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WGA Strike Battles for Diversity in Hollywood

Posted on May 17, 2023 by Jireh Deng

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When Caroline Renard moved to Los Angeles 10 years ago, she had zero connections to Hollywood. But she was determined all the same to break into the industry and did all sorts of side gigs — from working at Veggie Grill to driving for DoorDash and Lyft to babysitting — all to pay the bills while she worked on her craft.

And that hard work eventually paid off.

She moved up from production assistant on set to an executive assistant at Disney before becoming a writer’s and showrunner’s assistant until she became a staff writer on a show. But throughout that decade breaking into Hollywood, she oftentimes noticed she was one of the few or only Black women in the room. She credits mentors and great bosses for championing her work, but she frequently felt like it was a battle just to be heard as a creator of color.

Today, Renard is a writer on Disney’s Secrets of Sulphur Springs and a union captain with the Writers Guild of America. But the golden era of streaming has officially burst — she was one of more than 11,500 writers and others who went on strike May 2 after their current contract expired and negotiations fell through with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (which represents the nine largest Hollywood studios).

Among the WGA’s demands: Restricting the use of artificial intelligence in writing, establishing transparency in viewership-based royalties, paying writers their weekly minimums during post-production of shows, and preserving a minimum staff of six writers with guaranteed employment for 10 consecutive weeks on prospective shows. These demands were all flat-out rejected by the major studios. And now production in Hollywood has essentially come to a screeching halt.

As negotiations deadlocked, the AMPTP released a statement, according to Deadline, that they had offered “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as increases in streaming residuals” and are open to further improve the current offer, but that they’ve been unable to concede to the WGA’s demands around “mandatory staffing” and “duration of employment.”

But writers like Renard aren’t willing to back down on the entirety of their demands at a moment that feels existential for her profession — and hope the WGA won’t back down either.

“If we don’t change what’s broken now, writing won’t be a viable career,” says Renard. “There won’t be a middle class in this industry because writing has become a gig economy. It is not sustainable.”

Renard is referring specifically to the proliferation of mini rooms, smaller versions of full-scale writers rooms that have grown in popularity as streaming services like Netflix have flooded their platforms with high quantities of shows.

Now, it’s more common to see shorter seasons (maybe 10 to 14-episodes) instead of the former broadcast seasons that would be longer and carry on for maybe 24 episodes in a season. These conditions, the WGA says, have sucked writers into the orbit of freelance work.

“The companies’ behavior has created a gig economy inside a union workforce, and their immovable stance in this negotiation has betrayed a commitment to further devaluing the profession of writing,” the WGA stated in a public announcement about the strike.

This is a portion of a blog that originally appeared in full at In These Times on May 11, 2023.

About the Author: Jireh Deng (they/them) is a queer Asian American writer and filmmaker born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley.

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Organizing Against Police Unions Has Invigorated Hollywood’s Labor Movement, Members Say

Posted on July 9, 2020July 9, 2020 by Alice Herman

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The labor movement is split on the question of cops. While union officials have signaled their tempered support for police unions, the push to expel law enforcement from the movement has grown quickly in the rank-and-file.

The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) led the way with a June 8 resolution urging the AFL-CIO to drop the International Union of Police Associations (IUPA). Nine days later, the Martin Luther King, Jr. County Labor Council, an AFL-CIO regional affiliate, voted to expel the Seattle Police Officers Guild from the coalition. Union shops representing postdoc researchers and teaching assistants have since passed resolutions demanding police union disaffiliation from the AFL-CIO, and a coalition of workers within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have put forward a similar call to expel its police union affiliates.

Except the WGAE, no national unions within the AFL-CIO have positioned themselves against police unions beyond calling for the IUPA—a union representing over 100,000 officers across the United States—to reform itself. But a movement is brewing in two large Hollywood unions.

Within the ranks of two unions representing theater and entertainment workers—International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA)—the push to kick police out of the AFL-CIO has ballooned in the span of a few weeks, with members of each union saying that the effort has pushed them to consider, some for the first time, the power they possess as unionized workers.

Taking inspiration from the WGAE, Nicholas Monsour, a television and film editor credited on “Us” and “The Twilight Zone,” wrote a petition urging his union, IATSE, to pass a resolution calling for the ouster of police unions from the AFL-CIO. The petition has been shared widely on social media, garnering hundreds of signatures and bringing together a coalition of IATSE members organizing around the “drop cops” campaign.

