Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, you watching anything good on TV these days? No,
Speaker 1: I'm serious.
Speaker 2: I just finished watching The Bear, which I know you
Speaker 2: also watched, right I did.
Speaker 1: I switch off usually between watching like some new show
Speaker 1: and then going back and watching all six seasons of
Speaker 1: The Sopranos, and then watching a new show and then
Speaker 1: the Sopranos again. So I think I recent right before
Speaker 1: The Bear, I did my seventh viewing of The Sopranos.
Speaker 1: It's one of these things I never I don't know
Speaker 1: what to watch now. I don't have a new show.
Speaker 2: Do you need suggestions?
Speaker 1: I need suggestions.
Speaker 2: Actually, I just finished watching all of Cheers, which I've
Speaker 2: never seen really like it was kind of it was
Speaker 2: always in the background. I was a big Frasier fan,
Speaker 2: so I thought I should try Cheers, and I really
Speaker 2: enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: I want to watch Northern Exposure, but it's not on
Speaker 1: any of the streaming sage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would love to rewatch that too. I remember
Speaker 2: my mother loved that show. Okay, well we are not
Speaker 2: actually doing TV reviews, are we?
Speaker 3: We?
Speaker 4: Good?
Speaker 3: But you know.
Speaker 1: It is true, there is a lot of archive TV
Speaker 1: material to watch. You don't even need to watch new shows.
Speaker 2: No, that is true. You could endlessly watch the back
Speaker 2: catalogs of old TV, which is fun and entertaining, but
Speaker 2: has also given rise to a new issue for us
Speaker 2: to worry about.
Speaker 1: Right, and so you know, right now we are in
Speaker 1: the midst of sort of, I think at least two strikes.
Speaker 1: I think that the writers, the screenwriters in Hollywood have
Speaker 1: been on strike for at least a few months now.
Speaker 1: The actors are on strike. So while there's plenty to watch,
Speaker 1: and actually people are excited about going to the movies
Speaker 1: again for the first time in a while, Like, my
Speaker 1: understanding is that basically nothing is getting made right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is actually I know we said there's tons
Speaker 2: of TV to get through, but I do also worry
Speaker 2: about what if some of the good stuff shuts down?
Speaker 2: But more broadly, and.
Speaker 1: I do want to know whether the guy gets out
Speaker 1: of the freezer after in the Bear, right, because he
Speaker 1: got caught in the freezer at the end. So I
Speaker 1: hope there's a third season that resolves that.
Speaker 2: You know how they call everyone chef on the Bear,
Speaker 2: It's like, yes, chef. Okay, chef, should we start calling
Speaker 2: each other?
Speaker 3: Co host?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, yes, co host, guest host, guess host okay.
Speaker 2: All right, okay, So there is a concern over future content,
Speaker 2: but this also fits more broadly into some of the
Speaker 2: more active labor discussions and things that we've seen going
Speaker 2: on recently. And we just finished up that episode about
Speaker 2: the United Auto Workers Union and their fight against the
Speaker 2: Big Three, and it feels like these are two very
Speaker 2: different industries car manufacturers and you know, content creators for Hollywood,
Speaker 2: but there are some similarities and also key differences underlying
Speaker 2: both of these labor movements.
Speaker 1: Yes, host, let you know what, let's just get started.
Speaker 1: We have two perfect guests to describe to help us
Speaker 1: understand what's going on with Hollywood and the unions right now,
Speaker 1: both of them in house. Here are colleagues. We're going
Speaker 1: to be speaking with. Lucas Shaw, here's the managing editor
Speaker 1: for Media and Entertainment at Bloomberg and the author of
Speaker 1: the excellent screen Time newsletter. And we also have Josh Iidelson,
Speaker 1: senior reporter for Bloomberg and BusinessWeek, who covers organized labor.
Speaker 1: So Lucas and Josh, thank you both. So much for
Speaker 1: coming on o.
Speaker 4: Locks, thanks for having us, Thank you for having us, Lucas.
Speaker 1: Why don't you give us the state of play generally
Speaker 1: right now on Hollywood, Like how many strikes are going on,
Speaker 1: who's on strike, who isn't on strike, Where are talks?
Speaker 1: How long have they been going on? Give us like
Speaker 1: the quick summation of where things stand.
Speaker 3: There are two strikes happening right now, which is the
Speaker 3: first time that that has happened since nineteen sixty. The
Speaker 3: first union to go on strike was the Writers Guild,
Speaker 3: which was at the beginning of May, so they've been
Speaker 3: on strike for about three months. The last writer's strike
Speaker 3: was in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: that lasted for one hundred days. This one looks almost
Speaker 3: certain to blow past that. The actors join the writers
Speaker 3: on strike in the middle of lie and so that's
Speaker 3: been going on for a couple of weeks. The other
Speaker 3: guild that had a deal coming up this year that
Speaker 3: was a big deal with the directors. They did make
Speaker 3: a deal with the studios, and so they are not
Speaker 3: on strike. But you've now got you know, we've had
Speaker 3: months of writers on the picket lines outside of studios
Speaker 3: chanting and getting attention, and now the actors have joined them,
Speaker 3: and the studios haven't made a lot of progress in
Speaker 3: trying to sort it out with the actors. They are
Speaker 3: now trying to get back at the table with the writers.
Speaker 3: But from everything we've seen, the studios and the writers
Speaker 3: were really far apart, not even close. The studios and
Speaker 3: the actors were a little bit closer, but still a
Speaker 3: lot of ground to make up, and nobody's really certain
Speaker 3: when this is going to end, which is incredibly disorienting
Speaker 3: and de stabilizing for most of the people who work
Speaker 3: in the entertainment business and all of the industries that
Speaker 3: work around it, whether it's you know, restaurants or stylists
Speaker 3: or transportation.
