Robert Reich on the Hollywood Strikes, Tech “Leviathans” and a Second Gilded Age

“The real power with regard to the entertainment industry is in Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta.”

From The Hollywood Reporter:

While there are some uniquely Hollywood issues at the core of the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes, they’re in many ways a reflection of broader economic issues in the U.S.

In a wide-ranging conversation about the strikes and the recent spotlight on C-suite pay in Hollywood, Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and co-founder of Inequality Media and the Economic Policy Institute, explained how the rise of monopolies and relative disappearance of unions has created market conditions primed to enhance economic disparity.

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How do you see this playing out?

I worry for the actors and the writers and how little they have in terms of their cushions going forward. I hope that people who care about the writers and the actors will contribute to the striker funds and that a lot of people who otherwise are very economically vulnerable can get through this. It could be a prolonged strike. There’s a lot of anger on both sides, from what I hear. As long as nobody’s being employed, at least actors and writers, the studios are raking it in even more. They don’t have to pay writers and actors. Artificial intelligence looms on the horizon. That is even scarier — and should be — to a lot of people who are creatives and who are content producers. That’s why the stakes are even higher this time around.

What are the broader implications here?

Overall, I think it’s important to understand that this is not simply Hollywood. This is not just a bunch of writers and actors against some studios. This is the entire American economy and the direction we are going in. This is gigantic high-tech firms that are monopolizing like mad, including the entertainment industry, including streaming videos and games and media platforms. They are mining consumer data and getting even larger. There’s gotta be changes in the law. We haven’t talked about this very much, but the reason that these giant firms can become monopolies, the reason that these monopolies can bestow these extraordinary salaries and pay packages on select CEOs and executives overall, the reason we see a structure of industry like this, is not because of some necessary market in the sky. Markets don’t exist in nature. This is because of how laws and rules have structured the market and made it very easy to monopolize and made it hard to unionize, and made it difficult for a lot of content providers to do well. So, hopefully out of all of this will come some change in the law that balances out what is now a very distorted system that gives more and more power to the monopolies and less and less power to individuals.

The approval ratings in favor of labor unions in the United States has reached its highest level since 1965.

This echoes Reich’s comments that workers across the board are fed up with the current system. The so-called “gig economy” is set up against the best interests of workers forcing them to scramble to make ends meet. Meanwhile, corporations reap record windfall profits.

In Hollywood, the film and TV system is broken.

The “streamer” approach to the process of acquiring, developing, producing, and distributing movies and television has broken a system that worked for six decades. Workers have had to strike during that time to force corrections to employees benefits, but it was possible for the companies to make profits and people like writers and actors to make decent, sustainable livings.

Not now. Hence, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike.

As Robert Reich says in the interview, “We can’t simply sit back and assume this is normal or necessary or inevitable.”

For the rest of The Hollywood Reporter article, go here.

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

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