Labor Day, the Writers’ Strikes, and Fairness

A sunny day in Los Angeles, clear blue skies, and a festive mood: the Writers’ Guild Association (WGA) on strike. Spunky, bass-heavy hip-hop pierced the air; picket signs bobbed up and down: “You can’t pay us in La Croix,” “Fair wages are so fetch,” “I like your offer as much as you like an angry female lead;” people happily chatted with each other while walking along the lines. Their purpose isn’t anything new—they want job security, assurance that AI won’t write screenplays in place of actual human writers, fair wages, and the ability to live off their salaries. Their opponent? The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a group that includes such gargantuan names as Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and The Walt Disney Company. Writers for these companies often work upwards of thirteen hours per day, seven days a week, for multiple months at a time. “It’s exhausting. It’s unsustainable,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a writer who’s worked for productions such as “New Girl” and “The Carmichael Show.” And the pay discrepancies between these writers and their higher-ups are massive. Take Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney. He earns up to twenty-six million dollars a year, over one hundred times the median salary of an industry writer, and they don’t even take home all the money they make. Agents, managers, and lawyers all have to be paid, taking significant chunks out of writers’ paychecks.
Unless a deal is reached quickly, this strike may mean a significant postponement in the TV shows and movies we’ve been anticipating. There might be a lapse of summer blockbusters next year. “Avatar” 3, 4, and 5, “The Last of Us,” “Abbot Elementary,” multiple “Avengers” films, “1923,” “Stranger Things,” “Severance,” and countless other über-popular films and television shows have
indefinitely delayed production. This is the largest disruption to the television and film industry since the Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on Hollywood will be nothing short of seismic.
But this isn’t the first strike that’s impacted Americans—the United States has a long history of strikes. Workers and executives have been locked for years in a seemingly never-ending wrestling match. This fight has continued since the mid-to-late 1800s, one of the most notable early union strikes being the 1892 Homestead Steel Strike. Workers’ salaries were cut, the company’s chief executive refused to negotiate with the union, tensions escalated exponentially; the strike culminated in a bloody gunfight in which sixteen people died and countless were injured.
We’ve come a long way since then. Today’s prominent striking workers are writers and actors, not steelworkers. People haven’t died in union strikes since the late 1970s. Different industries strike today, but our society has retained the basic principles of bargaining and striking and bargaining, and also a very tangible reminder of union laborers' struggle for fair wages: Labor Day.
Today, we see Labor Day as a convenient easing-in to the school year, the informal marker between summer and fall, but it was originally intended to celebrate the many successes of the United States worker. The first Labor Day parade was in 1882 in New York City, and in 1894 President Grover Cleveland declared it a national holiday. Since then, it’s been celebrated every year on the first Monday of September. And because its origins were so long ago, it’s become easy to accept the day off we’ve been given without actually recognizing why we observe it. Labor Day is a celebration of unions, of workers, and of the rights of the people to stand up against money-hoarding corporate bosses.
This year’s Labor Day has already passed us by, the sun continues to set earlier, and we are well on our way to the heart of the school year. But it is important that we do not forget the purpose of the day, even if we won’t be encountering it for another year. Striking union workers love their jobs, they’ve been trained to do them well, and all they want is to get paid and treated fairly. As Chris Keyser, Negotiating Committee Co-Chair for the WGA, said, “We do not write because it’s easy; we write because we have no other choice…. on Labor Day, it’s worth remembering that.” The writers will continue striking until the AMPTP recognizes their right to fair wages. And while the environments surrounding the WGA’s strike are incredibly different from those of the United States’ first strikes, the WGA is continuing and participating in 150 years of rich American history by taking a stand against the wage discrepancies within the entertainment industry.