The clock is ticking toward a costly strike that could shut down production on most television shows, pushing back the return of many programs now set for the fall.
Last month, members of the Writers Guild of America voted 98% in favor of going on strike if no new deal is reached before their current contract expires at 11:59 pm PDT Monday. With less than a day left before the deadline, the two sides appear far apart.
The talks come at a time both sides are feeling pain. Many of the media and tech companies producing shows that use the writers have seen drops in their stock price, prompting deep cost cutting, including layoffs. But the writers, many of whom can’t support themselves with writing alone, are suffering from reduced job opportunities and the loss of some sources of income due to an industry shift from traditional broadcast and cable programming to streaming services.
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“The companies have used the transition to streaming to cut writer pay … worsening working conditions for series writers at all levels,” said a statement from the union. “On TV staffs, more writers are working at minimum regardless of experience, often for fewer weeks [of pay]….While series budgets have soared over the past decade, median writer-producer pay has fallen.”
“This is not an ordinary negotiating cycle,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a member of the union’s negotiating team, in a video message to members a month ago. “We are fighting for writers’ economic survival and stability of our profession.”
The union is negotiating with Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers, which represents Amazon, Apple, CBS, Disney, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony and CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
Members of Writers Guild of America hold signs on a picket line in front of Paramount Studios during the 2007 strike that lasted 100 days.
“Our goal continues to be to reach a fair and reasonable agreement,” said a statement from management. “The AMPTP companies have approached these negotiations with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority. We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and we are fully committed to reaching a mutually-beneficial deal.”
While many shows have already filmed their final episodes for the current season, viewers could see an immediate impact with late night shows, daytime soap operas and shows such as Saturday Night Live, which could have early ends to their seasons.
And with estimates that a strike could last for months — the last strike by this union, in 2007, went on for 100 days — the start of the new season could be pushed back.
“If this goes on we’ll see more reality, news and sports,” said Jonathan Handel, an entertainment attorney and author of the book, Hollywood on Strike!: An Industry at War in the Internet Age.
Handel is one of those who thinks a strike, quite possibly a months-long strike, is likely.
“There’s a lot of unfinished business from 2020 negotiations that were raised then but then put on ice by the pandemic,” he said.
The economics of the industry have change radically in just the last 18 months, he said, as many media and tech stocks have taken a beating on investor concern about profitability of streaming services. While initially the industry battle was to get the most subscribers, attention has now turned to the bottom line.
“Both the media companies and the tech companies that own streamers are engaged in belt tightening,” said Handel. “The tune today is profits.”
The union represents 11,500 writers for television shows, both for networks and streaming services, as well as many motion pictures. Not all of them are currently working, though. But if they do strike, it could have widespread implications for the industry, and for the economies of Southern California and some other locations, such as New York City.
There could be as many as 20,000 workers working on as many as 600 productions who could be out of work if the writers shutdown production, according to an estimate from AMPTP. The 2007 strike caused an estimated $2 billion in economic damage. Adjusted for inflation, that comes to nearly $3 billion today.
Management appears unlikely to give the union the improvements it says its members need to have a living wage. If anything, there are incentives to letting this drag on.
“The issue the writers are striking over are real, they’re meaningful, but their timing couldn’t be worse,” said Tom Nunan a lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, as well as a film producer and writer.
“Media companies are laying people off, crying poor, reevaluating their investment in streaming and scrutinizing their more mature revenue streams,” he said. “I don’t think the studios have much to lose if there is a strike and there could be a lot for them to gain. If you have a work stoppage, you have instant savings.”
The writers are arguing their contracts need to factor in the entertainment industry’s shift to streaming. Residual fees — or money paid when a film or series is rerun or aired on broadcast — has helped provide much needed money for writers for years. But those fees are vanishing in the streaming era, which is where a great deal of projects ultimately land these days.
