Is Hollywood Sleepwalking Toward Strike Three?

Katie Kilkenny
·14 min read
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As the creator and administrator of a popular crewmember-focused social media hub, Diego Mariscal had a bird’s-eye view into the turbulent experience of his peers during Hollywood’s 2023 strikes. Typically, his account, Crew Stories, supplies its more than 128,000 followers across Instagram and Facebook with wry insider jokes about the below-the-line experience and lighthearted, behind-the-scenes stories like a boom operator on 1990’s Tremors recalling wiring up Reba McEntire — not knowing she was a major singer — and telling her she had a good voice, or a recent meme about an assistant director explaining their complicated job to in-laws during the holidays. “But there was very little of that in the last six months,” says Mariscal. “It was very serious.”

During the work stoppages, Mariscal — a dolly grip, the role on film and TV sets that involves operating the dolly and assembling tracks for it — was hearing from people moving out of their houses, shacking up with parents and, he says, even contemplating suicide. When one man posted to the hub that he had moved into his car, Mariscal says, the group’s community found him a place to stay that same day. It reminded him of other times crewmembers had gone through difficult periods — during COVID-19 and after the accidental shooting death of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, for instance — when the tone on the page had taken a turn. The experience shaped the way he thinks about this year’s contract negotiations for Hollywood’s major crew unions, a battle that will determine the future of work for tens of thousands of on- and off-set workers in a post-Peak TV era. “I can tell you, for me personally and from what I’ve seen, we’ve fought this much, and we were standing in solidarity with the actors and writers, that when it’s coming to our time, I don’t think there’s going to be any [hesitation] to stand up,” he says. “We’re not just going to take a shit deal.”

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It is nearly their time. Just months after the conclusion of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA strikes, top crew unions the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Hollywood Teamsters (Teamsters Local 399) are scheduled to enter the bargaining room March 4. The groups — IATSE represents a broad swath of craftspeople, from costume designers to cinematographers and writers assistants, while the Teamsters membership includes drivers, dispatchers and animal trainers/wranglers — will start together, hammering out details of their benefits plans alongside other unions in the Hollywood Basic Crafts coalition. Then IATSE will begin more individualized negotiations, followed by the Teamsters, all ahead of a number of deals that are set to expire July 31 — after which a strike could theoretically begin.

Even after the Hollywood labor movement flexed its might in 2023, many in the industry remain skeptical that crewmembers could shut it all down again this year. Given that these workers spent months in 2023 with significantly reduced to no work opportunities, after the COVID-19-induced work stoppage just a few years earlier, the conventional wisdom is that they’ve been hit too hard to threaten another stoppage. IATSE international president Matthew Loeb has said that “nothing is off the table,” but both sides have incentive to posture at this time: Labor organizations often seek to increase their leverage at the bargaining table by talking up a strike, while management likes to throw cold water on the fiery rhetoric. So, to better understand the potential for a shutdown, The Hollywood Reporter went to some of the many crewmembers who were deeply affected by the last strikes to determine what the mood is on the ground — and what that can tell us about the next few months.

It’s undeniable that the hardship was acute and widespread for crews in 2023. According to the Motion Picture & Television Fund, a prominent industry charity, about 80 percent of its calls for financial assistance during the strikes came from crewmembers. Meanwhile, about 24 percent of the more than 29,000 entertainment industry workers (across film and television, theater, dance and music) that fellow charitable organization the Entertainment Community Fund provided with financial aid and other services in 2023 were Teamster and IATSE members. Thousands showed up to food drives organized by the crew unions and other labor partners during and after the strikes.

IATSE vp Michael Miller maintains that his members are determined to make major gains this cycle, despite the odds. “The idea that somehow the membership resolve is significantly weakened by the strikes, I think it’s potentially the opposite. I think [members] have seen that the strikes brought strength to the industry and the expectation is that if the companies come in and treat the members respectfully and pay for a fair contract, that a contract can absolutely be reached without a labor dispute,” he says.

Adds Lindsay Dougherty, the lead negotiator for the Teamsters and the Hollywood Basic Crafts: “We’re going to have issues that need to be dealt with. And I think if you tell our members, ‘Hey, the companies wanted to cut your benefits, cut your wages,’ you think they’re going to be OK with that? No.” She adds, “It’s really about talking about [members’] issues and ensuring that we get a fair deal.” The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which will represent studios and streamers in these talks, said in a statement that it looks forward to “productive negotiations” that will yield an agreement ensuring “an active year ahead for the industry” and recognizing crewmembers’ contributions.