Another editor represented by IATSE, who preferred not to be named for fear of retaliation from the Los Angeles Police Department, says he joined the campaign because he has seen the police indiscriminately target Black people and “[has] relatives who have been mistreated by the police.”

“There’s IATSE members who actually get mistreated by the police, and I think we should look out for them,” he says. “Being a person of color in IATSE, I love being a union member, I love the benefits and my coworkers, and I would love more if we used our power to make the community a better place.”

He adds, “I’m very encouraged to see these actions happening, and I hope that union leadership listens to its grassroots.”

Members say the push has also had the secondary effect of pulling union members into union politics who might not have participated otherwise; in the fight for the Black Lives Matter movement, rank-and-file members have found and exercised their union power.

“The culture when I joined [was] a little bit sleepy,” Monsour says. “I’m a dues paying member who has occasionally gotten slightly more involved in our discussions and meetings around contract negotiations but I’ve never sought any positions or anything within the guild, the union.”

Through the campaign, interest in the structure and leadership of the organization has grown among members who were less involved in union politics before this month.

“I wasn’t day-to-day involved in Local 700 stuff, but . . . knowing that IATSE is part of the AFL-CIO and that [the International Union of Police Associations] is part of AFL-CIO too, a lot of this is definitely new to me,” said editor and producer John Cantú.

“Everyone that I’ve been in touch with has been just like me, where they had no idea that IATSE was part of the AFL-CIO and that police unions were also tied into that.”

Alexis Simpson, an actor and member of SAG-AFTRA, says that the parallel push within her union has yielded a comparably strong increase in union activism. “I would say I’m probably more engaged in union stuff than most of the membership. And that’s not saying much … the number of people [to whom] I have said, ‘Hey, did you know that we’re affiliated with the police unions?’ who are like, ‘What? I did not know that.’ It is waking them up to learning more about their union, at least at that initial level.”

In each union, members started their respective campaigns by circulating petitions. While gathering signatories and connecting with interested members, the member-organizers simultaneously pressured leadership to take a position against police unions. Members of each organization say they have coordinated efforts on internal message boards and launched internal campaigns to demonstrate popular support for expelling the police from the labor movement. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA member-organizers have partnered with Color of Change, an organization that has rallied against racism in the criminal justice system and media.

There’s precedent for the action they are calling for: In 1957, the AFL-CIO expelled the Teamsters from the federation for corruption and unethical practices.

Both SAG-AFTRA and IATSE have issued statements in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department and the movement to end police brutality that has ensued. But neither has gone so far as to actually call for the expulsion of police from the AFL-CIO.

A June 11 statement from SAG-AFTRA calls on police unions to “dismantle the structures they have erected that have been used to protect officers who engage in racially targeted violence, racial profiling, and other racist and unlawful conduct towards Black and other citizens of this country.” It’s an argument that mirrors the logic of AFL-CIO’s original statement on police brutality by condemning discrete acts of violence while maintaining that the police unions are capable of changing course.

But cop unions have long formed an ardent opposition to police reform, providing legal cover for killer cops and quashing efforts to increase transparency. And IUPA reacted to the labor federation’s statement on police reform with outrage: In a letter to AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, Sam Cabral, the head of IUPA, called the idea that brutality is endemic to policing “ridiculous.”

Leaders of the 55 unions in the AFL-CIO have skirted the question of expelling cop unions from the labor movement or outwardly rejected the idea. But as calls from the rank-and-file grow, so will the pressure for their representatives, in unions representing workers across industries, to respond.

This blog originally appeared at In These Times on July 9, 2020. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Alice Herman is a writer based in Madison, Wisconsin, where she works at a restaurant. She contributes regularly to Isthmus, Madison’s alt-weekly, and The Progressive magazine.

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Kristen Stewart’s experience is emblematic of LGBTQ people’s struggles in Hollywood

Posted on September 5, 2019September 6, 2019 by Casey Quinlan

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Image result for casey quinlan In an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, actor Kristen Stewart, who has been romantically linked to model Stella Maxwell since 2017, said, “I have fully been told, ‘If you just like do yourself a favor, and don’t go out holding your girlfriend’s hand in public, you might get a Marvel movie.’ I don’t want to work with people like that.”

Stewart has said publicly she does not identify as bisexual or lesbian, and doesn’t want to choose a label for her sexuality. In the same interview she added, “I was informed by an old school mentality, which is — you want to preserve your career and your success and your productivity, and there are people in the world who don’t like you, and they don’t like that you date girls, and they don’t like that you don’t identify as a quote unquote ‘lesbian’, but you also don’t identify as a quote unquote ‘heterosexual’. And people like to know stuff, so what the fuck are you?’”

