-office-return-policy#xj4y7vzkg

This is all worth listening to, but there’s a really interesting point made at around the 42 minute mark of how little it would cost the studios to get to where WGA is asking them to go.

https://postshowrecaps.com/tv-show/the-writers-strike-a-discussion-with-wga-member-justin-shanes/

The DGA seems to have squeezed something out of the studios

https://deadline.com/2023/06/directors-hollywood-studios-reach-deal-new-contract-1235399542/

SAG authorizes strike if it comes to it:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2023-06-05/sag-aftra-strike-hollywood-labor-amptp-strike-authorization

98% margin! The equal of the WGA authorization vote.

If you need a free-read link:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sag-aftra-members-authorize-strike-nearly-98-percent-work-stoppage-1235507295/

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/19/1177194215/tv-writer-david-simon-weighs-in-on-the-writers-guild-of-america-strike

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, May 23, 2023 6:36 AM (one week ago

apparently they went with the Season 5 theme music or was that Steve Earle?

The DGA seems to have squeezed something out of the studios

morelike the studios have convinced the union with the smallest voting base and comparative best per-member compensation not to join in solidarity with their more numerous and more precarious colleagues, reinforcing a class division that benefits the studios?

Yay oh wait

LA this summer! pic.twitter.com/5uJqSdyuP8

— Americana At Brand Memes (@americanamemes) June 6, 2023

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-byrne-history-of-union-avoidance_n_647e6c0fe4b0047ed782e1ad

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/writers-strike-sag-aftra-actors-1235508507/amp/

this may be a dumb question, but ... are they getting strike benefits from the Union and how do strike benefits work, and what role do they play in successful vs. unsuccessful labor actions?

According to this story, projectionists at an NYC Alamo Drafthouse (unclear which) filed a petition to unionize Weds

On Fri, Alamo sent an email notifying of its intention to eliminate the projectionist role and replace with with "technical engineer" https://t.co/D08dT7xlEH

— Screen Slate (@ScreenSlate) June 11, 2023

good.

With their latest win, @SBWorkersUnited is now in 80% of U.S. states.

The union's recent victory in Missoula, Montana means that there are now 331 unionized Starbucks spread across 40 states.

Just 1.5 years ago there were zero.https://t.co/Owmwgi3A9a

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 26, 2023

Pretty good background on the WGA itself, and what it provides its members

https://podtail.com/en/podcast/bonehead-humor/ep-285-todd-farmer-and-the-wga-strike/

SAG-AFTRA went to bed

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/bob-iger-writers-actors-strike-disney-ceo-1235669169/

Hahaha respectfully sir, fuck you

https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/culture/2023/7/13/23793828/sag-aftra-strike-wga-hollywood

I didn't realize that Fran Drescher was such a militant firebrand

Fran Drescher's speech is worth watching:

The business model has changed for all of us - this applies to music equally #solidarity pic.twitter.com/j8sbmisCD3

— Damon K 🎤 (@dada_drummer) July 13, 2023

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/notes-on-hollywood/orange-is-the-new-black-signalled-the-rot-inside-the-streaming-economy

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/notes-on-hollywood/orange-is-the-new-black-signalled-the-rot-inside-the-streaming-economy🕸

H/t sleeve

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/actors-strike-sag-artificial-intelligence-hollywood-studios-background-1234788191/amp/

I meant to C&P this good Janis Ian post along with that link, here it is:

* you may share anything I post here.
A few people on this page have objected to the SAG-AFTRA strike on the grounds that "you get to do what you love" "you're overpaid already" "I can't afford to take my kids to movies because of you" and my favorite, "I can't afford tickets to sports events any more."
???
So let me explain just a couple of things.
- Statistically, 2% of actors make a living wage. Even fewer singers make that much.
- SAG-AFTRA doesn't only represent actors. It represents singers, dancers, DJs, puppeteers, stunt performers, and dozens of other professions.
- You may work in an industry that will contribute to your pension fund, provide matching funds, provide health benefits. We get none of that. The only benefits artists get are through our unions, and we pay for those.
- Years ago, the union caved to Amazon and its subsidiaries by making deals that ruined audiobook narration and a host of other things. As a personal instance, I narrated The Singer and the Song, which was nominated for an Audie (the audiobook equivalent of a Grammy nomination). It involved singing parts of more than 20 songs, creating new arrangements for them all that would suit solo vocal and guitar, researching names of places and pronunciations, and a host of other things. I spent two full weeks of my life on the project and was paid for 7 hour's work, because that's how long the audiobook plays. At that time, the rate was about $230 an hour, so for my two week's work I was paid $134 a day, or about $14 an hour for a basic nine hour day.
- Most performer's "days" are more like 12 hours.
- Most performers earn in the region of $8-$10 an hour if they're lucky.
- The studios are not "negotiating". Read the below article from Rolling Stone to see what they want from us. If you happened to be lucky enough to be a "background actor" on a show that needs warm bodies in a restaurant, or walking around the street, you'd be paid $200 for up to 16 hour's work, and have to agree to have your body scanned, after which the studio would OWN that scan and the right to use it FOREVER.
- As a last aside, please don't come on my page and tell me artists get to do what we love so we shouldn't be paid for it, because we don't really work as hard as non-artists. Until I stopped touring, 12-hour work days were routine, and I was lucky if that's all it took.
Thank you for your support, of art, and of artists.

