NEW YORK — Lighting for the entertainment industry is Ryan Meyer’s lifeblood.
Before the Hollywood strikes, he worked 40 hours a week or more as a gaffer or director of photography. He also has a company that usually earns more than a million dollars a year in production support.
Most of that is gone, for now, dried up in the contract disputes that have led to months of picket lines by writers and actors. One day recently, the 50-year-old Meyer, who lives in Los Angeles, lit an actor’s home foyer, “so when she opens the door,” he said, “she looks good.”
While waiting out the strikes, Meyer and many thousands of others in the business are taking most any paycheck they can get, from Trader Joe’s to teaching to hitting up friends for writing gigs. Some are turning hobbies into money. Anything to pay the bills.
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“We’ve become handymen,” Meyer said. “My neighbor needed help with his Jacuzzi so we powered that up for him. Somebody else bought a trailer with a saw and is cutting people’s firewood.”
Side hustles are nothing new to many actors and writers. Turning them into life support is the issue now. That includes industry workers not striking but thrown out of work.
Jesse McLaren is a staff writer in Los Angeles for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and has written for the Oscars and the Emmys. As a hobby during the pandemic, he bought a 3D printer and began making custom snow globes featuring the houses of loved ones. He doled them out as gifts.
“They’ve become my full time living, basically,” he said.
McLaren has sold about 40 custom snow globes since the writers went on strike, at $299 a piece, through his Etsy shop.
“I’ve made the equivalent of one full mortgage payment so far this month,” he said. “I’m fully committed to snow globes right now. No joke,” he said.
As the strikes near historic records, and with renewed contract talks for writers continuing Thursday, industry funds offering help are juggling intense demand.
“In the past month our counselors have been reporting an increase in applicants facing eviction notices, utility shutoffs and mortgage foreclosures. And we know that even a quick end to the current strikes will not put an end to people’s financial hardships for quite some time,” Keith McNutt, executive director of the Entertainment Community Fund’s western region, said Friday.
As of Sept. 1, the fund has distributed about $6.5 million to about 3,100 film and TV workers. It has doled out $400,000 to $700,000 a week during the strikes, compared to an average of $75,000 weekly during the first half of 2023.
Cameo, a site where celebrities record personalized video messages for fans, has seen 156% growth from July 15 to Sept. 1 from the same period a year ago. Since the writers strike began, 3,124 people joined or reactivated their Cameo accounts, the company said.
It’s been nearly five months since members of the Writers Guild of America stopped working, and just over two months since the actors union joined them in their fight against studios and streamers.
Actor Autumn Monroe splits her time between Atlanta and New York. While walking a picket line recently in downtown Manhattan, she said she has an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sister to thank for helping her stay afloat during the strikes.
“She called and I was able to pick up some consulting and writing. It’s for her research as part of a fellowship. I have a doctorate. She’s paying me, thank God,” Monroe said.
Monroe appeared in the recently canceled reboot of “The Wonder Years” and wrapped an upcoming movie starring Vince Vaughn. In the business for 13 years, she remains on her union’s health insurance and has enough banked hours to preserve her coverage for a while longer.
With the help of her sorority sister, Monroe won’t have to touch her savings.
Sometimes, it’s about the impacted helping the impacted.
Actor Bethany Layla Johnson in New York said on a recent picket line in New York that she has befriended on-set photographers over the years. When the actors strike began, she signed on to help them sell images to photo agencies, including celebrity-fueled rallies and picket lines in the strikes. She takes an 8% fee.
“I’m thinking about getting my notary,” she said. “New York City is a real estate city. It would be great if I could become a go-to notary for real estate brokers.”
Acting and modeling work for Briza Covarrubias had picked up significantly since 2019, when the pandemic stalled her livelihood. Her husband’s salary as an engineer helps, but it doesn’t get them all the way there in paying their bills.
“Right now, there’s nothing. Social media has really changed the modeling industry,” she said. “My sister does work at Trader Joe’s. She offered to help, or I go back to bartending.”
Covarrubias, 30, has done some unpaid stage work during the strikes that fed her hunger to act. She considers herself lucky. Her French husband, who she supported while he pursued a work visa, now has that in hand and is able to earn. His salary is about $50,000 a year. They pay her parents about $1,500 a month in rent.
“He reminds me every day, you were there for me. I’m here for you now. But, you know, we’re still struggling,” she said.
What the Hollywood strikes tell us about the state of unions in the US
What the Hollywood strikes tell us about the state of unions in the US
To hear Hollywood talk about the current moment in labor history, American workers stand on a precipice.
“We are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines and big business, who care more about Wall Street than you and your family,” actress and Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists president Fran Drescher told members of the media gathered for a SAG-AFTRA news conference in mid-July 2023.
