More than three months in, the mood on the picket lines outside of The Walt Disney Co.’s Burbank studios remains a blend of festive and defiant. Members of the two Hollywood unions on strike — the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA — have continued to assemble here and in front of other major studios in record numbers. But the marchers at this picket had more at stake than most, with many of them belonging to the group Filipinx In Entertainment and WGA’s “pre-union” supporters caucus, consisting of aspiring writers who have not yet amassed the professional credits necessary to become full-fledged members.
The striking unions say the items on the table in their fight against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the group representing Hollywood’s major studios and production companies — shrinking residual payments in this era of streaming media, the slashing of jobs due to shorter seasons and reduced writers’ room commitments, and the looming threat of artificial intelligence — are existential ones for Hollywood workers. But these issues don’t affect all actors and writers equally. Hollywood has always been hardest for those paying their dues by toiling endless hours for unlivable wages in the hopes of someday breaking through to the big time. And those at the lower-levels are often people of color. WGA West data shows that the majority of low-to-mid-level television writers are black, indigenous, and other people of color, while 64% of executive producers are white men.
