The agreements with actors and writers represent a capitulation by Hollywood’s biggest companies, which started the bargaining process with an expectation that the unions, especially SAG-AFTRA, would be relatively compliant.
Recent union contract gains against a backdrop of decades of union decline, worsening wealth inequality and broken labor laws.
Writer Gary Phillips traces the history of the Writers Guild, the militancy of Hollywood unions, beginning with the writers, the difference between the writers and actors, and why the actors remain on strike.
The singer-songwriter met the demands of striking SAG-AFTRA, including streaming residuals, to release The Eras Tour documentary.
Hollywood glamour doesn't pay the rent. Many of the people who actually make the movies and television shows we love so much — whose hard work creates stories, sound stages, spectacular costumes, and so much more — are barely scraping by.
The unions raised the need for antitrust enforcement, and the Biden administration’s top antitrust cops paid attention. The one-two punch of simultaneous WGA and SAG strikes, for the first time in 60 years, has stalled out virtually all productions.
The American movie industry has been one of the most consistently unionized sectors of the economy since the 1930s — but to achieve that, workers had to overcome “the iron fist of the moguls” and organized crime, says historian Gerald Horne
Extras - they fear the general public thinks all actors get paid handsomely and are doing it for the love of the craft, almost as a hobby. Yet in most cases, it's their only job, and they need to qualify for health insurance, pay rent or a mortgage,
Calls AI a ‘Criminal Enterprise’: They’ll ‘Scan Extras, Own Their Likeness Forever and Eliminate Them’
The innovative and daring show Orange Is the New Black was a worldwide hit for Netflix, but some of the actors say that they were never fairly compensated.
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