Against the backdrop of new technology that carries the potential to eliminate jobs and wages that don’t keep up with inflation, more Americans than ever find themselves sympathizing with unions. Public approval of unions reached a modern high over the past year with at least 7 in 10 Americans (71%) thinking favorably of unions compared with 68% of Americans in 2021.
The trend has been on the rise since 2010, and the increased enthusiasm for organized labor is beginning to manifest itself in newly formed unions in recent years. The number of elections held in U.S. workplaces to decide whether workers can collectively bargain with their employer rose 51% in 2022 compared to the year before, according to a Stacker analysis of National Labor Relations Board case data. Still, union membership rates nationwide are far from their golden days, and experts say a serious boost may require more than just enthusiasm.
The 160,000 workers represented by the SAG-AFTRA union voted to authorize a strike in July. The historic vote marked only the second time in history that actors and writers have gone on strike simultaneously. The Writers Guild of America, representing 11,500 TV and film writers, authorized a strike two months prior.
The reasons for the strike are disagreements between writers and actors and their big studio and network counterparts who own the distribution channels for their work. The workers warn that studios want to use workers’ likeness and past writing to make artificial intelligence-generated entertainment at low cost.
Beyond Hollywood, AI is being put to work reducing costs in other industries. Today’s generative AI can automate software processes and perform white-collar jobs typically performed by entry-level workers. A June 2023 Business Wire survey illustrates how the emerging technology has put the interest of workers at odds with their employers. According to software provider Qualtrics, 64% of executives surveyed described AI as “exciting,” but only 39% of full-time employees surveyed felt the same way. And about as many employees as executives who are excited about AI expect job loss of some kind.
Union support reaches levels last seen when Ronald Reagan led striking Hollywood actors
The last time working conditions were severe enough to warrant both actors and writers striking at the same time was more than 60 years ago. In 1960, Ronald Reagan had yet to make his run for the White House and was leading the strike as an actor and SAG’s president.
Though technology was less in focus in 1960, workers then, much like today, were motivated to strike by a perception of unfair negotiations over pay. Actors and writers won beneficial residual pay for movies they acted in because of that strike. The actors’ strike lasted six weeks—while the writers stopped work for 21 weeks—before reaching an agreement with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers representing the movie studios and networks.
In the following decades, Reagan would be elected president with the support of the business community. During his presidency, he took action to stymie the power of workers unions, most famously when he broke the air traffic controllers’ strike. Labor’s favor with the public began its precipitous decline.
Union drives grow more effective
The frequency with which workers have been able to win union representation in the workplace has increased since the Great Recession, when perceptions of organized labor had reached rock bottom.
It’s important to note that Stacker’s analysis groups case data by the calendar year ending in December and will differ slightly from official NLRB numbers, which adhere to a federal budget calendar ending in October.
Clashes between workers and employers rising
Workers mounted nearly 24 large work stoppages last year—on par with the number conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic. A work stoppage, or strike, typically happens after a majority of workers in the union vote to authorize it, but workers’ right to strike does not require union representation.
Workers can initiate a strike legally for economic reasons, like seeking fair wages or fewer work hours. Or they can legally strike in response to a perceived “unfair labor practice,” which describes when employers run afoul of the National Labor Relations Act.
Several of the most headline-making strikes in recent years have occurred in California, where the cost of living is among the highest in the country, a trend that continues into 2023. It’s not just Hollywood actors—janitors and teachers are also flexing their right to strike. West Coast states—including California, Oregon, Washington, and even Alaska—have the highest percentages of unionized workers behind New York, where 1 in 5 workers belong to a union.
Union membership still below prepandemic levels
Nationwide, however, union membership has been in freefall for decades. In 1983, 1 in 5 workers were union members. Today, that figure is just 10%—the lowest on record, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even though the raw numbers of union members have increased with time, employers continuously add nonunion jobs that dilute the membership rate.
Union election wins for workers also don’t always foretell new labor strength, as the election is often just the first step in the arduous process of establishing a working agreement between employees and the employer.
After winning recognition, new unions are granted the right to formally negotiate with employers who often use stall tactics to keep the union from ever getting its first written working contract. Almost half of all union drives result in new unions, but only about half of those new unions are even successful in winning an initial contract after that.
Academics have argued that without stronger penalties for employers who violate labor law, such as those included in the failed Protecting the Right to Organize Act legislation, it will continue to be burdensome for workers to successfully negotiate working conditions with their employers. The act failed to make its way through Congress and into law in 2020 and 2021, and it faces steep opposition in 2023, including from business interests like the Society for Human Resource Management and Republican politicians in the House of Representatives who argue it would give workers too much power.
For established, well-organized unions like SAG-AFTRA, WGA, and those in other industries like the Teamsters’ delivery workers unions, the enthusiasm of this year’s so-called “hot labor summer” could provide cover to other workers looking to level the playing field the only way they can control—by walking off the job.
Story editing by Ashleigh Graf. Copy editing by Paris Close.