Speaker 2: So talk to us a little bit about the issues
Speaker 2: at play here, and you know, Joe brought up the
Speaker 2: idea of the back catalogs, which I guess have become
Speaker 2: more valuable given the right of streaming, and it seems
Speaker 2: like writers or actors involved with those want a bigger
Speaker 2: piece of the pipe. So what exactly are the complaints
Speaker 2: here and how do they tie in with the way
Speaker 2: the media business has sort of changed over time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the writers and actors have slightly different asks
Speaker 3: or proposals, but the unifying theme under girding this dispute
Speaker 3: is there's been this dramatic transformation in the entertainment business
Speaker 3: which every consumer, every viewer knows about because it's streaming.
Speaker 3: Streaming has replaced cable TV, or is in the process
Speaker 3: of replacing cable TV. That has changed how projects are made,
Speaker 3: how they are funded, and how talent gets paid. And
Speaker 3: the writers and actors feel that they are not receiving
Speaker 3: enough money from these big media companies and from streaming
Speaker 3: services in particular, and that the ways in which they
Speaker 3: are paid make the job, which was already not the
Speaker 3: most secure position, even less secure, and so they are
Speaker 3: looking for ways that protect themselves a bit more. At
Speaker 3: the same time, the biggest reason that I think there's
Speaker 3: so much labor unrest is because of that transition. Most
Speaker 3: of these media companies also are not making as much
Speaker 3: money as they used to because their cable networks are
Speaker 3: less profitable, and they're pooring a ton of money into
Speaker 3: the streaming services, most of which other than Netflix, lose money.
Speaker 1: Josh, let me bring you in. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the themes that we've been talking about on recent episodes and
Speaker 1: just out a lot. Is this sort of like this
Speaker 1: idea of newfound energy in the labor movement more broadly?
Speaker 1: And I don't know if there are actual number of
Speaker 1: strikes is up, but we definitely see a new attitude,
Speaker 1: or we saw it with the ups we see with
Speaker 1: UAW et cetera. When you look at the unions in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: how similar is this, Like, you know, is the vibe
Speaker 1: is these sort of political stance sort of similar to
Speaker 1: what it was maybe in two thousand and six, or
Speaker 1: has there been also a change to and the sort
Speaker 1: of leadership and tactics that we see with some of
Speaker 1: these Hollywood unions.
Speaker 5: So, having covered the labor movement for more than a
Speaker 5: decade now, it has often felt like every six months
Speaker 5: or year or so, someone wants to grab something to
Speaker 5: declare that the long declining labor movement in the US
Speaker 5: is revived. And so I come at this generally with
Speaker 5: a sense of skepticism. And we could go year by
Speaker 5: year and I could tell you what the cool thing
Speaker 5: was that was supposedly going to reverse the decline of
Speaker 5: US labor unions and didn't. That said, what's been happening
Speaker 5: in the past year and a half really is remarkable.
Speaker 5: The most stunning thing that we've seen is at longtime
Speaker 5: non union companies, the most famous companies in the United
Speaker 5: States in many cases where for the first time workers
Speaker 5: actually won union recognition at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, other places
Speaker 5: like Trader Joe's, Microsoft, and those workers so far have
Speaker 5: not won union contracts. But the fact that these places
Speaker 5: that were seen, often including by union organizers, as impregnable,
Speaker 5: suddenly now have legally recognized unions is a very significant shift,
Speaker 5: and one that has impacted how workers think about their
Speaker 5: jobs and about what's possible at other places, and also
Speaker 5: I think has impacted the sense of ambition and possibility
Speaker 5: for workers who've had a union for a long time.
Speaker 5: And some people may remember in twenty twenty one there
Speaker 5: was discussion about what was being called strike Tober, where
Speaker 5: there were lots of union members authorizing or going on strikes.
Speaker 5: What's happened since then is more significant. By the numbers,
Speaker 5: this year has been a big year for strikes already,
Speaker 5: not compared to the nineteen fifties. If you go to
Speaker 5: When I Love Lucy was on, we may remember that as.
Speaker 2: It's a great show, which I have rewatched.
Speaker 5: Probably on streaming. I'm guessing, although there could be an
Speaker 5: I Love Lucy channel, I don't know about because I
Speaker 5: cut the cord a long time ago. Every year that
Speaker 5: I Love Lucy was on TV, there were, by current standards,
Speaker 5: tons of people going on strike in the US. There
Speaker 5: were close to or over a million people involved in
Speaker 5: work stoppages every one of those years in the fifties.
Speaker 5: We are far from that because unions are a much
Speaker 5: smaller share of the US workforce these days in terms
Speaker 5: of the workers they represent. But by recent standards, this
Speaker 5: has been a big year for strikes and for potential
Speaker 5: strikes like the one that almost happened at UPS, the
Speaker 5: ones that could happen in the auto industry, the one
Speaker 5: that hypothetically could still happen at UPS if the teamsters
Speaker 5: rejected the contract. And I think we're seeing that for
Speaker 5: a number of reasons, including how the pandemic changed people's mindsets,
Speaker 5: including what's been going on on with the labor market,
Speaker 5: and also changes in leadership at some of these unions,
Speaker 5: as workers have elected more militant leaders to represent them,
Speaker 5: or as with the actors, members have been pressuring the
Speaker 5: leadership to take a more aggressive posture so I think
Speaker 5: it's fair now to say that, at a minimum, the
Speaker 5: vibes have shifted here.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that came up in our
Speaker 2: recent episode on the UAW strikes or potential strikes was
Speaker 2: this idea of you know, workers actively banding together, but
Speaker 2: not just in their own industry, but with other industries.
Speaker 2: And I think this is something I actually learned a
Speaker 2: term for it, horizontal solidarity. There's a new phrase, but
Speaker 2: this is something that we've seen also in relation to
Speaker 2: some of the Hollywood actions. I think we've seen members
Speaker 2: of the Writers Guild like show up to the Teamster
Speaker 2: rallies and vice versa. You know, teamsters refusing to make
Speaker 2: deliveries to the studios and stuff like that. But how
Speaker 2: much of that is a sort of new tactic and
Speaker 2: how does it make these actions more effective?
