What did we learn from a tumultuous 2023? As an extraordinarily challenged year sunsets, here are five takeaways.
By late 2022, the Writers Guild strike of 2007-08 and the SAG stalemate of 2008-09 were but fading memories for those who remembered them at all—and the dual writers-actors strikes of 1959-60 were sepia-toned history, known to only a few. Then came last December, when the Directors Guild failed to reach a deal on its usual early schedule, and the industry awakened to what became its most turbulent year in a generation. Now that 2023’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are over, we can ask, What just happened? Herewith, five key answers.
The evidence was everywhere, but the entertainment C.E.O.s ignored it: Labor in Hollywood—and across the U.S.—is on the move. From digital news shops to VFX workers, from UPS to the UAW, from Amazon and Starbucks to teachers and doctors and hotel workers, everywhere you look, someone is unionizing, and often striking. Polls have shown attitudes toward unions on the upswing, and even highly paid software engineers in Silicon Valley have been organizing and protesting, if not actually unionizing.
Closer to home, the WGA board elections over a year ago featured almost nothing but hardline talk that clearly foreshadowed a strike; the moderate faction of SAG-AFTRA began talking of a strike a year ago (and the union went into negotiations bearing a strike authorization); and the DGA, contra its typical practice, failed to reach an early deal. This was the backdrop against which 2023 unfolded, but the chief executives discarded the tea leaves, as did AMPTP president Carol Lombardini and the company labor V.P.s (or else they went unheard at the highest levels). Hence, corporate miscalculations and an aging labor-relations playbook that brought us dual strikes for the first time in 63 years
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A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.
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