The major issues that will be on the table this time around are not yet finalized, but will generally look familiar to observers of Hollywood’s 2023 strikes: instituting contractual language on artificial intelligence is one, while another for the Teamsters, per Dougherty, is minimum staffing. The unions are putting an emphasis on wage increases that account for recent inflation and on boosting the unions’ health and pension plans after the strikes took their toll on the funding for these benefits. Last year, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA each gained a new residual — bonuses rewarding successful projects on streaming platforms — in their deals, which the Directors Guild of America also retroactively secured. IATSE, at least, will be looking to make “comparable and proportionate gains in that residual stream” as well, per Miller. SAG-AFTRA, moreover, broke previous wage rate increase precedents with its deal in November, securing 7 percent bumps upon ratification of its contract, which will likely come up at the bargaining table for the crew unions. IATSE will also be looking to tamp down on signatories allegedly subcontracting work that is covered under its contract.

Crewmembers say economic gains like these will be crucial, especially in light of recent events. Some describe the actors and writers strikes as a shock to the system that highlighted the value of building savings in a volatile industry. During the strikes, IATSE lighting control programmer Mario Colli (WandaVision, One Night in Miami) and his wife sold their home when they realized they weren’t going to be able to come up with the mortgage payments. They stayed with his wife’s parents until January, when they moved into a rented home that is closer to his work.

“I’m always in support of union and labor action, doing what they need in order to get what they need,” says Colli of the 2023 strikes, “but it did create a serious amount of anxiety in me in that this thing that seems so storied and stable an institution, a 120-year-old industry, occasionally the tap just turns off. That’s alarming.” He and his wife are prioritizing savings in a new way, he says, and top issues for him in the 2024 negotiations include funding the union’s pension plan and wage increases that account for inflation.

Teamsters Local 399 location manager Jason McCauley (Joker: Folie à Deux, Bel-Air) went for months without work in 2023, and during the strikes his wife, a junior studio executive, was also laid off. During that time, his family lived off money they were saving for a down payment for a house and didn’t travel home for the holidays to save funds. (McCauley recently started work on a feature film.) He says he and his peers have major issues to address — some of his top priorities this year include the sustainability of the health and pension plans and raises to minimum rates — that are separate from the effect of the strikes. “What happened to us because of the work stoppages this year doesn’t change the facts on the field,” he says. “It doesn’t change the idea that inflation has made all our paychecks worth a little bit less, the fact that the housing market is where it is and that it costs so much to live here.”

The industry’s working conditions also remain a key motivator. In 2021, tens of thousands of members of IATSE nearly went on strike amid an outcry over long working days, short rest periods and safety issues — a conversation that grew more urgent after the fatal shooting of cinematographer Hutchins on the set of Rust. Though the union avoided a work stoppage that year, its delegates only narrowly ratified its Basic Agreement and Area Standards Agreement deals with studios and streamers. The contracts had many critics, with some decrying the pacts for not making enough headway on working conditions and other issues. According to Miller, IATSE is still seeing reports of 15-, 16- and 18-hour workdays; six- to 10-hour work periods without meal breaks; and members being required to work weeks of consecutive days, albeit at a lower level than before the union’s last contract went into effect.

Miller says IATSE wants to focus on financial penalties for these situations: “The best way to avoid working conditions becoming abusive is for those [situations] to be disincentivized and to be managed around,” he says. “And the most practical disincentive tool that we have is to increase the cost around doing those types of things.” Dougherty says the Teamsters also want to address safety concerns raised by the long working hours.

Last year, set lighting technician Anna Orzechowicz (For All Mankind) worked only a handful of days on union sets and started collecting unemployment benefits and food stamps to make ends meet. Recently, she also worked at a lighting and grip rental house in the absence of on-set jobs coming back in full force. But sprawling days on set still remain top of mind, and tackling working hours is her top issue during this negotiations cycle. “After doing a week straight on a TV show on location 30 miles from my house, I was like, ‘This is nuts,’ ” she said. “What if I had kids? I don’t know how people do it.” New York-based IATSE dolly grip Anthony Stracquadanio (his local will negotiate with studios after various others make their deals), who worked on West Side Story and The Whale, is also concerned about the length of workdays. “We do some of these insane hours for people watching these amazing pieces of entertainment, but they don’t see what the work really is. They don’t really get to see the dark side of the industry,” he says.