Speaker 5: Well, if you go far enough back in US labor history,
Speaker 5: you can find examples of attempts to shut down a
Speaker 5: whole city in a general strike with workers from all
Speaker 5: sorts of industries. But more recently there has been more
Speaker 5: work stoppages and more high profile labor disputes and potential
Speaker 5: or existing strikes and organizing campaigns than we had seen
Speaker 5: in a while, particularly at really prominent companies, where lots
Speaker 5: of people notice what's happening, whether it's because they see
Speaker 5: it on TV, or because they know someone who works there,
Speaker 5: or because they depend on their UPS delivery person and
Speaker 5: have a conversation with them. One of the phenomena that
Speaker 5: our colleagues Spenser Soaper, has been writing about is the
Speaker 5: role of UPS in Amazon's supply chain and that the
Speaker 5: drivers for Amazon will now have more interaction with drivers
Speaker 5: from UPS who just got this contract deal that includes
Speaker 5: very significant raises. And so Starbucks workers, for example, have
Speaker 5: inspired people at all sorts of companies, including Apple. We've
Speaker 5: seen workers at places that some people don't think about
Speaker 5: when they think about the labor movement historically, like graduate
Speaker 5: students doing teaching and research who have come to think
Speaker 5: of themselves more as workers and as having more in
Speaker 5: common with workers they see taking action other places Lucas.
Speaker 2: Just on the specific Hollywood actions that we've seen, is
Speaker 2: it significant at all that SAG and the WGA are
Speaker 2: striking at the same time, and should we think of
Speaker 2: those two different strikes as two different labor disputes or
Speaker 2: do the share similarities.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly significant. I mean again. It hasn't happened in
Speaker 3: six decades, and it has shut down the industry for
Speaker 3: months now. You know, the writer's strike prevents a lot
Speaker 3: of development of new projects. It prevents studios from buying
Speaker 3: things from writers because writers in studios are not supposed
Speaker 3: to be communicating. It shuts down work on a lot
Speaker 3: of TV shows because those are often sort of written
Speaker 3: as you shoot them. The actors adds to that because
Speaker 3: you know, you could have a movie that was in production,
Speaker 3: like the new Deadpool movie with Ryan Reynolds. The script's done,
Speaker 3: their in production, it's supposed to come out next year.
Speaker 3: The actor's gone strike that has to shut down. Suddenly,
Speaker 3: Disney has no big tent pole movie for next year.
Speaker 3: Actors can no longer promote their projects. So you have
Speaker 3: a bunch of movies coming out in the fall where
Speaker 3: some studios are pushing because if the talent in them
Speaker 3: can't promote them, they fear that it will impact how
Speaker 3: that performs. And so the combo strike means that it's
Speaker 3: not just something that's an inside Hollywood story, it's something
Speaker 3: that starts to affect the average person can see and
Speaker 3: feel as to whether you can see them as sort
Speaker 3: of distinct strikes or one of the same. I think
Speaker 3: it's a little bit of both. You know, there are
Speaker 3: issues that are very specific to writers around being on
Speaker 3: set or the number of people in a writer's room
Speaker 3: or all these things that the actors don't care so
Speaker 3: much about. And same deal with the actors. You know,
Speaker 3: the actors have some issues with their pension plan, which
Speaker 3: the writers do not have. But there are a number
Speaker 3: of kind of big picture thematic problems that unify them.
Speaker 3: That includes residuals, payments for projects being re aired, it
Speaker 3: includes how much they get paid for people watching overseas
Speaker 3: on streaming services. It's being able to share in the
Speaker 3: upside of a successful show, and is also one of
Speaker 3: those issues that has been unifying across the different US.
Speaker 1: I definitely want to get into AI a bit more
Speaker 1: on how it affects writers and actors and how the
Speaker 1: studios are thinking about it. But I also just want
Speaker 1: to go back to this question of like Lucas within
Speaker 1: the context of these unions, like some actors make an
Speaker 1: insane amount of money and we all know that, and
Speaker 1: then some actors, like you know, they have to take
Speaker 1: a side job waiting tables or attending bar or teaching
Speaker 1: an acting class or something like that. I think it's
Speaker 1: probably the same with writers and so forth, and so
Speaker 1: of course, like when we talk about say ups so
Speaker 1: the United Auto Workers. Of course, this tearing question, how
Speaker 1: do the Hollywood unions maintain solidarity when the economics of
Speaker 1: their own members are so skewed and so diverse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean solidarity is one of the bigger challenges
Speaker 3: for these unions. You know, Josh was talking about some
Speaker 3: of the changes in the approach and the membership of
Speaker 3: these of these unions, and I think, if you know,
Speaker 3: you talked to both members of the unions and the studios,
Speaker 3: the unions in Hollywood today feel very different from how
Speaker 3: they did ten or twenty years ago, you know, far
Speaker 3: more progressive, far more activists, and at least in the
Speaker 3: case of the Writers Unified, You're right that there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people in these unions who make a
Speaker 3: lot of money, which I think sometimes makes them sort
Speaker 3: of unsympathetic figures, because it seems like, you know, rich
Speaker 3: Hollywood actors and writers fighting with rich Hollywood studio chiefs.
Speaker 3: And there's a degree to which that's true. Obviously, you
Speaker 3: have movie stars who are in these unions, or you
Speaker 3: have writers like Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy who've made
Speaker 3: hundreds of millions of dollars who are in them. But
Speaker 3: that's a really small layer at the top. Most of
Speaker 3: the people in these unions are very much working class.