Although it may, at times, appear as though LGBTQ representation and participation in Hollywood has achieved some semblance of parity, Stewart’s experience is far from unique. Several young, openly LGBTQ actors such as Ellen Page and Ezra Miller have talked about how their gender and sexuality have affected how people talk to them about their careers.

Ellen Page, star of Inception, Juno, and Tallulah, came out as gay in 2014. “I was distinctly told, by people in the industry, when I started to become known: ‘People cannot know you’re gay.’,” she said to Porter Edit earlier this year. “And I was pressured — forced, in many cases — to always wear dresses and heels for events and photo shoots. As if lesbians don’t wear dresses and heels. But I will never let anyone put me in anything I feel uncomfortable in ever again.”

Ezra Miller, who has starred in Justice League, Madame Bovary, and the most recent Harry Potter franchise Fantastic Beasts, came out as queer in 2012 to Out, and told GQ in 2018 that their gender is fluid.

“I’m comfortable with all the pronouns. I let he/his/him ride, and that’s fine,” Miller said.

But Miller said they were told not to be open about their sexuality and gender by a number of people who thought it would damage their acting career.

In 2017, Miller said, “I won’t specify [who told me not to come out.] Folks in the industry, folks outside the industry. People I’ve never spoken to. They said there’s a reason so many gay, queer, gender-fluid people in Hollywood conceal their sexual identity, or their gender identity in their public image. I was told I had done a ‘silly’ thing in…thwarting my own potential to be a leading man.”

Sarah Paulson, who also chooses not to label her sexual identity, told Porter Edit in 2017 said that she was told that her relationship with Holland Taylor could be a liability for her career.

“Early on, when people found out I was with Holland, some said: ‘I think you have to be careful, I’m afraid it’s going to affect your career negatively,’” the Ocean’s 8 actor said.

One of the most notorious examples of Hollywood reacting negatively to an actor’s sexuality was Rupert Everett, star of My Best Friend’s Wedding and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, who said that he stopped getting offers for roles in 2007. He has since focused on writing scripts and roles that he could play, such as poet and playwright Oscar Wilde.

He said in 2010, to BBC’s Radio 4, that Hollywood is “an extremely conservative world” that “pretends to be a liberal world.”

Although LGBTQ character diversity in films is increasing in some respects, Hollywood has a lot of progress to make on LGBTQ inclusion. According to GLAAD’s 2019 Studio Responsibility Index, LGBTQ characters had more screen time than in previous years — of the 20 LGBTQ-inclusive films released last year, 10 featured more than 10 minutes of screen-time for an LGBTQ character. When looking at each of the 45 LGBTQ characters GLAAD counted, 26 had less than three minutes of screen time and 16 had less than one minute of screen time. Transgender characters were absent from the 110 major studio releases for the second year in a row.

And there is often tremendous buzz around movies’ supposed LGBTQ representation, only to ultimately fail to deliver anything meaningful in terms of screen time or actual representation of a queer relationship.

Often there is only a hint of a relationship, or a wink and a nod, rather than representation in line with relationships between straight people. Beauty and the Beast’s live action remake was applauded for featuring a gay LeFou, but he was only very briefly shown dancing with a man in drag during a ballroom scene, largely for comedic effect. Finding Dory briefly showed two women together in a park, which some audience members interpreted as a lesbian couple and others didn’t, and they were only shown in a speechless reaction shot. When questioned about the women, the movie’s co-director Andrew Stanton said, “They can be whatever you want them to be. There’s no right or wrong answer.” Most recently, Marvel’s Avengers Endgame tossed in a quick throwaway line alluding to a gay relationship, a scene Disney pumped up as the first openly gay character in the largest box office franchise in cinematic history.

Some LGBTQ viewers were upset with the representation of Harry Potter character Albus Dumblemore in Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald, who J.K. Rowling said had a relationship of a “sexual dimension” with Gellert Grindelwald. But when it came time to show that relationship onscreen and address Dumbledore’s sexuality in general, the director, David Yates, said those things would not be explicit in the film. Similarly, in Thor: Ragnarok, the character Valkyrie — portrayed by out actress Tessa Thompson — had a scene which made her sexuality explicit but was ultimately cut from the film. Some of that representation may improve soon, however — In Thor: Love and Thunder, the next sequel in the same franchise, Valkyrie will reportedly get more explicit representation of a relationship with a woman, according to i09. Marvel Studios confirmed a romantic storyline of Valkyrie seeking a new queen.

