Members of the Writers Guild of America have stopped working — they’ve been on strike since the beginning of May. The Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA, joined the strike on July 14 over an ongoing labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Motivation for the strike is multifaceted. Workers want to negotiate a new basic agreement for minimum wage, along with ensuring that each member of a writing staff receives their own pension and health care funds. That's as production companies and studios have found ways to cut corners to increase profits, which has been further exacerbated with new technologies and ways to watch — and create — content like streaming services and artificial intelligence.
“I think that what we’re looking for is residuals,” said Mark Fite, an actor and comedian from Iowa City who graduated from the University of Iowa. “This is going to be hard with these people.”
The “people” he’s referring to are those associated with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents over 350 American television and film production companies including Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios and Warner Bros.
Toby Huss, originally from Marshalltown, is a well-known writer and actor in Hollywood who has played parts in over 150 TV shows and films since the 1990s. He said on Iowa Public Radio’sRiver to River while standing on the picket line that there are anywhere from 500 to a couple thousand industry workers alongside him.
He agreed that one of the main issues for writers and the actors continues to be residual payment.
“That's how a lot of middle-class actors and writers make their living,” he said over the phone while walking the perimeter of Warner Brothers studio in Burbank with other strikers. “Every time they show an episode of television, the writers and the actors and the producers all share in some of the profits of that. What's been happening with the streaming services is they've cut out the actors and the writers from seeing the profits of that, so they've been holding all the profits for themselves.”
Huss said workers are also striking because of the continued influence and threat of artificial intelligence in writers rooms. Without regulation, the technology has the potential to take over writing and even acting jobs by using actor likenesses.
“I don't really have the ideas about how to regulate it, or what the price you put on to sell your face somewhere,” said Mather Zickel, a SAG-AFTRA actor with Iowa connections. “I think the whole thing is spooky to begin with, but you can't stop it. But you got to do something about it, and I think the background actors are particularly vulnerable in that realm. Because they are just going to be out of work.”
Zickel said it’s become increasingly impossible for writers and actors to make a living in Hollywood since streaming took off.
“Actors and writers survive on residuals. That's how we get by, because nobody works all the time, and we pay the bills through residuals, and there are virtually none coming from the streaming shows, which are now dominating the market,” he said. “That’s got to be addressed.”
If a deal isn’t made soon, Huss warns that the quality of shows and films will start to decrease. Several shows are on pause, like the third season of Abbott Elementary, the 12th season of American Horror Story and several late-night talk shows. Filming for a number of anticipated movies has stopped as well.
“You're gonna start seeing worse and worse shows, and you're gonna start to see worse and worse movies, and they're just not going to be worth watching anymore,” Huss said.