Speaker 3: A lot of them have second and third jobs, which
Speaker 3: ironically makes them able to sort of hang on a
Speaker 3: little bit longer. There's not the same pressure to reach
Speaker 3: a deal really quickly. This strike can go on for months,
Speaker 3: and it seems like everybody sort of figures out a
Speaker 3: way to make it work. They've been able to really
Speaker 3: get the wealthier members, especially in the Actors Guild, on
Speaker 3: their side. There was a famous letter signed by a
Speaker 3: few hundred of the richest and most famous actors in Hollywood,
Speaker 3: basic telling the leadership of the Actors Guild, like, don't
Speaker 3: make a big compromise, or don't compromise your values, go
Speaker 3: for a big deal. We support you. I think the
Speaker 3: writers it's a little murky yer. You do have some
Speaker 3: writer producers who are maybe not on board with everything,
Speaker 3: but they're not going to come out and say it.
Speaker 5: And that letter ended in an interesting way because they
Speaker 5: were telling the leadership of the Actors' Union, we're concerned
Speaker 5: you may not be as willing to go out on
Speaker 5: strike as we are. And the leader of the union,
Speaker 5: fran Dresher, responded by adding her own name to the
Speaker 5: letter to herself.
Speaker 2: Can I just ask on the actor's side? There was
Speaker 2: one demand that I saw and it kind of reminded
Speaker 2: me of some of the issues Joe that we saw
Speaker 2: with truckers titling at the port, and you know, they
Speaker 2: sign up for a job that's for X amount of
Speaker 2: money and supposed to take X amount of hours or days,
Speaker 2: and then they wind up spending a lot of time
Speaker 2: just waiting to take on the loads. And the actors
Speaker 2: are complaining about not being paid for audition times, which
Speaker 2: if anyone has ever done acting or modeling, you know
Speaker 2: that you can spend all day going to castings and
Speaker 2: come away with nothing in some cases. How thorny is
Speaker 2: that issue? And what are the proposals actually to fix that,
Speaker 2: because it seems like a difficult one.
Speaker 3: The issue of free labor is one that I'd say
Speaker 3: both the writers and actors are unified in. Obviously the
Speaker 3: type of labor is different, but writers don't want to
Speaker 3: have to do a bunch of drafts of something without
Speaker 3: getting paid more money. Actors don't want to have to
Speaker 3: spend all this money going for auditions without getting paid
Speaker 3: something in return. I'm not sure how that's going to
Speaker 3: get solved. There are a bunch of asks that the
Speaker 3: writers and actors have made that are fairly fundamental structural
Speaker 3: changes to how the industry works. Those being some big examples,
Speaker 3: and I don't get the sense from the studio side
Speaker 3: that there's a lot of interest in giving on them.
Speaker 3: You know, they feel like if they give the writers
Speaker 3: and actors more money on some of the core issues,
Speaker 3: that the free labor things may be overlooked. But there's
Speaker 3: no question that Hollywood has long preyed on the fact
Speaker 3: that there are thousands, if not millions, of people who
Speaker 3: would love to be famous, and so they can get
Speaker 3: them to do a bunch of work for free.
Speaker 2: Well, this was going to be my other question, which
Speaker 2: is how much leverage do the studios actually have here,
Speaker 2: because it seems there is this endless stream of starry
Speaker 2: eyed want to be stars who potentially would be more
Speaker 2: than happy to, I guess, break union lines and go
Speaker 2: for things.
Speaker 3: It's a really good question, and I'm not sure I
Speaker 3: know the answer. I think that the conventional wisdom is
Speaker 3: that the studios and big media companies have more leverage
Speaker 3: than the writers and actors, because at a certain point
Speaker 3: you're going to have a lot of these writers and
Speaker 3: actors who have bills. If they don't work and they
Speaker 3: don't make money for months and months and months, it's
Speaker 3: going to start to negatively impact their lives in ways
Speaker 3: that they won't be able to make rent. They are
Speaker 3: all these things that horrible things that could happen to them.
Speaker 3: The media companies, they will suffer a little bit from
Speaker 3: not having new product and not being able to make money,
Speaker 3: but a lot of the ways those companies make money
Speaker 3: are unaffected. Right. They have deals for their cable networks
Speaker 3: with PayTV distributors where they get paid fees every month.
Speaker 3: They get paid no matter what, right, as long as
Speaker 3: the ratings don't fall off a total cliff. They have
Speaker 3: backlogs of programming in library that they can put on.
Speaker 3: CBS doesn't have as much new programming to put on
Speaker 3: in the fall because of the strike, but they can
Speaker 3: still do reality TV, which is not part of these
Speaker 3: so there's going to be survivor. They can still do
Speaker 3: news so they'll be ninety minutes of sixty minutes. They
Speaker 3: can still do sports, so they'll be football coming in
Speaker 3: the fall. And then they're part of a company where
Speaker 3: they can take a show like Yellowstone that's a big
Speaker 3: hit for the Paramount network and put it on CBS
Speaker 3: to an audience that probably hasn't seen Yellowstone before.
Speaker 1: What about international TV? I mean that's a huge thing.
Speaker 1: I like when I like turn on Netflix, you know
Speaker 1: it's like, here's a hot show that's in Korea, or
Speaker 1: a show from Israel, or a show from Poland or
Speaker 1: something like that. Does that implicitly like undermine the bargaining
Speaker 1: position of the US based actors and writers that presumably
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people working internationally who are
Speaker 1: not engaged in the same actions right now.
Speaker 3: I don't know that it's undermining them, but it has
Speaker 3: put some of the unions abroad in an uncomfortable position,
Speaker 3: right I think people in the UK in particular are
Speaker 3: a little uncomfortable because they want to show solidarity with
Speaker 3: their peers in the US, and there have been marches
Speaker 3: famous actors like Brian Cox from Succession shouting AI will
Speaker 3: not replace us, or to screw you Studios but if
Speaker 3: you have productions that are filled with actors that are
Speaker 3: not in the US unions, they can continue, right like
Speaker 3: House of the Dragon, the Game of Throne spin off
Speaker 3: for HBO. Pretty Much all the actors in that work
Speaker 3: in the UK, and so they can keep shooting that,
Speaker 3: or in South Korea, which has become a huge producer
Speaker 3: of film and television. Those productions continue. And that's why
Speaker 3: a service like Netflix is in a fairly good position
Speaker 3: relative to some of its peers because so much of
Speaker 3: its productions come from outside of the USA.