This article was originally published at Think Progress on September 4, 2019. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Casey Quinlan covers policy issues related to gender and sexuality. Their work has also been published in The Establishment, Bustle, Glamour, The Guardian, Teen Vogue, The Atlantic, and In These Times. They studied economic reporting, political reporting, and investigative journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where they graduated with an M.A. in business journalism.

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Do Nondisclosure Agreements Perpetuate a Toxic Workplace Culture?

Posted on November 2, 2017November 3, 2017 by The Attorneys of Passman and Kaplan

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In Hollywood, the cat is out of the bag. Scores of women (and men) are pouring out pent-up tales of sexual assaults and sexual harassment by famous producers, directors and actors. Every day brings new accusations against some movie icon. A group of women at Weinstein Co. has asked to be released from nondisclosure agreements so they can speak publicly to Harvey Weinstein’s alleged decades of predatory abuse and brazen quid pro quo demands.

The mere fact that an entire group of employees at one company is seeking to be unmuzzled is testament to a deep problem. Nor is it limited to the entertainment industry. NDAs and “hush money” settlements are common in every employment sector, including government agencies.

Sweeping it under the rug … until someone notices the lumps

There are two types of nondisclosure agreements at play in scenarios like the Weinstein saga:

First, there are standard NDAs in employment contracts which prevent employees from speaking up about what they’ve seen or experienced. These are a preemptive strike against disclosures that would reflect negatively on the company. When victims, witnesses and allies are effectively gagged, offenders are off the hook and a culture that tolerates sexual harassment is perpetuated.

Second, there are nondisclosure “agreements” thrust upon victims after the fact when they report harassment/assault or threaten legal action. In exchange for a payoff and/or a specifically worded NDA, they keep their jobs or walk away with a settlement and never speak of it again. The alternative is the threat of being blacklisted and smeared.
Again, this dynamic is not unique to Hollywood. Sexual harassment and coerced silence happens in every industry.

How nondisclosure agreements inhibit sexual harassment claims

A few mavericks have violated their NDAs with the Weinstein Co., knowing the company would face fierce public backlash if it tried to enforce the confidentiality agreements. But most people who are subject to NDAs do not have the upper hand. They can be terminated, sued and “outed” for breaching the agreement. The contract may specify monetary damages greater than the original settlement.

One-third of the 90,000 complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in 2015 involved workplace harassment. About 45 percent of those cases were sexual harassment. A report by the EEOC revealed that taking formal action is the least common response for women or men who reported being sexually harassed at work.

Why would they not file a formal complaint or lawsuit? Some fear termination or other retaliation. Others fear they won’t be believed or that nothing will change. And some take no action because their hands are tied by employment agreements.

Many employment contracts and NDAs require that claims against the employer – including sexual harassment — be resolved through arbitration. Employers favor mandatory arbitration clauses because (a) there is no risk of a big jury award and (b) the proceedings are private. Whatever the outcome, it is kept quiet. For victims of sexual harassment who want their abuser exposed, arbitration is a dead end.

Nondisclosure agreements are not ironclad

The mere threat of enforcing an NDA is very effective. Some victims do not want the public exposure, expense and stress. Settling and staying mum was their way of making the best of an awful ordeal and moving on.

However, NDAs are not as bulletproof as most employees think. No employment agreement can supercede state or federal laws. A victim of a crime cannot be prevented from talking to police or testifying in court. An employer cannot prevent an employee from reporting sexual harassment to the EEOC. A settlement agreement and NDA only prevents the employee from suing the company and speaking publicly about the incident. And if the agreement was overreaching or coerced, it may not be enforceable.

If you are subject to a nondisclosure agreement, you also cannot be barred from talking to a lawyer. An employment law attorney can explain your rights, your legal options, and any possible consequences of breaching the NDA.

This blog was originally published at Passman & Kaplan, P.C., Attorneys at Law on November 3, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: Founded in 1990 by Edward H. Passman and Joseph V. Kaplan, Passman & Kaplan, P.C., Attorneys at Law, is focused on protecting the rights of federal employees and promoting workplace fairness. The attorneys of Passman & Kaplan (Edward H. Passman, Joseph V. Kaplan, Adria S. Zeldin, Andrew J. Perlmutter, Johnathan P. Lloyd and Erik D. Snyder) represent federal employees before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and other federal administrative agencies, and also represent employees in U.S. District and Appeals Courts.

