Interview: Hollywood Teamster Boss Lindsay Dougherty

Meet the Writers Strike’s Secret Weapon

A Vanity Fair interview with Lindsay Dougherty, a Teamster boss who heads up Los Angeles’s Local 399 and is director of the Teamsters Motion Picture Division. Here are some excerpts.

Vanity Fair: Talking to industry people for a recent story, I noticed class friction in Hollywood. Writers complain that actors get better pay and privilege, while grips and editors and truckers wonder what the hell writers are complaining about. Does that make it hard to unite people?

Lindsay Dougherty: I think the companies have done a really good job at dividing us. We hear it now, like, The writers aren’t gonna support you! But we are really communicating to our members the importance of sticking together and how we all collectively can help each other. Because we all have strengths and weaknesses. Our strength is on the ground. We are the hammer to their pencil. Local 399 has 6,500 members, but the political power and the strike funds and the things that the Teamsters come along with is important.

Teamster trucks are refusing to cross WGA picket lines, and that has waylaid a lot of productions. Do you get reports when your members don’t cross a picket line?

The picket line language that we have in the majority of our Teamster contracts gives us the ability to not cross and not be disciplined or terminated based on that. Teamsters don’t cross picket lines — that’s very much been in our DNA. But that’s been a difficult thing to manage. Because they’re the ones that are shutting it down, essentially, the drivers feel the pressure. We are very mindful of that — we want to make sure that they feel comfortable, that they’re not being retaliated against, and that they understand what they’re doing is noble, honorable, and, really, for the greater good for this industry. We are fighting for the livelihoods of all of our members, and for the future viability of their jobs.

Do your members have overlapping concerns with the WGA?

[The writers] have the AI battle, and we have autonomous vehicles, which is very much a part of this conversation. The studios and these companies squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. And theres also this very bad habit of [saying]: “Just work for free. If you want this job, do this for me.” Our casting directors are doing [unpaid] things to hone their skills on a constant basis, like going to theater. They have experience and knowledge that makes them a great casting director, and then to have a company not want to compensate them for that is just ridiculous. And on productions, we have members that are working 16 hours a day, 18 hours a day, 20. It’s really a conversation that needs to be had, because this isn’t the way that they need to do business. They’re doing it simply because it’s cheaper. And they’re doing it on the backs of our members.

Here is a statement from Dougherty:

For the writers strike to succeed, we need solidarity across the board: DGA, SAG, and Teamsters among them.

For the rest of the Vanity Fair interview and more background on Lindsay Dougherty, go here.

Twitter: @LindsayD399

For the latest updates on the strike and news resources, go here.