Tuesday, October 12, 2021
“There Is No Backup Plan”: Can the Threat of a Strike Make Hollywood Live Up to Its Ideals?
Vanity Fair: Hollywood’s workers are on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear whether they will be going on a picket line. Eight days ago, 98% of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees members who voted chose to authorize a strike if the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers doesn’t offer them a better deal. With 60,000 IATSE members covered by the movie and TV contracts being negotiated—in jobs like makeup artist and set designer, grip and editor—a walkout could cripple the entertainment industry.
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It seems ironic that in preparing for a strike due to tight schedules and overworked employees, productions could currently be doing 7-day work weeks, using up as much labor as they can before they lose it. All over the country, in so many fields, workers are rejecting jobs that don’t pay enough and don’t treat them with decency and respect. The panic over this strike highlights how essential and undervalued IATSE members are, and hopefully production companies realize this and improve conditions, meeting IATSE’s demands. The story about Sarah May Guenther crashing her car after an excessively long work day is haunting; I can’t imagine dying in a car crash just to make a season of TV that might not even get good reception. The response from her coworker, affirming the experience as common, is familiar. To cope with difficult jobs, we often adopt the mentality that we can just laugh at our misfortunes because, at the end of the day, our job is “so cool”!
Before reading this article I had never heard of the terms “above the line” and “below the line” referencing the hierarchy of people in this industry. Although it may sound demeaning, the correlation in this moment is accurate. There are two points that stood out to me in this article, one being how much power IASTE members have in this moment and the other being how reflection during the pandemic has been a reminder that the situations these workers are put in in not humane. What I find interesting is even though this is a wealthy industry, workers are still not being given basic human decencies like food and bathroom. Breaks. I think it is important these people use the leverage they have to make this situations safe. Also, these workers have leverage is because they are a vital part of production which would make you wonder why they are treated this way. Another concept that was mentioned was the fact that at the moment, crew members are wearing masks when working which dehumanizes their positions even more because they are simply now just simply working bodies.
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