As the double Hollywood strike marches on, members of SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America are rallying at Disney Studios in Burbank Tuesday for what they describe as a "National Day of Solidarity."
“In this ‘Summer of Strikes,’ working Americans everywhere are fighting for fair contracts, better compensation, safe working conditions and protections from encroaching technology,” SAG-AFTRA said in a statement.
Kate Fortmueller, who researches film and TV labor at Georgia State University, says these joint rallies help both unions in their battle with the Hollywood studios.
“These kinds of shows of solidarity are tremendously helpful,” she told KNX News. “There’s actually not a particularly long history of this kind of solidarity across the unions and guilds. As we know, the last time the writers and actors were on strike was in1960, and they weren't in sync in this kind of same way.”
Fortmueller says the solidarity between the unions is partly because they’re facing many of the same issues, especially when it comes to streaming.
“Actors and writers no longer have a sense of how well their shows are doing, so that hurts them in negotiations,” she said. “These really big changes to the industry that everyone is facing makes it easier, I think, for them to band together.
The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers resumed bargaining with the WGA last week, nearly three and a half months after the start of the writers’s strike. Negotiations are expected to continue this week.
Actors joined the writers on the picket lines July 14. The AMPTP hasn’t contacted SAG-AFTRA to resume negotiations since their strike began.
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