The writers are also seeing smaller writing staffs on shows than have been the case in the past, and fewer episodes of shows produced for streaming platforms than have been produced for broadcast networks in the past.
“Even if the union resolves the issues it has raised, the question of ‘Can this really be a career for me’ will still hang over most writers, post-strike,” said Nunan. “I know very few writers who pay the bills by writing alone.”
30 victories for workers’ rights won by organized labor over the years
A brief history of workers’ rights and organized labor
Today, American workers have a host of rights and recourses should their workplace be hostile or harmful. While the modern labor movement works to continue to improve the working conditions for all, with big efforts around a fair minimum wage and end of employer wage theft, the movement has a history rich with fights and wins. It put an end to child labor, 10-to-16 hour workdays, and unsafe working conditions.
Stacker compiled a list of 30 of the most consequential victories that unions fought for in the name of workers’ rights. The list includes information about the milestones unions achieved and the circumstances that made those victories worth fighting for.
Today, every wage-earning American owes a debt of gratitude to organized labor for the 40-hour workweek, minimum wage (such as it is), anti-discrimination laws, and other basic protections. Far from basic, those protections were, until fairly recently, pipe dreams to the millions of American men, women, and children who labored endlessly in dreadful conditions for poverty wages.
The gratitude is owed mostly to the unions those nameless and disposable workers organized, which they did under the threat of being fired, harassed, evicted from company homes, beaten, jailed, and, in many cases, killed. In 1886, for example, over 200,000 railroad workers went on strike to protest an unjust firing. In 1894, over 250,000 workers walked out of the Pullman Palace Car Company factories to protest 12-hour workdays and wage cuts.
The 2018 Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME established that public-sector workers who are protected by unions—of which there are five times as many as private workers—but don’t wish to join, no longer have to pay fees on behalf of the union’s collective bargaining. This dealt a blow to public-sector unions, though it didn’t result in the mass exodus union detractors had hoped for. Overall union membership in the U.S. in 2020 was at 10.8%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. While that’s a historical low rate, some industries—like digital media, museums, and non-profits—are making inroads with new unions.
Over the decades, there have been far more losses than victories, but the victories the labor movement did achieve made earning a living in the United States a much more equitable, fair, safe, and profitable proposition. These wins show what is possible for the modern labor movement. Keep reading to explore 30 hard-fought victories that America’s working class won in our names.
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1794: Shoemakers organize America’s first union
The rise of so-called journeymen societies in 1794 led to the creation of the Federal Society of Journeymen Cordwainers of Philadelphia, which worked to protect the wages of shoemakers, who toiled in a large and profitable industry. The society was the first true union and can be considered the genesis of the American labor movement. The moment is also significant because it was the first time tradespeople organized for protection against “scabs,” workers willing to undermine demands for better pay by agreeing to work for cheaper wages—a dynamic that would remain a central theme throughout the entire history of the labor movement.
1842: Commonwealth v. Hunt legalizes unions
A court in 1806 ruled against the shoemakers and declared the act of organizing for higher wages to be a criminal conspiracy. More than three decades later in 1842, a high court in Massachusetts overturned that precedent in Commonwealth v. Hunt, which declared that workers do, in fact, have a right to organize and strike.
[Pictured: 19th chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Lemuel Shaw, who served from Aug. 30, 1830–Aug. 21, 1860.]
1866: National Labor Union is created
The end of slavery emboldened laborers around the country to capitalize on the national sentiment and pursue better conditions for themselves. A year after the Civil War, the formation of the National Labor Union represented the first nationally organized workers’ rights group. The organization’s efforts went a long way to raising awareness, but the group dissolved in 1873 and soon after, a series of violent strikes and successful corporate anti-labor campaigns compelled much of America to sour on the movement.