Speaker 2: Josh, I'd be curious to get your thoughts on the
Speaker 2: leverage held by corporations in you know, twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: versus say a decade or even two or three decades ago.
Speaker 5: Well, to take a step back, sure, the US legal
Speaker 5: system gives companies a lot of leverage over workers with
Speaker 5: or without a union. People in the United States generally
Speaker 5: can be fired for almost any reason, with a couple exceptions.
Speaker 5: That's not the case in most of the industrialized world.
Speaker 5: The process of forming a union and getting it recognized
Speaker 5: is difficult, as we've seen it places like Starbucks. Even
Speaker 5: when workers successfully legally formally form a union, actually getting
Speaker 5: a union contract can be difficult and may not happen
Speaker 5: for years, if at all, And in contract negotiations, both
Speaker 5: sides are legally required to negotiate in good faith, but
Speaker 5: the penalty for not negotiating in good faith if you're
Speaker 5: the company, generally is being ordered to come back and
Speaker 5: negotiate in good faith. There are no punitive damages for
Speaker 5: violating labor law as a company the way that there
Speaker 5: could be if you were polluting the river or something.
Speaker 5: And so workers go on strike in some industries largely
Speaker 5: as a symbolic move away to galvanize workers and the
Speaker 5: public and go after a company's brand. There are other
Speaker 5: places like we're talking about, like UPS, the auto industry
Speaker 5: and Hollywood, where workers have relatively more clout because they
Speaker 5: can actually shut down the industry at least partially, or
Speaker 5: at least for a while or both. I talked to
Speaker 5: one longtime labor leader who said, when we look at
Speaker 5: Hollywood and UPS and the auto industry, we're talking about
Speaker 5: three of the top five or ten places in the
Speaker 5: United States where workers really do have leverage over their conditions.
Speaker 5: And even so that leverage is limited for all of
Speaker 5: the reasons that Lucas mentioned the executives are not going
Speaker 5: to have to worry about mortgaging their homes or being
Speaker 5: able to pay rent in the way that some of
Speaker 5: these workers are. And there are serious issues here about
Speaker 5: the long term future of the industry and the money
Speaker 5: and the discretion that management will have to navigate changes.
Speaker 5: So those are not things that the company has reason
Speaker 5: to budge on easily. That said, a lot of people
Speaker 5: were expecting that the studios would try to weigh out
Speaker 5: the writers and in the meantime get deals with everyone else,
Speaker 5: including the actors, and they were not able to do that.
Speaker 4: And the fact that the.
Speaker 5: Studios did reach out to the writers about at least
Speaker 5: talking about talking again is a good sign for the
Speaker 5: writers because generally in a contract fight, you want the
Speaker 5: other side to be more hungry to negotiate with you
Speaker 5: than you are to be back at the table negotiating
Speaker 5: with them, and so that may be a sign that
Speaker 5: the studios would rather not wait out the actors and
Speaker 5: writers forever.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask a really weird question, god Bar.
Speaker 1: Prior to the strike years ago, I was like thinking,
Speaker 1: like twenty seven team, maybe twenty eighteen. I seem to
Speaker 1: recall a lot of like socialist red rose emoji DSA
Speaker 1: types on Twitter, thinking of like fran Dresher as this
Speaker 1: sort of like trade unionist socialist heart throb. But then
Speaker 1: I think like at the beginning of the strike, do
Speaker 1: was like some question like about how militant or how
Speaker 1: like committed she would be, and I think you sort
Speaker 1: of hinted at this, Josh like ideologically like how does
Speaker 1: she fit in with past presidents of the Screen Actors Guild.
Speaker 5: Fran Dresher occupies an interesting place here because at both
Speaker 5: the UAW and the Teamsters you had the incumbent faction
Speaker 5: in the union lose and someone come in. Both happened
Speaker 5: to be guys named Sean who ran on being a
Speaker 5: more aggressive bargainer, someone who was more ready to take
Speaker 5: the fight to the companies, someone who was against the
Speaker 5: types of concessions that had been made in the past,
Speaker 5: and whose election was a signal that the membership was
Speaker 5: ready to go into tough fights and to not concede
Speaker 5: as easily. That does not seem to have been the
Speaker 5: case with the actor, and there was a perception among
Speaker 5: at least some people in the membership that fran Drescher
Speaker 5: was someone who was hoping not to have to go
Speaker 5: out on strike, and someone who was not particularly militant,
Speaker 5: and that's part of why we saw this letter emerge,
Speaker 5: trying to push from below, so to speak, from the
Speaker 5: membership for a more aggressive stance. Now, all of that
Speaker 5: was going on while there was relatively these are celebrities,
Speaker 5: but relatively less attention to this fight. And then once
Speaker 5: they were out on strike, what a lot of people
Speaker 5: saw who hadn't been paying attention from Fran Drescher was
Speaker 5: very militant, loud, compelling, charismatic speeches that drew a lot
Speaker 5: of attention because this wasn't what some people had expected
Speaker 5: from the Nanny.
Speaker 2: Even though the nanny was famously pro union.
Speaker 4: Yeah right right.
Speaker 3: For one, Fran Dresher doesn't have a ton of history
Speaker 3: labor activist, at least in her personal life, and her
Speaker 3: election to be the head of SAG was something of
Speaker 3: a surprise. I think at the time a lot of
Speaker 3: people thought the actor Matthew Modine would be the next
Speaker 3: head of SAG, and he does have a little more
Speaker 3: experience in that area. Fran won in a close election
Speaker 3: that was fairly surprising. More broadly, that SAG doesn't have
Speaker 3: a long history of striking or fighting with the Hollyode studios.
Speaker 3: It's really been the Writers Guild that is kind of
Speaker 3: famous for agitating and for asking for more and fighting
Speaker 3: with studios. You know, it was the Writer's Guild that
Speaker 3: went on strike in two thousand and two thousand and seven,
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight, that was sort of at the
Speaker 3: dawn of streaming, which was a big part of those negotiations.
