Why The Hollywood Strike Wins Are A Victory For Everyone (Yes, Even You)
The SAG-AFTRA strike officially ended at 12:01am on Thursday, with a deal for a new three-year contract set to go to the national board for a vote on Friday, November 10, 2023. The end of the record-breaking strike comes after 118 days, during which members and supporters picketed studios and showcased solidarity through a broad range of gestures, from opting out of Halloween costumes featuring struck projects to donating to funds that directly support workers impacted by the industry-wide shutdown. The equally historic WGA strike lasted 148 days, ending in late September with a robust deal for film and TV writers.
While folks working within Hollywood or around its periphery may be painfully well aware of the rights at stake during this year's labor movements, there are still plenty of everyday Americans who no doubt look to the strikes and say "Who cares?" It's clear that union-busting and corporate anti-union propaganda still hold strong in America. Couple this with the common conflation of "actors" for "celebrities" — both unions are thousands-strong, and the wealthy A-listers most people think of when we think of Hollywood are only a tiny fraction of the mostly low income membership – and it's not surprising that these historic strike outcomes might not mean much to some people. But they should.
If you have a job
Any way you cut it, it's hard to get by in America these days. Three years after the COVID-19 pandemic led to an economic recession, experts say the country still teeters on the edge of another major downturn. Issues like inflation make it hard for many people to afford gas, rent, and everything else, and the cost of living doesn't seem to be coming down anytime soon. The fight for a living wage isn't always achieved through labor movements, but it often is, and the SAG-AFTRA and WGA wins strengthen the position of trade unions as a whole across the country. In fact, in August 2023, one poll showed that U.S. support for unions was at its highest point since the 1960s.
This seemingly sudden love for unions basically comes down to two factors: visibility and solidarity. "The desire to have a union is contagious. Workers see successful strikes, they see successful negotiations and that inspires peoples' hopes and raises their expectations," UC Berkeley's Labor Center Chair Ken Jacobs told Spectrum News. When workers from all kinds of professions see something like a strike work for a group as massive and high-profile as SAG-AFTRA or the WGA, it's a lot easier for them to envision their own fight for better pay and treatment, and to potentially make it a reality. Employees working everywhere from Manhattan's Alamo Drafthouse to Stanford's graduate workers' program have formed historic unions in 2023 while Kaiser Permanente's healthcare workers and Swedish Tesla workers are just two of many workforces that have gone on strike this year.
What does this mean for you? Well, that you, too, can start or join a union and push for better pay and treatment if necessary. There's a wave of pro-worker activism happening all around us: why not ride it?
If you use the internet
One of the most broadly important wins for both SAG-AFTRA and the WGA involves the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace, a rising issue that is generally not being addressed by legislature as quickly as the relevant technology is evolving. While full details of the SAG deal are still emerging and have yet to be ratified, the WGA negotiated to prevent A.I. from writing or rewriting "source material" and noted that studios cannot force employees to use A.I. writing software. Studios also must tell writers if the materials they're given contain A.I.-generated work.
This deal sets up an important framework for artists and performers who are hoping for similar job protections, but as Adam Seth Litwin writes in the New York Times, "everyone from autoworkers to white-collar middle managers should be paying very close attention to how this deal was achieved — because it sets a monumental precedent for labor relations in a digital future." When it comes to protecting one's rights, legal precedent is everything, and the Hollywood unions just gave the whole world a precedent on which they can build their own case that robots should not take our jobs.
Work aside, any and all A.I. protections for actors will be major for anyone who uses the internet. Rampant misinformation has been a problem online for years, and it's already hugely shaped the world around us (see: COVID-19, the 2020 election). If the SAG-AFTRA deal protects actors from deep-fakes and other A.I. atrocities, their win is everyone's win, as it could help staunch the flow of the same dangerous misinformation that's fueled nearly every national crisis in the last few years.
If you watch movies or shows
So the Hollywood unions' wins are a win for anyone in America who wants to have rights as an employee, protections from AI, and a more coherent digital landscape. But what about those of us who do actually care about movies and TV shows? It is, of course, a win for us too. As the strikes end, some effects will be nearly immediate — the return of the celebrity press tour, talk shows returning to air — while others will take more time. Movies that have paused production or development will now be allowed to resume filming, make new casting announcements, and get their release dates in order. Scripted network TV will come back, eventually, while the streaming landscape is so crowded at this point that new shows never stopped releasing during the strikes.
In the long term, though, streaming will definitely be changed by the WGA deal that pushed major companies like Netflix to finally share more of their previously shadowy viewership data. It's unclear how much information about streaming data will actually become public, given that the current contract allows companies to make sure anyone who sees the data is NDA-ed up to their eyeballs, but it's likely that when numbers do trickle out, they might surprise us. If far fewer people are clicking on streamers' big-budget shows than investors expected, streamers will have to re-evaluate how much money they pour into things. If the opposite is true, though, then their premature cancellations of shows fans love will lead to more outrage than ever. This isn't as clear-cut a victory for non-industry folks as the AI wins and general success of the unions, but it's still important to set a precedent for more transparent consumer information.
Basically, everyone's a winner
If you want the sexy headline version of why you should care about the SAG and WGA wins, it's because all your favorite shows will come back now and award season will begin in earnest. Hollywood will restart, and while studios may pretend that the industry as a whole has to cut back on future projects after the cost of the strikes, it's worth noting that the value of the deals SAG-AFTRA and WGA received are still worth way less than the L studios took by refusing to come to the bargaining table. CEOs and other high-level execs still make bank, so there's still money to go around in Hollywood — hopefully future blockbuster projects reflect as much.
Aside from the simple joy of getting all your shows back, there's plenty in these deals worth being happy about: these wins help strengthen the already-growing worldwide labor movement, set strong precedent against the misuse of A.I. in any and all workplaces, and could even help staunch the flow of misinformation that has made the world objectively scarier and worse over the past several years. And, yes, maybe now we'll get to see Zendaya on Hot Ones.
The strike may have ended, but plenty of actors, writers, and crew members won't be back at work right away. As the gears of Hollywood start to turn again, you can still donate to the Entertainment Community Fund in support of people who need it most, including below-the-line workers who weren't covered by the strikes.