1882: The first Labor Day Parade marks a movement
On Sept. 5, 1882, New York City hosted the country’s first Labor Day Parade; around 10,000 workers marched in what is now an annual event, and the holiday was soon moved to the first Monday in September, just as it is celebrated today. Although a parade, of course, didn’t directly improve working conditions, the moment signified a psychological victory for labor and indicated a shift in public opinion that would ultimately lead to the rise of the progressive era in the 20th century.
1898: Erdman Act briefly ends union blacklists
In the second half of the 19th century, several major labor groups like the American Federation of Labor emerged as major strikers and often-brutal government and corporate reprisals created a nearly constant state of unrest. Much of that unrest was concentrated around railroad work, most notably, the Pullman Strike of 1894.
In an effort to quell tensions, the federal government passed the Erdman Act, which provided workers with arbitration and mediation options, while banning railroad companies from firing or refusing to hire workers for joining a union, a common intimidation tactic known as yellow-dog contracts. It would eventually lead to the more comprehensive Railway Labor Act of 1926, but not before the Supreme Court struck down the Erdman Act’s key provisions 10 years later in 1908.
1909: The Uprising of the 20,000 demands change
In 1909, the women’s rights movement and the labor movement converged with the Uprising of the 20,000, a strike launched by sweatshop laborers known as shirtwaist workers, who were mostly young, immigrant women. The strikers protested low wages, long hours, and appalling conditions, especially the frequent and intentional locking of doors and fire escapes to prevent workers from leaving or even from taking breaks. The uprising secured the support of the powerful and well-heeled Women’s Trade Union League, and by 1910, most of the protestor’s employers agreed to sign union contracts.
1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire exposes conditions
On March 25, 1911, the deadliest industrial disaster in New York City history changed the course of the labor movement when the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 sweatshop workers, mostly women. Although the owners and management staff escaped unharmed, the workers found themselves in a death trap of locked doors, blocked fire escapes, and highly flammable material, like the kind the 1909 protestors had warned about. Although the fire itself, of course, was hardly a victory for labor, the death of the workers was not in vain—it galvanized the previously scattered and frequently infighting labor movement to unify, and stoked public outrage and demand for change.
1913: The Department of Labor is formed
On March 4, 1913, the efforts of generations of labor activists were realized, at least in part, when President William Howard Taft signed a law creating the U.S. Department of Labor. The labor movement now had representation in a Cabinet-level agency.
1916: Keating-Owen Act briefly curtails child labor
By the turn of the 20th century, 2 million children were laboring on farms, on city streets, and in mills, mines, factories, and stores. The work of social reformers and a nationwide campaign by National Child Labor Committee photographer Lewis W. Hine to chronicle and publicize the abuses led to calls for reform. In 1916, the Keating-Owen Act limited the number of hours children could work and prohibited interstate sale of merchandise produced by child labor, but the Supreme Court ruled the act unconstitutional just nine months later.
1921: The Battle of Blair Mountain pits miners against the police
The disparaging term “redneck” can be traced to 1921 when 10,000 West Virginia coal miners rose up against mining companies, managers, and their allies in government after decades of abuses in what was the largest uprising in labor history and the most significant armed insurrection since the Civil War. Tying red bandanas around their necks in a show of unity, the miners faced off against thousands of heavily armed company agents, scab workers, law enforcement officers, and military personnel who confronted the workers with heavy machine guns and, eventually, the only aerial bombardment of American civilians in U.S. history.
At least 100 people died and 1 million rounds of ammunition were fired before the rebellion was put down, but the efforts of the miners would lead to some immediate improvement in conditions and, more importantly, a larger voice during FDR’s future New Deal negotiations.
1925: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters is formed
Shortly after the Civil War, George Pullman revolutionized travel with luxurious railroad sleeping cars, each of which came with a personal attendant called a Pullman Car porter. Consisting entirely of black men—originally recently freed slaves—the position was considered prestigious in the African American community, but the reality was grueling work, long hours, low pay, and daily indignities and mistreatment. In 1925, after 12 years of struggle, the Pullman Porters formed their own union, becoming the first black labor union in history to force a powerful corporation to the negotiating table, marking a triumph of both labor rights and civil rights.