Speaker 3: The Writers Guild went on strike in the nineteen eighties twice,
Speaker 3: and so it's typically been the writers that go on strike,
Speaker 3: and as Josh mentioned, the studios try to go to
Speaker 3: the directors, and the actors sort of undercut the writers
Speaker 3: and eventually forced them back to the table, which is
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why the actors also going and
Speaker 3: strike has become such a big deal because I think
Speaker 3: now the studios are a little in a little bit
Speaker 3: of disarray trying to figure out how they solve it.
Speaker 2: Carmen, at some point in this episode, I'm going to
Speaker 2: need you to insert a clip from friend Dresser's iconic
Speaker 2: pro unionization speech from the nineteen ninety seven masterpiece The
Speaker 2: Beautician and the Beast.
Speaker 5: Coming right up, excellent, Now.
Speaker 4: We'll have to work late tonight.
Speaker 3: I'll miss my soft lesa be able to rack and
Speaker 3: some good OVID time.
Speaker 2: Man, what is over the time?
Speaker 4: He kidding me?
Speaker 3: Representative because Union.
Speaker 2: Lucas you touched on this already. But there is this
Speaker 2: sort of threat of artificial intelligence hanging over this, not
Speaker 2: just over the long term, but the idea that well, actually,
Speaker 2: if the studios don't have writers or actors, maybe they
Speaker 2: could use AI in the interim to produce content. And
Speaker 2: I'm kind of fuzzy on the timeline of how realistic
Speaker 2: this is. We did have one guest, Josh Wolf, who
Speaker 2: came on and said he thought we would see entirely
Speaker 2: AI generated movies within a year. I think you said
Speaker 2: a year or so. How realistic is that threat? Like,
Speaker 2: both on the long time scale and in the short
Speaker 2: term while this labor action is ongoing.
Speaker 3: The short term threat is largely non existent. I don't
Speaker 3: think Josh Wolf is right that you'll see movies that
Speaker 3: are fully AI generated within the year, or I should
Speaker 3: say you certainly won't see it from traditional studios. You
Speaker 3: might see people at home making really low budget stuff
Speaker 3: that could go viral on social media, but studios have
Speaker 3: no intention of having chatchbt write an entire script for them.
Speaker 3: Chat shipt cannot direct a movie. They're not going to
Speaker 3: replace all these actors with synthetic characters. But there are
Speaker 3: ways in which AI is already being used. It's being
Speaker 3: used in post production to work on dubbing or takeout
Speaker 3: swear words. It's been used to de age people. So
Speaker 3: Harrison Ford in the new Indiana Jones movie appears as
Speaker 3: a younger version of himself, and that younger version of
Speaker 3: his face, well, yes, it.
Speaker 1: Was a little weird.
Speaker 2: It's very uncasual, I think.
Speaker 3: But those are examples where the actor has sort of
Speaker 3: blessed the use of AI to affect their face. What
Speaker 3: a lot of the writers and actors are worried about
Speaker 3: unsanctioned use of their work, either to train these large
Speaker 3: language models or to create some synthetic person based on them,
Speaker 3: or that studios will do something a little simpler and
Speaker 3: sort of adjust their facial expression or what they say
Speaker 3: without their consent. And some of that could happen in
Speaker 3: the next year or two. But I think this is
Speaker 3: more trying to establish some guardrails for what could be
Speaker 3: a threat many years in the future. And since these
Speaker 3: deals tend to run three years. There's concern that studios
Speaker 3: will do things that the writers and actors don't like
Speaker 3: in the next year or two, and they just won't
Speaker 3: be protected.
Speaker 5: And everyone should read Lucas's great covers Sorry about AI
Speaker 5: and Hollywood. One of the important points I think here,
Speaker 5: as Lucas is saying and Road, is that this is
Speaker 5: about control. Many people in the industry who are working
Speaker 5: as writers or as actors are not dead set against
Speaker 5: technological change and AI, although some may be, but for
Speaker 5: many people it's about this question of who gets to decide.
Speaker 5: And these are like debates we see about automation in
Speaker 5: all sorts of industries, where there are ways that technology
Speaker 5: can make people's jobs easier, can make it safer, can
Speaker 5: replace some not very fun or safe jobs with other
Speaker 5: better jobs. But when workers don't have a voice in
Speaker 5: how that's happening, often they get freaked out. And often
Speaker 5: they have good reason to see technology making their conditions
Speaker 5: potentially worse if it's all being dictated by management and
Speaker 5: not by them. And some of this anxiety is about,
Speaker 5: as Lucas said, what will happen over the next few years.
Speaker 5: I mean, on picket lines in Los Angeles and New York.
Speaker 5: What I heard from a number of the writers is
Speaker 5: that they see this as like streaming. When they were
Speaker 5: on strike fifteen years ago, some people thought it was
Speaker 5: premature as a time to be so concerned about what
Speaker 5: would happen with streaming, and now streaming is everything, and
Speaker 5: some people see AI having the potential to be the
Speaker 5: same way, even if, as Lucas explains, there are some
Speaker 5: significant obstacles to that actually happening.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up streaming, Josh, because that sort
Speaker 1: of anticipated my next question, which is like a thing
Speaker 1: you hear, is that no one has figured out how
Speaker 1: to make money in streaming. And I can never tell
Speaker 1: whether that's like one of those likes like hyperbole, or
Speaker 1: whether it's Hollywood accounting that obfuscades making money. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously some people are doing very well, and I know
Speaker 1: you've written about this. How do you sort of adjudicate
Speaker 1: this question, like how big is the pot to even
Speaker 1: be redistributed in some way?
