Since the Association of Motion Picture Producers (AMPP) and International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) signed the first Hollywood studio basic agreement (SBA) in 1926, Hollywood unions have played protagonist, antagonist, and supporting roles in the drama crafted by the studios that have driven change through adoption of new technologies and pivots to new modes of distribution. The first three decades of the Hollywood unions were particularly contentious, but since the 1950s, the Hollywood unions and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have usually reached an agreement that allows everyone to profit from the industry’s lucrative films and television shows before a walkout becomes necessary.
Above the line Hollywood unions (specifically the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG, now SAG-AFTRA), which consist of the workers often assumed to have the most creative control, have been the most-likely-to-strike. The WGA and SAG formed to protect writers and actors from Depression-era salary cuts and combat the greed of studio heads. These origins reveal an important point about these two unions since their origins in the 1930s: their goals have been to seek improved remuneration, radical disruption to worker-studio relations.
The negotiation cycle for the writers, directors, and actors increases the likelihood of simultaneous strikes, but there have only been two instances of dual strikes: 1960 and 2023. In both cases the unions sought groundbreaking changes to residuals (or royalties), which was at least partially achieved, union member reactions to the contract terms were mixed. Using a comparative approach, I look at what caused the WGA and SAG/SAG-AFTRA to walk out of their negotiations with the AMPTP. How does the particular nature of media collaboration hinder or enable labor solidarity? Does the nature of film and television production produce any unique forms of studio-labor relationships? Finally, how did the strikes and contracts resulting from these walkouts reflect changes in relations between labor and studio management?