Hollywood Strike Takes Increasing Economic Toll on Workers: ‘I Burned Through My IRA’

Gene Maddaus
·5 min read
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For the past five months, it’s been “eerily quiet” at Steiner Studios, a sprawling complex of soundstages in Brooklyn.

When the Writers Guild of America ended its strike on Sept. 27, Doug Steiner, the chairman of the company, was hoping production would rebound. But on Oct. 11, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers suspended talks with SAG-AFTRA, meaning there is still no end in sight for the actors strike. The sides held five bargaining sessions this month, but management surprised the union with a late-night announcement that they were too far apart to stay at the table.

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“I’m more stressed out than ever given the pause in the SAG negotiations,” Steiner tells Variety. “We’re just hoping it ends sooner rather than later. The amount of collateral damage is humongous.”

The strikes have cost the national economy about $6 billion, according to an estimate from Kevin Klowden, the chief global strategist of the Milken Institute. In an interview, Klowden says the figure includes losses in wages as well as the ripple effect on ancillary businesses like real estate and services.

“This is an ongoing significant issue in terms of loss of spending,” Klowden says. “People don’t buy houses. They don’t make capital purchases. There’s massive uncertainty.”

Below-the-line workers represent the bulk of Hollywood employment, and thus have taken the brunt of the strike. Workers are primarily struggling to make rent and car payments, says Bob Beitcher, president and CEO of the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which has given out more than $3 million in relief grants.

The organization fields calls every day from crew members who need help making ends meet. Some are also leaving the industry, but they’re finding it hard to replace their income and have been forced to move out of state.

“The technical term for this would be a ‘hot mess,’” Beitcher says. “A lot of these people just don’t have other reliable sources of income.”

He has also heard stories of divorces and separations.

“Our social workers are talking to members who are living in their cars,” he says. “It’s just blowing up households.”

As of Oct. 9, more than 4,500 workers from below-the-line unions had applied for “hardship withdrawals” from their individual retirement accounts, totaling $68 million. Workers must pay state and federal early-withdrawal penalties, plus taxes, on that money, and cannot pay it back.

The union health funds have also lost several months’ worth of reserves. And some union members will fall behind on the hours they need to qualify for pension benefits.

“Our members will never make up what they lost — never,” says Steve Dayan, former secretary-treasurer of Teamsters Local 399. “They’re just going to have to work longer.”

Even though writers are now back to work, they too will have to dig out from an economic hole.

“I ran out of money by the end of the strike,” one showrunner tells Variety. “You build a nest egg in this silly town, and then events like this happen to take it away. I burned through my savings, and I burned through my IRA.”

The last major Hollywood strike, in 2007-08, cost the California economy $2.1 billion, according to a Milken Institute analysis.

Klowden bases the $6 billion estimate on that earlier study, factoring in the longer duration of the strike, inflation and the fact that production is now more dispersed around the country.

Jerry Nickelsburg, the director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, argues that it’s too soon to say how much economic damage has been done. He believes that some activity has merely been delayed.

“One cannot assess the economic impact of a strike until it is over with and the catch-up activity has been completed,” he says in an email.

A couple weeks ago, there was widespread optimism that the hardship would soon be over. Once the WGA got its deal, ending its 148-day strike, the hope was that it would pave the way for an agreement with SAG-AFTRA.

That optimism evaporated on Oct. 11, when the AMPTP pulled the plug on talks. The studio alliance has offered the actors a deal that is broadly similar to agreements reached with the WGA and the Directors Guild of America.

But SAG-AFTRA says it has unique concerns that aren’t addressed in the other unions’ deals. The main obstacle is a SAG-AFTRA demand for $500 million annually from streaming services, in the form of a 57-cent-per-subscriber fee.

The AMPTP has offered instead a version of the viewership-based bonus given to the WGA. That would cost the studios about $20 million a year — leaving a massive gap between the two proposals.

SAG-AFTRA is also seeking an 11% increase in basic minimums to keep pace with inflation, while the studios are offering 5% — the same as the WGA and DGA got.

Fran Drescher, the head of SAG-AFTRA, has said that it was “unfair” and “disrespectful” for the studios to walk away from the table. Studio sources, meanwhile, have said that Drescher used the bargaining time to make speeches about “changing the world” for actors, and that it was clear the union was not ready to make a deal.

Rebecca Metz, a veteran TV actor, says that actors’ hopes were high going into the latest round of bargaining.

“Obviously everyone is disappointed and frustrated that it sounds like they’re hung up on the same stuff the writers just resolved,” she says. “Hot labor summer should be over. The only reason it isn’t is the AMPTP is dragging their feet. That steels our resolve. We’re not going to buckle.”

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