Speaker 3: The pie is very large, but the profit pie is
Speaker 3: pretty small. So the amount of revenue being generated from
Speaker 3: streaming is quite significant, tens of billions of dollars a year,
Speaker 3: and the biggest player Netflix does make a substantial profit. Now,
Speaker 3: it is not as profitable as cable TV was, and
Speaker 3: one of the questions for all of these companies is
Speaker 3: whether that is the result of streaming still being somewhat
Speaker 3: nascent and that it will grow into larger and larger profits,
Speaker 3: or whether it is a defect of the business model.
Speaker 3: Even if streaming is not as lucrative as cable, it
Speaker 3: can be profitable for a lot of these entities. But
Speaker 3: I think what people lose sight of is that a
Speaker 3: lot of these streaming services are new, and companies were
Speaker 3: also encouraged by investors at the time to spend lots
Speaker 3: of money just for the sake of growth, and they
Speaker 3: didn't need to worry about profit. They only started to
Speaker 3: be told to worry about profit in the last sort
Speaker 3: of eighteen months. And because of the way that film
Speaker 3: and television works, you can't just sort of flip a
Speaker 3: switch and make these things profitable. They've committed lots of
Speaker 3: money to projects that they're in the middle of developing
Speaker 3: or in the middle of shooting, and so a lot
Speaker 3: of these companies are now trying to slow down or
Speaker 3: reallocate their spending, but they's somewhat limited because they've got
Speaker 3: this melting iceberg, which is the cable TV networks, and
Speaker 3: they're trying to transfer as many of the viewers and
Speaker 3: as much of the money over to streaming, and we're
Speaker 3: still in the middle of seeing how that transition is
Speaker 3: going to play out.
Speaker 5: That's interesting. I mean, we look at companies like Amazon
Speaker 5: that for year after year did great in the stock
Speaker 5: market while not being profitable because there was a sense
Speaker 5: that they were getting big enough to become really profitable.
Speaker 2: So that's really interesting that sort of shift in incentives
Speaker 2: from growth to profitability. And this is something that has
Speaker 2: come up on the podcast a number of times now,
Speaker 2: but I'm curious if you see that kind of feeding
Speaker 2: through into content choices, because this is one of the
Speaker 2: criticisms in particular of Netflix. You know, they start a
Speaker 2: season of a new show, and if it's not an
Speaker 2: absolute monster hit, then they cancel it and a lot
Speaker 2: of people get upset. Do you see an impact of
Speaker 2: those decisions, like can you see people more focused on
Speaker 2: profitability and that leading into I guess safer choices for content?
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting that you bring that up because streaming
Speaker 3: has in some ways actually been more forgiving to the
Speaker 3: creative process because they will commit to making and releasing
Speaker 3: a full season on broadcast. There were shows that if
Speaker 3: they didn't work, they could get canceled after four episodes.
Speaker 3: They would never even finish the season. I think one
Speaker 3: of the problems in streaming has actually been that they
Speaker 3: have spent too much money on projects that people don't
Speaker 3: watch and that are not financially lucrative. But to the
Speaker 3: question about impacting what we see in companies being more safe,
Speaker 3: I think that's absolutely a concern that companies will fall
Speaker 3: back on, you know, franchises and non intellectual property and
Speaker 3: will take fewer risks because the early days of streaming
Speaker 3: you saw companies like Netflix and Amazon and then later
Speaker 3: Apple take a number of risks with unknown creators or
Speaker 3: with famous creators who just had an idea, because they
Speaker 3: needed to convince them to work. With these new players.
Speaker 3: In streaming, there wasn't the trust that there is with
Speaker 3: a Warner Brothers or a Disney, and so they had
Speaker 3: to take some chances on risk your ip and I
Speaker 3: think that was good for all of us. It led
Speaker 3: to a lot of really interesting programming. I think over
Speaker 3: the past few years that we already saw to some
Speaker 3: extent a decline in quality because you saw too many
Speaker 3: companies trying to make too much, and so there weren't
Speaker 3: the same quality control mechanisms in place. And so the
Speaker 3: question as they recalibrate is, on the one hand, they'll
Speaker 3: probably be more conservative, and that may lead to slightly
Speaker 3: less interesting storytelling. On the other if they're trying to
Speaker 3: make slightly fewer projects and put more emphasis on quality
Speaker 3: or making sure those work, that could actually be a
Speaker 3: good thing, especially if the creative energy comes from outside
Speaker 3: of the system. I think a lot of people, most
Speaker 3: people don't expect your Netflix, their Disney's to really be
Speaker 3: trailblazers in terms of edgy programming, but there will be
Speaker 3: people on the outside who see an opportunity in this
Speaker 3: to make something new and fresh.
Speaker 1: Josh, I want to go back to you know, this
Speaker 1: is something that we talked about, but you know, you
Speaker 1: mentioned like grad students at more and more universities having
Speaker 1: voted to unionize, and like, one way I think that
Speaker 1: like grad students are sort of similar to actors is
Speaker 1: that there really are only like a small number of
Speaker 1: like really plumb academic jobs that you can get. But
Speaker 1: if you get like a sort of a tenure professorship
Speaker 1: at a big flagship state university. Certainly at like an
Speaker 1: Ivy League school, that's amazing, but the vast majority of
Speaker 1: academics never get them. And it feels like that's similar
Speaker 1: with Hollywood in many respects, where yes, there are a
Speaker 1: handful of actors that we all know who have just
Speaker 1: like incredible careers and make tons of money, but the
Speaker 1: vast majority of actors is like none of us have
Speaker 1: ever heard of. And I'm curious whether you see like
Speaker 1: unionization solidarity across like some of these like people at
Speaker 1: different levels is like threatening maybe in a good way,
Speaker 1: to like change the sort of like tournament nature of
Speaker 1: some of these industries.
