This year was supposed to have been a showbiz love fest. Disney, Warner Brothers and the boosters of the world-famous Hollywood sign had planned to celebrate their centennials, with a special thanks to the “storytellers who have sparked the joy” of movies.
There were so many actors, writers and other workers buzzing around the soundstages in Burbank, Studio City and Culver City that you could practically hear the hum of a $134bn TV-and-film hive.
By spring, however, the buzz had died. After negotiating for two months with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for better pay, job security, and more staffing, the Writers Guild of America went on strike in May.
Now the writers’ strike is over and the 11,500 members of the WGA are voting on the contract. Since the union got everything it asked for back in May, ratifying the three-year-contract is a foregone conclusion.
So, let’s review the lessons that were learned by both sides in this historic event.
Moguls need to read the room
CEOs in Hollywood like to think that they are skilled at reading the room. But if they sit too long in the captain’s seat, they can turn myopic and see only what’s in front of them and not 10ft (or 10 years) ahead.
Had they been paying attention, they would have known that, nationwide, there have been 275 strikes so far this year. Teachers, graduate students, baristas, farm workers, nurses, bell boys, hotel maids, longshoremen – the list goes on. Even strippers at a North Hollywood topless club joined a union in May after a 15-month battle.
The union surge is due partly to the pandemic. It showed workers how indispensable they are to the economy, how underpaid they are for their work and how cavalierly most employers treat them. It hasn’t helped that some firms have price-gouged their customers, blaming it on inflation. In fact, the cable unit owned by NBC Universal Comcast has tripled its monthly fees in the past few years, prompting consumers to cut the cord. These multinationals seem out of touch with most Americans.
Writers should stick together
In the last strike of 2007, better-paid showrunners pushed lesser-paid screenwriters to settle for an inferior deal. They didn’t, but the division did not bode well for solidarity.
This year, the WGA agreed to stick together. This summer, when temperatures in Los Angeles reached 104F (40C), WGA members picketed nearly every day. They also joined the picket lines of service workers, hotel strikers, actors, teachers and anyone else who was fighting for a fair shake.
Outsiders call Los Angeles a fractured city. But it’s a union town with a remarkable level of cross-union support that cuts across radically different workplaces. Watching the camaraderie among workers made it easy for bystanders to cheer them all on.
Disdain and disrespect aren’t labor strategies
For months, the tycoons talked to content creators as though they were troubled teens. Disney chief Bob Iger chastised writers for not being “realistic” while he was at the grossly impractical Sun Valley retreat for the elite. Warner Bros Discovery’s chief David Zaslav bragged that he was saving $300m by not paying writers on strike. Netflix’s Ted Sarandos unctuously claimed that he was “a union man through and through, and feels the (strikers’) pain” although no one believed him.
Anonymously, the chiefs had used the trades to plant threats about dragging things out until writers lost their homes. They complained about the writers’ lack of civility and tried to bully them into accepting a bad deal. In the end, it made the leaders look bad.
This is not your daddy’s union
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is led by Carol Lombardini, who comes from the old school of labor negotiations. The 68-year-old can be heavy-handed and lacks the speed, continuity and nimbleness to match the skillful scribes. She’s married to a corporate attorney who’s spent his career defending companies against employee labor disputes and who has also worked for the studios.
Early in negotiations, Lombardini would throw out a crumb of what the WGA was seeking. When the union tried to negotiate for a whole slice, negotiations would stop for several weeks – until the next crumb-tossing event. Granted, the woman is responsible for 58 other Hollywood union deals. But for her annual pay of $3m, she could have done better with WGA.
When things turn toxic, hire a snake-charmer
By late August, relations between employers and unions had soured so much, a Gallup poll showed that Americans favored the WGA over AMPTP by 72% to 19%.
Enter Molly Levinson, an expensive crisis manager. Her job was to “reframe the big picture” about the studio chiefs who have been called greedy, imperious and out of touch. In the past, Levinson has “reset” the images of predatory student lender Better Future Forward and of Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.
Levinson told the moguls to settle. And they did. In September, the AMPTP gave the WGA pretty much what it had given the Directors Guild of America in June. After a five-month-long industry shutdown, the AMPTP’s brash gamble cost California’s economy about $5bn, New York another $1.6bn, and who knows how much more in other states.
But at least we can now celebrate the centennial of the movies’ magic.
Kathleen Sharp is the author of Mr & Mrs Hollywood: Edie and Lew Wasserman and Their Entertainment Empire which has been optioned