1926: The Railway Labor Act is passed
After decades of widespread, public, and often violent labor strikes—which were commonly put down by force with the aid of government troops—President Calvin Coolidge compelled unions and railroad bosses to agree on a different means of conflict resolution. In 1926, the Railway Labor Act substituted strikes for bargaining, mediation, and arbitration, and gave both unions and railroad companies the opportunity and responsibility to negotiate before resorting to strikes. It was the first federal law that guaranteed workers the right to organize, unionize, and choose their own leaders without company interference.
1931: Davis-Bacon Act regulates wages
By 1931, the Great Depression was raging; the masses were desperate for work and employers found it easy to offer take-it-or-leave-it wage ultimatums. The Davis-Bacon Act required private contractors on all significant public-works construction projects to pay workers the “prevailing wage.” Those wages generally corresponded with union wages, and the standard now covers one in five construction projects and one in four construction workers at any given time.
1932: Norris-LaGuardia Act eliminates injunctions
In 1932, labor made major gains when the Norris-LaGuardia Act prevented federal courts from issuing injunctions to stop peaceful union strikes and protests, which had long hurt their ability to organize. It also protected workers from being fired for joining a union or from being forced to sign yellow-dog contracts, which demanded a vow not to join a union.
1933: Frances Perkins named secretary of labor
History was made in 1933 when Frances Perkins became the first woman ever to serve in a presidential Cabinet position—but the milestone was literally forged in fire. Twenty-two years earlier, Perkins was in New York City, having tea in Washington Square, when sirens and growing commotion compelled her to join a gathering crowd outside the towering inferno of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, where she watched helplessly as 47 workers, mostly young women, made the agonizing choice to jump to their deaths instead of burning alive. She later called the catastrophe “the day the New Deal was born.”
1933: The labor movement has one of its own in Washington
Frances Perkins is a towering figure in American labor, having dedicated her life and career to the common worker and the downtrodden in general. When FDR asked Perkins to join his Cabinet, the woman who would become the principal architect of the New Deal made it clear that she would only agree if Roosevelt backed her priorities, which the president promised he would. Those priorities, according to the Frances Perkins Center, were an amalgamation of the ideals the labor movement had pursued for generations: “a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, unemployment compensation, worker’s compensation, abolition of child labor, direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief, Social Security, a revitalized federal employment service, and universal health insurance.”
1935: The National Labor Relations Act becomes law
The National Labor Relations Act legitimized, enfranchised, and vindicated the workers’ rights movement more than any provision that had come before. The culmination of decades of union struggle, the act guaranteed the rights of private-sector workers to unionize, engage in collective bargaining for higher wages and better conditions, and, if necessary, to strike. It remains the foundation of modern American labor law.
1937: Auto workers win GM sit-down strike
At 8 p.m. on the night before Christmas Eve in 1936, autoworkers in Flint, Mich., took over one—and later, several—major GM factories, locking themselves in, refusing to work, and bringing production to a standstill. The company tried to freeze and starve them out, and the courts deemed the strike illegal, but the workers refused to budge. The governor also refused to send in the National Guard. In February 1937, after 44 days of dramatic stalemate, GM—arguably the most powerful and politically influential company in the world—capitulated to most of the workers’ demands, which included a fair minimum wage scale, protections against injury for assembly line workers, a grievance system, and the recognition of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union.
1938: FDR signs Fair Labor Standards Act
The crowning achievement of the American union movement came in 1938 with the signing of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which guaranteed a minimum wage, an eight-hour workday, a 40-hour workweek, and time-and-a-half overtime. It also mandated that minors under 18 be barred from certain hazardous work and prevented children under 16 from working in mines or manufacturing, or in any job during school hours. The act ushered American labor into the modern era, gave 700,000 Americans an immediate raise, and continues to serve as the basic foundation of workers’ rights and protections in the United States.