But members differ on whether they’d be willing to threaten another strike if studios and streamers clash with their unions in this year’s talks. Some IATSE members and Teamsters say that crewmembers should be able to fully get back to work before another work stoppage is threatened. “Everyone’s so hungry [for work] that I think it would be irresponsible to shut everything down,” says Georgia-based IATSE digital imaging technician Chad Oliver (Sistas, Ruthless), who for several months during the strikes lived off unemployment, funds he took out of his union retirement plan, and the down payment he and his wife had been saving for a house. “Which is really sad to say,” Oliver adds. (Work has now returned for him, and his schedule is booked until June.)

But others argue that crews should capitalize on the renewed sense of collective power that many feel after the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and during a period of attention-grabbing labor actions nationwide. “The consensus of everyone I’ve talked to, and myself included, is that we would fully be down to actually come together and strike,” says Mariscal. Adds New York-based IATSE prop shopper Joanna Tillman (Motherless Brooklyn): “Now we have even more awareness of how powerful workers can be against these same employers.”

According to one IATSE union insider, the grievances that erupted during the union’s 2021 negotiation cycle still haven’t faded. “I’m telling you, these people are pissed,” this source says. “They’re still pissed. Two and a half years later.” But in some cases, those grievances also extend to how IATSE handled the negotiations. After the controversial 2021 deal passed, many crewmembers were vocal in their displeasure on social media, while a new group, the Caucus of Rank-and-File Entertainment Workers (CREW), emerged to attempt to create “a more democratic and uncompromising union,” per its website. The group — which did not directly answer THR’s queries about its size, though one participant in virtual meetings says they have been attended by hundreds — published a “demands report” for IATSE leadership this negotiations cycle that notes what attendees of several meetings have said they want in a new contract.

Tillman, a member of CREW, notes the dissonance of 2021 for members: In part energized by a renewed discussion around working conditions, over 98 percent of voting members authorized a strike, then IATSE ratified a deal that was rejected in the West Coast locals’ popular vote but passed by delegates. (The union operates with an electoral college-style system: Each local has a certain number of delegates, determined by its number of members. Delegates vote to ratify or not ratify, based on the consensus of their individual locals’ members.) “That created a lot of mistrust and bad feelings that we really want to repair,” she says. Miller maintains that IATSE has learned from 2021: “I think we’ve done a lot of things differently” this time, he says.

Union negotiators will also have to contend with the current production environment, which isn’t revving up as much as some crewmembers might have hoped post-strikes. By many accounts, the return to work since November 2023 has been excruciatingly slow. “Everyone I talk to says ‘hopefully soon.’ I think we’re all in the same boat of just waiting around,” says IATSE writers assistant Ali Golub, who lived with her parents during the strikes and has worked gigs outside of her core job — as a personal assistant, dog-sitter, house-sitter and, recently, as a coordinator for a lab for TV writers. Weekly permit volume for television and film in the L.A. area is down 23 percent from normal levels, even as FilmL.A. spokesperson Philip Sokoloski says that “there is new work coming in.” Noting that rebooting production takes time, he adds that “by the end of March, we should know what the new normal looks like, in terms of sustainable production.”

As a result, for some crewmembers, the hardship continues. MPTF president and CEO Bob Beitcher says that the charity is currently hearing more eviction stories than ever before, as well as more “severe and very complex” cases like medical conditions that haven’t been addressed and mental health issues.

Over the next few months, the industry may have a better sense of which way the wind is blowing. IATSE will likely be releasing top priorities for its main negotiations sometime after it begins bargaining for benefits with the Hollywood Basic Crafts on March 4, while the Teamsters will be publicizing classification-specific issues in the early spring — and member reaction to those priorities could show how on-board they are with this year’s fight. IATSE, for one, has promised that its negotiating committee will “regularly update membership” with developments. The tone of those updates could suggest whether early bargaining has been productive or contentious.

Crewmembers who have weathered so much over the past few years will be paying close attention. “This is our livelihoods we’re talking about. The stakes are higher for us” than they are for the studios, argues Colli. “We’re in a position where we need to act in our own interests strongly now.”

This story first appeared in the Feb. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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