As an avid television watcher, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes have been on my radar for the past few months. Not only has Hollywood been on strike, but a number of other industries and unions including the UAW, Kaiser Permanente Health Care Workers and more. That doesn’t even cover all the strikes that happened over the summer. It’s a lot. (Probably too much to cover in a single article). Many of you, including myself, are probably wondering, why have there been so many strikes in the U.S. 2023?
As stated by Johnnie Kallas, the project director of the ILR Labor Action Tracker, in a CNBC article published Oct. 9th “Altogether, there have been 312 strikes involving roughly 453,000 workers so far in 2023, compared with 180 strikes involving 43,700 workers over the same period two years ago”. Wow.
Let’s set the basics down first. What’s a strike? A strike is when employees collectively refuse to work under conditions their employers enforce, often to obtain higher wages, shorter working hours, or better working conditions, among other things. Most industrialized countries grant the right to strike to employees working in private sectors (individual businesses, corporations, and non-government agencies). Some countries require efforts to be made towards settlement before a strike is carried out.
In some cases, just the threat of the strike is enough power to incite change. For a recent example we can look at the UPS strike from a few months back in August. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a union that represents more than 300,000 UPS employees, threatened a walkout if UPS executives failed to meet their economic demands. These demands included eliminating the lower paid category of full time driver, requiring air conditioning in new trucks to improve heat safety, wage gains for current employees and raising the minimum for part time workers from $17 to $21. The full-time delivery driver wage was also raised from $42 on average to $49 after being on the job for 4 years.
A strike by UPS workers would have had major effects on the country. You may have even gotten an email about it a little before the school year started – if they’d gone on strike, many of us would’ve gotten our textbooks much later, among many, many other things. A walkout would disrupt package deliveries all across the country, and threatened to shake up the competitive delivery market.
A CNN article from mid-July showed estimates from a Michigan economic research firm, which predicted that a 10 day walkout would have cost UPS 816 million dollars, the Teamsters union 1.1 billion in wages, businesses and consumers 4.6 billion dollars, and the US economy 7.1 billion dollars – having given it the potential to be the costliest strike in US history. There would have been significant harm to small businesses, household workers, and online retailers as well. The scale is massive – but it concretely asserts just how essential UPS and package delivery workers are to our economy and day to day lives. They, like everyone else, deserve to get paid livable wages and work in conditions in which they won’t die of heatstroke.
So that’s one example. The workers don’t work, the company doesn’t make money. It puts pressure on executives to comply with striking employee’s demands. At the same time, however, striking workers aren’t making money. Loss of income over any period of time will make it difficult to support themselves and their families, which is why striking is such a heavily thought out decision. They also risk having their positions being replaced and losing benefits covered by their jobs like health insurance. Waiting it out is a tactic employers will use to pressure striking employees into accepting their less than ideal terms.
Now let’s look at two industries the pandemic hit in very different but important ways – the Healthcare industry and Hollywood.
A little over a week ago, more than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente employees went on a three day walkout strike in California, lasting from Oct. 4th to Oct. 6th. This forced a number of hospitals and clinics to operate without thousands of medical assistants, lab techs, receptionists, and sanitation staff. The workers claimed they were exhausted, burnt out and frustrated, facing major stress due to crushing workloads and staffing shortages, conditions heavily exacerbated by the pandemic, to put it lightly. The walkout disrupted many appointments and services at hospitals and clinics, a great number of which brought in contingency workers.
After days of picketing, Kaiser agreed to the 4-year contract proposed by the workers, which included significant wage increases and a new wage minimum of $25 an hour. The improved wages are important for attracting and retaining new workers so the hospitals are properly equipped with staff. These better conditions also put pressure on the rest of the industry to treat their workers better.
So what about Hollywood?
On May 2nd, 2023, the WGA, (Writer’s Guild of America), went on strike against the AMPTP, The Alliance of Motion Picture Television Producers, which includes Amazon/MGM, Apple, Disney/ABC/Fox, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount/CBS, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery (HBO), and others. After having worked decades under standards that had not been adjusted for inflation and supplying the industry with the content that kept all of us sane during the pandemic, and all these executives filthy rich, Hollywood writers rightfully demanded that they were properly treated and compensated for their labor. New standards were especially needed with the major shift from broadcasted television to a streaming service centered industry.
The WGA’s demands included minimum staffing requirements in writers rooms, protections against use of AI technology in production, and more transparency from streaming services on viewership and the financial success the shows they were writing were bringing these studios.
Then, on July 14th, SAG – AFTRA, (Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Arts), went on strike with the WGA marking the first time both SAG and the WGA were on simultaneous strike since 1960.
“We’re fighting for the survival of our profession,” the WGA stated, demanding minimum earnings for performers to keep up with inflation, protecting actors from having their likeness used without consent or compensations and being replaced with AI tech, updating health and pensions contributions, and a great deal of other protections.
Struck work, (things union members aren’t allowed to do), includes acting, singing, dancing, doing stunts, voice acting, promoting upcoming works, and many other things.
In good news, the WGA strike just came to an end! The strike lasted a whopping 148 days, which is a new record for the guild. During those 5 months there were no new scripted shows. Studios relied mostly on running reality tv, sports and reruns. Finally, after months of picketing in Los Angeles, New York, and other cities, the WGA was able to strike a deal with the AMPTP on Sept. 4th, winning a great deal of their demands.
Unfortunately, an update from the SAG-AFTRA website reports that industry CEOs walked away from the bargaining table after refusing the union’s most recent counter offer. Not only have they stopped negotiating, but they’re also giving the press misleading information. “The companies are using the same failed strategy they tried to inflict on the WGA – putting out misleading information in an attempt to fool our members into abandoning our solidarity and putting pressure on our negotiators,” says the WGA, “but, just like the writers, our members are smarter than that and will not be fooled.”
It’s vital that workers in any industry are able to make a living off their labor, not just barely get by. There have been massive shifts in many aspects of our world, especially in light of the pandemic: the economy, the workforce, our culture, technology, AI and so on and so forth. The impact on our industries is undeniable, and change is inevitable, so it’s important that we are striving to change for the better.
To keep this from being too long for a school newspaper article, (a task I may have already failed), I went over the covered topics very briefly. I greatly encourage those interested in learning more to look into the many recent and ongoing strikes with the provided links or a simple Google search.
