George Clooney, Margot Robbie, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Rosario Dawson and Brian Cox are some of the actors who have supported orally or with a sign in hand the strikes of actors and screenwriters demanding new collective agreements in their relations with film, television and streaming producers in the United States. Their names explain how trading has changed, at least from a symbolic perspective. Where the writers’ strike (called since May) had gone more or less unnoticed, the actors’ fight is impossible to ignore.
The strikers also play their cards and announce that they are in no hurry to reach an agreement lower your expectations. Brian Coxthe actor of Succession, said this weekend on Sky News that he does not expect the strikes to end before the end of the year. “It’s a situation that could become very, unpleasant. And it could last quite a long time. They will push us to the limit and we will have to be prepared to go to the limit. This situation may not be resolved until the end of the year.”
160,000 actors affiliated with the SAG-AFTRA union and 11,500 writers members of the Writers Guild of America have joined the biggest strike in the sector in 60 years. Their main claims have to do with the collection of copyrights for re-broadcasts on video platforms and with the demand for regulations that protect human employment from the irruption of Artificial Intelligence.
What works in favor of the actors and the scriptwriters so that they challenge their employers like this? Basically, the state of american public opinion, which is changing their perception of labor claims. A Gallup Institute poll last summer found that 68 percent of those polled sympathized with unions. That rate hadn’t been this high in 60 years. Low unemployment rates and recent union successes at companies like Amazon and Starbucks have led to a change of cycle in which workers are the ones who are an unusual position of strength for decades.
Against them, as in all strikes, time can go: if the strike lasts, the actors will receive pressure from professionals linked to cinema and television: their weaker colleagues, sent to unemployment by someone else’s strike.