1941: FDR Forms Fair Employment Practice Commmission
In 1941, the Fair Employment Practice Commission (FEPC) was assembled to enforce an executive order from President Roosevelt that barred employment discrimination based on race, national origin, color, or creed in defense or government industries that received federal funding. FEPC served as the teeth of the executive order, as the commission was authorized to investigate complaints of discrimination and take action against offending companies or organizations.
1962: Kennedy signs Executive Order 10988
On Jan. 17, 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order that for the first time gave federal employees the right to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. Although private-sector employees had enjoyed these basic rights for decades, the moment was a milestone for federal workers.
1963: Kennedy signs the Equal Pay Act
The women’s rights movement and the labor movement ran parallel to each other and often intertwined from the very beginning. In 1963, the two movements achieved a mutual milestone when JFK signed the Equal Pay Act. An amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Equal Pay Act banned pay disparity for equal work based on gender.
1964: Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act
Although the 1964 Civil Rights Act mandated sweeping social reforms that were by no means limited to labor, union-backed workers’ rights campaigns were central to the civil rights movement—Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis while supporting a strike by sanitation workers. The landmark civil rights legislation, in part, banned workplace discrimination based on race, gender, religion, color, or national origin.
1967: Johnson signs the Age Discrimination in Employment Act
Organized labor continued its run of success in 1967 with the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. It prevented hiring discrimination based on age and protected workers over 40 or those collecting age-related federal benefits from termination or forced retirement. The act basically extended to older workers the rights associated with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
1970: Nixon signs the Occupational Safety and Health Act
From black lung and mine collapses to farming accidents and factory fires, American workers were driven to unionize first and foremost for their own safety, health, and wellbeing, which were often afterthoughts for the companies that used their labor. The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) required employers to protect their workers from toxic substances, mechanical dangers, unsanitary conditions, excessive heat and cold, and other known physical hazards. The legislation created OSHA to inspect, investigate, and enforce the measure.
1974: Ford signs the Employee Retirement and Security Income Act
A central thesis of the workers’ rights movement is that a lifetime of labor should guarantee a stable retirement. In 1974, the Employee Retirement and Security Income Act protected workers enrolled in private-industry pension plans by setting minimum standards for how those plans are managed. The legislation required companies to disclose information about the plans to their employees and also put fiduciary responsibility on the people or organizations in charge of their assets.
1988: Congress passes the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act
Union workers long lived with the knowledge that a decision could be made to close their auto plant or coal mine without them knowing that their next paycheck would be their last. In 1988, however, Congress signed the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act without President Ronald Reagan’s signature. The act required most companies with more than 100 workers to give 60-days advance written notice if mass layoffs or plant closings were imminent.
1990: Bush signs the Americans With Disabilities Act
The Americans With Disabilities Act amended the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include workers with disabilities. It also required employers to make reasonable accommodations in terms of accessibility and other special needs.
1993: Clinton signs the Family and Medical Leave Act
The Family and Medical Leave Act required employers to allow their workers to take off 12 job-protected workweeks in a year for things like the birth or adoption of a child, a serious illness, or to care for a seriously ill child or spouse. There are also extended considerations involving military families. Unlike in most wealthy Western countries, however, the act does not mandate paid maternity or paternity leave, which means the time off is guaranteed, but uncompensated.
2009: Obama signs the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
The 2009 amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, was so-named for the plaintiff in a Supreme Court case that spurred the legislation. Prior to 2009, the mandated 180-day statute of limitations for a worker to file an equal-pay lawsuit began when the employer made the initial discriminatory pay decision, meaning that if a woman found out she was being paid less than a man for equal work six months after she agreed to her salary, it was too late for her to file suit. The 2009 legislation reset the statute of limitations with every discriminatory paycheck received.
CNN’s Vanessa Yurkevich and Oliver Darcy contributed to this report
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