The Labour Movement Will Thrive or Die This Summer
The Saturday Huddle is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis, and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts, and business news in the region. Trevor Nichols is Huddle’s editor, based in Halifax.
This summer will be a turning point for labour rights in North America.
For months, Writers Guild of America members have been on strike demanding an end to studio practices that have dramatically cut their residual payments. They have just been joined by SAG-AFTRA, which represents pretty much all your favourite actors.
With writers not writing and actors not acting, the big Hollywood studios they’re striking against will soon start running out of new shows and movies to feed the ever-ravenous content beast.
Meanwhile, for the writers and less-famous working actors, months without paid work is taking a massive financial toll.
Something must give. And when it does, who exactly gives will reveal a lot about the future of labour rights.
For decades, labour movements in both the U.S. and Canada have been weakening. Over the last forty years, union membership in Canada dropped by 9 percent. In the U.S., it fell by 10 percent over approximately the same period.
However you feel about unions, you can’t deny SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild members appear quite sympathetic right now.
On one side, writers working for the best TV shows in the world aren’t making enough to qualify for health insurance. And actors in hit Netflix shows must take second jobs to pay their bills.
On the other side, multi-millionaire executives are talking to reporters about delaying negotiations as long as possible to starve writers out of their homes. Then there’s petty moves like chopping down tree cover so strikers must stand in the searing sun. All while the studios are raking in millions in profits.
These execs are not winning many hearts and minds. I mean, they’re literally trying to own the rights to actors’ faces.
Meanwhile, looming just over the horizon are 340,000 UPS employees who could hit the picket lines any day.
These drivers are asking for small pay increases and a fairer pay structure that doesn’t punish weekend drivers. Oh, and air conditioning in their trucks.
Where the actors and writers are uniquely capable of making their case through their wit, charisma, and star power, the Teamsters are a whole different animal.
The sheer size of their membership means if they go on strike, it will likely send shockwaves through the whole economy.
Those kinds of economic impacts can easily turn average people against strikers. But since beloved actors will have been beating the labour-rights drum for weeks, there’s a good chance more people will be on the Teamsters’ side than against them.
All this will culminate in a pivotal summer for the labour movement.
The Hollywood strikes are uniquely important because the people on strike are the most qualified to get people on their side, and their opponents are so uniquely unlikable.
The sheer mustache-twirling villainy of uber-rich studio executives, at a time when most average people can viscerally feel the effect of runaway wealth inequality, is shocking.
Meanwhile, you have clever writers out there every day going viral on social media. And you have the most famous and charismatic people on Earth, the people who play beloved characters like Ted Lasso and Saul Goodman, standing beside them talking about runaway corporate greed and labour rights.
All that could very likely be underpinned by economic chaos caused by UPS strikes. And the big takeaway from that one? “Please give us air conditioning.”
This is the most exposure and star power labour rights issues will have had in decades, not to mention the best chance for sympathy from ordinary people. If they can’t succeed in getting the bulk of their demands met it will be a death knell for the entire labour movement.
If Mark Ruffalo can’t win, no one else stands a chance.