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They were among the hundreds of thousands of U.S. and Canadian film and television crew workers who were unemployed for up to 10 months because of strikes called by actors and writers, leaving a trail of evictions and family disintegration.
Crew members rallied to help one another and charities pitched in during the writers strike that began May 2 and ended in late September, and the actors strike that started in July. The actors reached a tentative agreement on Wednesday.
“The actors and writers are getting a lot of publicity but the crews are the collateral damage of the strikes,” said Lori Rubinstein, executive director of mental health charity Behind the Scenes.
Crew members lost health insurance and broke into retirement funds. They saw relationships collapse and became isolated and depressed as, month after month, they went without pay and lost the rush of 70-hour work weeks creating shows that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to union leaders, counselors and over a dozen crew members Reuters interviewed.
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Strikes are caused by management. If the studios bargained in good faith there would be no strike. The studios could have agreed to the workers demands during initial negotiations, but instead they chose to put people out by dragging their feet for 10 months.
Every strike can be averted by bargaining in good faith, and making reasonable concessions in a timely fashion.
They’re not collateral damage of the strikers, they’re collateral of the same executives that dragged their assets thinking they would win.
The article was written by Andrew Hay, a Reuters journalist and a likely NewsGuild member. It’s a legitimate question as to why he chose to frame the issue as the fault of strikers and not their intransigent bosses.
The quote is from Lori Rubenstein, executive director of a charity for film crew mental health support. It’s a legitimate question as to why she believes that the people her charity serves don’t have the unqualified right to seek better treatment at work by striking.
Sounds like they need a stronger union.
The Directors Guild of America wasn’t on strike.
Neither was the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
Maybe they should have been, in solidarity. And use their strike funds to pay bills.
And yet these unions aren’t going to blame strikers for the strike. Framing it as collateral damage from the strike as Reuters has chosen to do is explicit union busting.
Okay? I’m not sure what that has to do with what I said.
Because Joe Bufalino, a first assistant director who committed suicide, was in the Directors Guild of America.
And the unhoused Toronto production assistant who was taken in by location manager are both in the International Alliance of Stage and Theatrical Employees.
How is that the fault of the strikers?
I never said it was.
You said “they” needed a stronger union, and I took that as you referencing the crew members who were affected but not part of the SAG-AFTRA union.
Gee maybe they shouldn’t be siloed off in their own unions when they all work in the same workplace.
Oh look the studios are trying to make the actors and writers into the bad guys again.
The crews often are. I don’t understand why they don’t have a union with reciprocal support agreements. I rememeber during the last strike the late night shows made agreements with the WGA so that they could bring their shows back if they performed no written material. That way the rest of the crews could get paid (and the actors weren’t on strike so there was stuff to promote). It was either Colbert or Conan that literally filled time by spinning their wedding ring on their desk, just because they could pay people to film it.
Conan handled the writers strike and this very issue so magnificently. We got Jordan Schlansky because of lack of content during the strike and he continued to pay idled employees personally out of his own pocket so that no one would lose a paycheck and no one felt pressured to “scab” to survive. A comedic master and a class act.
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