Speaker 5: Well, for many years, sociologists have talked about exit versus
Speaker 5: voice and this question of do you change your job
Speaker 5: by leaving and finding another one or by staying where
Speaker 5: you are. And one of the things that my work
Speaker 5: has focused on is these questions of things that employers
Speaker 5: do to limit the options that workers have, whether it's
Speaker 5: a contractual clause where you have to pay in order
Speaker 5: to quit your job early as a punishment early from
Speaker 5: the company's perspective, or it's some kind of non compete
Speaker 5: that restricts you from going somewhere else. And in all
Speaker 5: sorts of industries, whether it's baristas or graduate student researchers,
Speaker 5: we see often people making a mental shift from thinking
Speaker 5: of their job as having some kind of particular issues with,
Speaker 5: say their manager or the task that they're doing, to
Speaker 5: more systemic ones that they can better address by changing
Speaker 5: the job where they are than by going and finding
Speaker 5: something somewhere else. And of course there can be tensions
Speaker 5: and conflicts between groups of workers, and workers often are
Speaker 5: set up to be in competition with each other, and
Speaker 5: that's part of why solidarity is difficult, whether it's within
Speaker 5: a company or across an industry or between industries. But
Speaker 5: in some cases, whether it's the Academy or it's Hollywood,
Speaker 5: or it's in the retail industry, you have workers looking
Speaker 5: at the way that their job is set up and
Speaker 5: saying there's a structural issue here. There are not enough
Speaker 5: labor hours for the labor to be done. There are
Speaker 5: not enough years to do the dissertation work that you're
Speaker 5: supposed to be able to do and perform the labor
Speaker 5: let's being asked of you. It's interesting that you have
Speaker 5: workers both at Starbucks and at Grinder now demanding a
Speaker 5: seat on the board of their companies, the kind of
Speaker 5: thing that would be more common in Europe, and I
Speaker 5: think as workers see what's happening in other places, in
Speaker 5: a lot of industries, there are alternatives being voiced by
Speaker 5: people doing the work about what the organization of the
Speaker 5: work should look like and what the pipeline should be
Speaker 5: for future workers coming in that they would argue would
Speaker 5: make the industry more sustainable long term, and their bosses
Speaker 5: in many cases do not at all agree.
Speaker 1: Josh Eidelson and Lucas Shaw, such a fascinating topic, great perspectives.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. And
Speaker 1: I guess if this is still going in three months
Speaker 1: or six months, maybe we'll have you both back on.
Speaker 1: But really appreciate it. Great conversation.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, Tracy.
Speaker 1: I think the first thing I want to do is
Speaker 1: I'm going to go watch that video of The Nanny
Speaker 1: or no, what was it.
Speaker 2: It was in a movie, The Bututian and the Beast.
Speaker 2: So there's a famous why do I know this, there's
Speaker 2: a famous scene from The Nanny where she refuses to
Speaker 2: cross a picket line. Oh yeah, and makes a big
Speaker 2: point about it and then don't cross picket line. That's
Speaker 2: exactly it. Carmen very good. And then there is a
Speaker 2: lesser known scene from Beautician and the Beast, which is
Speaker 2: an excellent, excellent movie in my opinion, and highly underrated,
Speaker 2: in which she encourages a factory in Eastern Europe to unionize. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I just remembered, you know, one of the first articles
Speaker 2: I ever wrote was actually about labor conditions of teenage
Speaker 2: models in Japan, and a lot of these issues were
Speaker 2: ongoing back then, people coming over on pretty much exploitative
Speaker 2: contracts into the country and then not earning very much
Speaker 2: money but spending all day going to castings and not
Speaker 2: getting paid for it and things like that. It's kind
Speaker 2: of crazy how that system remains in large portions. I know,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about modeling, but similarly in acting kind of unchanged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was interesting to the point about how like
Speaker 1: the last writer strikes in the sort of mid odds
Speaker 1: were like at the very dawn, like barely at the
Speaker 1: dawn of streaming, and I guess that, and that there
Speaker 1: was some question of, like, well, is it too early
Speaker 1: to be worried about that?
Speaker 4: In two thousand and six or two thousand.
Speaker 1: And seven, and then with AI now it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm like skeptical that we're going to have like any
Speaker 1: like decent quality like two hour movie where all the
Speaker 1: actors are AI actors.
Speaker 4: I'm just I don't think.
Speaker 1: It's there yet, but who knows. But the idea is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: at some point these issues are going to get more real.
Speaker 1: And then the question of to Josh's point, like control
Speaker 1: and like is the technology going to be used in
Speaker 1: a way to like make the writer's lives worse or
Speaker 1: can be made to make the writer's lives better?
Speaker 4: Is like an interesting question, right.
Speaker 2: The control aspect is something that I hadn't really considered
Speaker 2: before but seems to be an important point. And who
Speaker 2: gets to make these decisions? Do you own your own image,
Speaker 2: your own work or does the studio? Seems to be
Speaker 2: a very thorny issue. I guess the big question for
Speaker 2: content watchers from an entirely self interested perspective is are
Speaker 2: we going to get a flood of AI content or
Speaker 2: reality TV and sports? And which is worse?
Speaker 1: Well, I think, like, I mean, the writers strike really
Speaker 1: did catalyze a lot more investment in reality, so I
Speaker 1: wonder if we will or you know, in the two
Speaker 1: thousand and six or two thousand and seven long so,
Speaker 1: I do wonder whether, like in the short term, whether
Speaker 1: we'll just see like way more reality programming or shows
Speaker 1: dubbed from Korean.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that seems to be the sort of easier one
Speaker 2: at this moment in time, like there's huge catalog of
Speaker 2: foreign content. Your already sing it on Netflix. Oh, speaking
Speaker 2: of recommendations, crash landing into You, Joe.
Speaker 3: I should watch that.
Speaker 1: That's a good one.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a Korean love drama. I think you should
Speaker 2: watch it.
Speaker 4: I'll check it out.
Speaker 2: All right, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the au Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at the Stalwart. Follow our guests Lucas Shaw He's at
Speaker 1: Lucas Underscore Shaw. Also check out his screen Time newsletter.
Speaker 1: Follow josh Idolson He's at josh Idolson. Follow our producers
Speaker 1: Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman and dash Ell Bennett at Dashbot,
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