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A Bizarre Labor Arrangement

Posted on November 2, 2012 by David Macaray

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Going all the way back to the Industrial Revolution, the “Us vs. Them” dynamic that defines labor-management relations has remained remarkably intact. And that’s a good thing. Yes, the relationship is tense and adversarial, and, yes, it hasn’t always been productive, and, yes, there have been occasions where debilitating strikes and even violence have resulted, but because each side has its own agenda, conflict should be expected.

Lined up on one side are the men and women who do the actual work, who toil long, tedious hours for a defined wage, and lined up on the other are employers who, while grudgingly recognizing the necessity of workers, are committed to not paying them one nickel more than is absolutely necessary. It’s an economic law. You charge for your product all that the market will bear, and you pay your employees as little as you can get away with.

By and large, this primitive relationship has resulted in an equilibrium. Adhering to the principle that there is “strength in numbers,” workers have joined together to form labor unions, and embracing the time-honored belief that “money talks,” business groups have bribed Congress to pass legislation that crippled the labor movement. By “equilibrium” we’re not suggesting there is anything remotely resembling “fairness,” only that there is a stasis of sorts.

Which brings us to the film industry. To be a movie actor, you must belong to SAG (Screen Actors Guild), the actors’ union. Similarly, Hollywood’s bosses are represented by the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers). In many ways, contract negotiations between the Guild and the Alliance are not unlike negotiations between any other parties; it could be the UAW going up against Chrysler, the IAM taking on Boeing, or the Teamsters bargaining with UPS.

[It should be noted that SAG is now known as SAG-AFTRA, having recently voted to merge with AFTRA—American Federation of Television and Radio Artists—but that’s a whole other messy issue, which we won’t get into here.]

But there is one very disturbing way in which SAG’s negotiations with the producers doesn’t resemble those of other unions, and that difference involves a profound conflict of interest. Incredibly, some of the most prominent and influential members of SAG are also producers. It’s true. While these “movie stars” are dues-paying union members who, nominally, do battle with the producers, they themselves are also big-time producers.

You can imagine where their interests lie when it comes to mundane (but critically important) rank-and-file issues such as residuals, new technology, and health insurance premiums. As important as these issues are to 95-percent of working actors, they mean next to nothing to these moguls. Indeed, as producers with an eye on the bottom-line, they’re interested in keeping their costs down, and if this results in their fellow actors receiving a smaller slice of the pie, so be it.

During SAG’s 2009 contract negotiations, some of these actor-producers actually took out advertisements in trade papers urging the membership not to do anything so dumb or reckless as to vote to authorize a strike, presumably because they didn’t want to see actors (whom they themselves employ) rock the boat by interfering with future profits. Of course, a public display of union dissension like this is going to badly undercut any talk of solidarity, which it did.

An accomplished actor friend of mine (he’s brave, so he probably wouldn’t mind me mentioning his name, but I shall preserve his anonymity) has recently (in late September) filed charges with the NLRB against these actor-producers. I read his affidavit. It was well-written and compelling. The extent of the alleged “collusion” was mind-boggling.

The four movie and TV production companies (and the executives associated with them) named in the complaint are:

Jersey Films and Jersey Television (Danny DeVito)
The Playtone Company (Tom Hanks)
Smokehouse Productions (George Clooney)
Tribeca Film (Robert DeNiro)

Anyone who believes in the value and nobility of the labor movement is going to root for this NLRB complaint to succeed. Of course, taking on famous movie stars like these guys will be an uphill climb, but it’s certainly worth the effort. And who knows? Maybe the NLRB will provide us with one of Hollywood’s patented “surprise endings.”

This article was originally published on October 31, 2012 on Dissident Voice. Reprinted with permission.

About the Author: David Macaray is a playwright and author (“It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”). His political and entertainment articles have appeared in CounterPunch, Common Dreams, New York Press, Huffington Post, Utne Reader, Beckett Monthly, LA Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, and various anthologies.

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Workplace Fairness

Tag: hollywood

WGA Strike Battles for Diversity in Hollywood

Organizing Against Police Unions Has Invigorated Hollywood’s Labor Movement, Members Say

Kristen Stewart’s experience is emblematic of LGBTQ people’s struggles in Hollywood

Do Nondisclosure Agreements Perpetuate a Toxic Workplace Culture?

A Bizarre Labor Arrangement

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