Jennifer Porst

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract: Both the film industry and antitrust law in the U.S. got their starts in the 1890s. Their parallel histories illustrate their significant mutual influence, and highlight the influence of antitrust on labor. In the mid-twentieth century, two antitrust cases against the Hollywood studios fundamentally changed the industry and the conditions of employment for its labor force. The “Classical Hollywood” period (1930s-1940s), was dominated by eight vertically integrated studios who controlled the production, distribution, and exhibition of the majority of films in the U.S. The courts found those studios guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, and as a remedy, in the 1950s, the studios divested large portions of their theater holdings. Around that time, the studios also fended off an antitrust suit alleging they had conspired to destroy the competition of the nascent television business by withholding their films from broadcasters. Although the studios prevailed, the threat of a guilty verdict led them to open their film libraries to television. In each of those cases, the outcomes altered the ways that laborers contracted with producer employers, the conditions of employment, and the types of work available. Significantly, the effect of antitrust enforcement accelerated the transformation of Hollywood to a “gig” economy where laborers worked on a project by project basis rather than entering long-term contracts with studios. Those changing conditions increased the need for stronger unions and guilds, but the differences between film and television production flows and jobs therein created unique challenges in terms of unions supporting all laborers. Those tensions have increased in the decades since, and came into high relief during the labor strikes in 2022. In these cases, how has antitrust law impacted labor, and in what ways might that inform how those who interpret and enforce antitrust law take labor into account?