Last week, I posted a piece about Hollywood studios' efforts to partner with online content creators to promote their TV and film projects during SAG-AFTRA’s strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Since then, there’s been a flurry of conversation about the role of online influencers in this moment.
While there have been many encouraging stories about creators turning down lucrative partnership opportunities with studios in order to stand in solidarity with the striking workers, some influencers have expressed confusion about why they should support the strike when they aren’t members of the union.
This line of thought is best illustrated by a conversation between two digital content creators on the popular podcast The Toast, posted six days after the guild’s strike announcement. After explaining that SAG’s guidelines prohibit influencers from promoting struck work, the hosts question why creators should be expected to give up opportunities and stand with the union during the strike. “Is it considering [sic] crossing a picket line when the whole situation really has nothing to do with you or your line of work?” asks host Claudia Oshry. The other host, Jackie Oshry, agrees, saying that “If you’ve never been a member of SAG… SAG wasn’t giving you opportunities. It’s every man for himself, honestly.” The two go on to say that influencers should weigh the money they will make from taking promotional deals with studios against the lost opportunity to earn money in the future by not being able to work as a SAG performer. That seems to suggest that crossing the picket line can be justified if you can make enough money doing it.
What these types of comments fail to grasp is that the SAG strike has a lot to do with influencers and their line of work. Quite a lot, actually. Since my last post focused on how crossing the picket line harms the striking workers, I want to use this post to unpack why breaking the streak is also harmful to influencers, other workers in the entertainment industry, and workers in other industries.
First, the workers choosing to strike are sacrificing in order to create a better future for all creative workers in Hollywood. If the guild succeeds at the bargaining table then the reforms actors are pushing for – such as fairer pay and safeguards to protect performers from unauthorized uses of their likenesses enabled by advances in AI – will apply to future SAG-AFTRA performers, regardless of whether they are current members of the union. As such, strikebreaking doesn’t just harm the workers who are on the picket line now – it harms all entertainers who may want to break into the industry in the future, as many influencers are trying to do. That’s why SAG is barring influencers who strikebreak from future membership. You can’t expect the guild to stand with you after you sold them out for personal gain.
Second, in addition to building bargaining power for the screen actors and writers, a strong strike will also help to build bargaining power for other workers in the entertainment industry. Beyond SAG and the WGA, a host of unions including the Teamsters, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), and Directors Guild of America (DGA) represent workers in other roles in the industry. Despite the hardships brought by the shutdown of TV and film projects, these unions and many of their workers have expressed support for the SAG and WGA strikes. Workers across the industry standing in solidarity is a statement to the AMPTP – whom they all bargain with – that they willing to work together to put the industry on hold in order to win demands that they see as essential. In turn, they are building their bargaining power for future negotiations.
Some creators may see themselves as separate or apart from other workers in the entertainment industry. But if they are cutting deals with TV and film studios, they’re really not. While right now the studios are trying to position themselves as friends of online content creators, it’s naive to think that the same studios who are fighting to pay the writers, actors, and crew members who make their productions possible as little as they possibly can won’t also turn the tables on influencers when given the opportunity. That’s probably one of the reasons why SAG is pushing to create more opportunities for content creators to join the union.
Third, the strikes happening now are bringing important issues that impact workers across industries to the forefront of the conversation. As Ian Kullgren wrote in a Bloomberg Law article last week, “Fed-up workers across a sprawling range of industries are aligned like never before over fears of being displaced by artificial intelligence and the belief that corporations left them with a minuscule slice of the profits they made during the Covid-19 pandemic.” The Hollywood strikes are part of a larger wave of labor activism that includes thousands of workers across the service sector, manufacturing, education, and other sectors. Together, these strikes are elevating issues that impact workers across the workforce, such as the regulation of AI, stagnant wages, the rising costs of living, and the transformation of good-paying, stable jobs into precarious gig work, and putting pressure on employers to address these issues.
To that end, it’s also important to recognize that the strikes happening today are part of a longer history of organizing and engaging in collective action to advance the interests of workers. For decades, organized labor has been at the forefront of pushing for progressive reforms that we now take for granted. Labor standards – such as laws mandating safe working conditions, the minimum wage, overtime pay, and the abolition of child labor (for the time being) – were won by workers organizing, striking, and using their collective power to demand change. Organized labor continues to play a key role in advancing the rights of workers with disabilities, LGBTQ workers, and workers who are women. By supporting the Hollywood strikes, you’re helping to strengthen the labor movement as a whole.
Solidarity means recognizing that none of these struggles happen in vacuum. Change happens when workers come together to advance their common interests. There is no “every man for himself.”
I understand why it might be difficult for some online creators, who differ from Hollywood actors and writers in so many ways, to recognize the interests they hold in common with the striking workers. I hope this post clarifies why they should. The bottom line is: the labor movement is fighting for you – whether you know it or not.