Damn, good post. And YIKES.

also relevant along w/the Black Mirror episode everyone is referencing that I have not seen

https://bojackhorseman.fandom.com/wiki/Secretariat_(film)

After an incident with her and her daughter Penny, BoJack returned to L.A. to find the film has been finished without him. They did this by using a CGI version of BoJack, which was created from a computer scan they did of his face during the first few weeks of shooting in Brand New Couch. In fact, they actually replaced the real BoJack with the CGI version for the entire movie, meaning that BoJack technically isn't in the film at all.

https://deadline.com/2023/07/oliver-stone-oppenheimer-sag-aftra-wga-strike-roots-1235438219/

truth bomb from above link:

“I don’t think it will be wrapped up quickly. Because well, I don’t understand the economics of Netflix and these new guys, but it’s the same old bullsh*t. You know they’re making money and they always say they’re losing money. It’s the classic conflict that goes back to the 1880s in America.”

So Netflix also hides viewership figures from cast and crew, too? Creeps.

Not just Netflix. Tony Gilroy, showrunner of Andor on Disney+: https://www.indiewire.com/awards/industry/tony-gilroy-andor-emmy-nomination-wga-strike-1234883534/

Critics have raved about it, but it doesn’t necessarily have the highest viewership for Star Wars. What would you tell people who have maybe hesitated to watch it?

I’m gonna go back to the strike then. One of the central issues of this entire labor experience is that I don’t have any idea what the audience is. We don’t know what that is, and I think that the obscurity of data doesn’t help anyone. Really. I think it looks like low-hanging fruit and easy profitability for certain corporations, but in the end it just crushes any kind of free market. It crushes the economics of the business, it means people are being overpaid and underpaid and never properly paid. It means that productions are overloaded with expenses up top because what used to be commonly residuals and royalties now have to be front loaded. I think it’s distorted and warped and is close to ruining this amazing industry. So I wish I knew how many people watched, I wish I knew who they were, and I’m not sure that that’s possible.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/hollywoods-cruel-strategy/674730/

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/os-angeles-shooting-days-plummet-writers-strike-1235539756/amp/

Lotta shooting not happening

Everything has been said on the thread already, I’m really hoping both writers and performers get what they deserve.

If you aren’t working in the industry and want to support, please consider using less Netflix/Disney + type streaming for the coming weeks or months, there are great alternatives for top content that aren’t benifiting these ghouls!

Great piece on Starbucks and their owner’s stonewalling and general evil vibe.

Yeah that’s a fantastic piece and close to home for me. A Starbucks near my workplace is also unionized so I’ve patronized them feeling a bit self-righteous for doing so (worker solidarity!) but knowing that no unionized Starbucks has a contract makes me feel like shit now. I’ve wanted to talk to the baristas about their union experience but haven’t thinking they’d be wary of talking to a customer about their experiences.

Starbucks can’t be blamed for Ms. Cruz Borrazas’ health crisis. Plenty of Starbucks workers are organizing under tremendous pressure without winding up in the hospital.

The fuck Starbucks can't. The woman who wasn't eating enough and spiraling in anxiety and depression because of Starbucks' actions wound up in the hospital.

I assume that was some kind of CYA from the Times legal department but fuck that shit.

Pretty great:

https://teamster.org/2023/07/weve-changed-the-game-teamsters-win-historic-ups-contract/

DANG.

Quite a coup for O'Brien, who hasn't been president all that long

Sets him up well for his big quest: unionizing Amazon.

The contrast between 1997 and 2023 in terms of pre-strike mobilization and preparation couldn’t have been more stark. Many major locals — Chicago local 705 in particular — were kept in the dark, and had no idea if there’d even be a strike until it was called. And while it wasn’t a Hoffa, Jr. -affiliated local, it was still very top-down, with the rank and file asking questions and not getting answers. A nearby Hoffa local, 710 in Rockford, actually scabbed on the ‘97 strike (and one of my favorite memories of that summer is when my friends and I chased scab-driven UPS trucks around the quiet and tony North Shore suburbs, honking, shouting at them, and hilariously scaring the shit out of them).

O’Brien is the first non-Hoffa president since Carey was ousted by the government in 1998 (on what turned out to be completely false charges), and obviously isn’t interested in getting cozy with UPS like Hoffa Jr was. That said, I’m cautiously optimistic about the new contract, and am curious what Teamsters for a Democratic Union’s position on it is.

Per your first paragraph there's some particular detail about the past vs. now in this solid piece

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-07-25-teamsters-historic-contract-ups/

Damn. Glad to hear that about UPS.

Thanks for that, Ned. Great background on their strategies.

O’Brien didn’t face similar opposition today from hostile local officers. “We’ve taken different factions and coalitions, come together, under one vision, one voice,” he said when asked about the role TDU has played in the contract campaign. “I think it’s been effective, and it should be a template for the power of collaboration to effectuate change.”

UPS came dangerously close to putting itself on strike

vg wording

Rather!

Good new piece here on the SAG/WGA front

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/the-system-is-quicksand-sag-and-wga-union-members-tell-all

Also, Wil Wheaton's IG post here is pretty sharp.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvFzWyCPiN8/?hl=en

Great post and he and spacemom are cuet.