LA Mayor Urges Hollywood to ‘Work Around Clock’ to End Strike

LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is calling on actors, writers and Hollywood studio brass to “work around the clock” and resolve the impasse that inspired screen actors and the writers guild to go on strike at the same time for the first time since 1960.

Bass released her plea hours after members of the 160,000-member strong Screen Actors Guild, now known as SAG-AFTRA, began joining members of the Writers Guild of America on picket lines across the nation on Friday morning.

SAG-AFTRA’s board voted Thursday morning to approve a strike against the film and TV companies, dramatically escalating a labor dispute that has had Writers Guild members walking picket lines for more than 70 days.

The Writers Guild has roughly 20,000 members nationwide.

“With more than 100,000 workers now participating in an unprecedented strike, it is clear the entertainment industry is at a historic inflection point,” Bass, a Democrat, said.

“This affects all of us and is essential to our overall economy,” she said.

In fact, Hollywood movie making and the ancillary local businesses that depend on it are estimated to bring tens of billions of dollars in revenue into the city and to generate even more in state tax revenues.

SAG-AFTRA’s contract expired midnight Wednesday, after a month of negotiations resulted in little progress on a host of issues including the role of artificial intelligence in movie making and the industry’s transition to streaming.

The actors’ strike officially began at midnight on Friday and familiar and unfamiliar faces alike began joining the writers on the streets of Hollywood Friday morning.

“We are being victimized by a very greedy enterprise,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said during a press conference on Thursday. “At some point you have to say, ‘No, we’re not going to take this anymore. You people are crazy. What are you doing? Why are you doing this?’”

Alluding to streaming and artificial intelligence in particular, Drescher said, “If we don’t stand tall right now, we are all going to be in jeopardy. 

“You cannot change the business model as much as it has been changed and not expect the contract to change too,” she said. “I cannot believe … how [the studios] plead poverty, that they are losing money left and right, when they give hundreds of millions to their CEOs. It is disgusting. Shame on them,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, is arguing it presented a “historic” deal to the union that included pay and residual increases, substantially higher caps on pension and health contributions, and a “groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors’ digital likenesses” for SAG-AFTRA members, all to no avail.

According to the guidelines, SAG-AFTRA members will not be able to attend premieres, do interviews for completed work, go to awards shows, attend film festivals or even promote projects on social media while the strike is in effect. 

However, major movie studio employees told The Well News on Friday that there are enough movies and television shows “in the can” to keep them busy for quite some time and perhaps to the end of the year.

In some way, ironically enough, the current dispute is almost a mirror image of what occurred in 1960 when the two unions walked out over a lack of payment, so-called residuals, when movies they worked on were shown on television.

Today, the actors and writers are demanding increased residual payments from streaming services.

They contend that in the past, when network television dominated the business, series had several more episodes than they do today, and even a moderate hit could lead to long-term payments for the artists involved.

They’re also fighting to have some kind of strict rules about the use of AI to protect the jobs of living and breathing actors.

Then as now, the studios claimed the actors and writers were being unreasonable and that to cut them in on a share of the additional revenues would be financial suicide for the film companies.

According to the studios, the evolution from moviegoing to streaming has not exactly been a win for them, dramatically shrinking their profit margins and causing them to lay off employees and greenlight fewer projects.

Bass, who just became Los Angeles’ mayor last year, just wants the strike to end with an outcome all sides can accept.

“I call upon all sides to come to the table and work around the clock until an equitable agreement is reached. This is an urgent issue that must be resolved and I will be working to make that happen,” the mayor said.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue