Are you losing income due to the actor strike?

[IamfeelingFrustrated]

If I wrong - can someone please correct me. But my understanding is the actors could have striked for example two days a week - keeping productions (and other associated businesses) operational for three days a week until they reached an agreement. But instead they have decided to go on a full strike and so now all the other professions related to the film industry are suddenly losing their jobs as production companies stand these other film related professions down. It’s very common in the industry to be on contracts associated with each film - the film stops working completely so the other industries stop working completely. By this I mean camera technicians, make up and hair artists, runners etc etc.
IABU - I think it’s ok for the actors to go on a full strike and the fact other related professions are losing their jobs is a necessary consequence.
IANBU - sure the actors can protest and strike but could have chosen an option where the other professions working on their set did not lose their jobs as a consequence.

If the actors don’t strike effectively to support the lower paid actors and the writers then there will be no decent film or TV industry in a few years time.

You do understand that the purpose of industrial action is not to mildly inconvenience?

Perhaps those others need to look at the issues here. For example, who needs construction workers for sites if AI can create the sites for nothing? But regardless - it is a fundamental right to withdraw your labour. End of.

And it's a fundamental right of employers to have a lock-out. End of.

yes it’s a fundamental right to withdraw labour…but not ‘end of’… because it’s also a fundamental right for freedom of expression and it does need to be said the way actors are striking are causing people in associated industries to lose their income immediately ie this week. People keep saying if AI comes in they will lose their jobs then…yes maybe but it would be a gradual process and these associated industries will have time to create other income streams. I am not against the principal of the actors striking or why they are striking - I just think little thought has gone into how to get what they want without maybe putting other people in the industry in a position of immediately losing their jobs as the productions are shutting down projects.

I'm not aiming to denigrate the female players, as the French video does show fantastic skills, but people who watch a lot of football would immediately spot "something wrong" with the French video, but they might initially struggle to identify exactly what it is. The producer's mistake was to superimpose images of players like Mbappe and Griezmann on the women's action, and these players are amongst the world's greatest. In the clip, their play looks somewhat slow, stilted and clumsy compared to their normal levels. I think it would have totally worked it if they had used average male players from the French squad, rather than their world class superstars.

but your comment about actors not being needed? Although I can’t see that ever happening as I think there is always going to be a market for human connection…. and so what if actors aren’t needed? How many professions over the centuries have and come and gone because the market demanded something else? The basic principle of business is demand = supply. If humankind wants to see actors then actors will always be in demand.

The big name actors will always be there, but what about the bit parts and extras?

I mean this will be true for many parents who lost pay because they couldn’t work when their kid’s teacher was on strike, many of whom will earn less than you.

This is the reality of striking, it’s meant to hurt and it will always involve hurting people beyond the target, it’s impossible to avoid if the strike is meaningful.

However, the teachers have never just decided to stop working completely until they got what they wanted. You really can’t compare teachers striking adhocally and the loss of parent pay on these days to the full and indefinite actors strike that is resulting in some parents immediately losing their full income indefinitely.
If anything this supports my point - if the teachers can strike adhocally so they don’t cause full disruption to their students and parents - why can’t actors think about how they can strike and get what they want without causing supporting industries to suddenly have zero income.

@MissTrip82 i don’t think it’s the same. Like when tube/ train drivers strike, commuters and parents have the option of making alternative arrangements even if these arrangements are inconvenient.
In many cases, employers and most of the public are sympathetic to the people who are inconvenienced by the strikes and try to make allowances (maybe someone has to start work later or work from home on these days). There are some employers who are not sympathetic but the majority of good people would agree that these employers are unreasonable.

The actors strike means that the majority of the people working on the same production (and who have not decided or even been consulted on the strike) suddenly find themselves with no income, for an unknown amount of time. That means no money coming in, for the foreseeable future. I think it’s very different.

Maybe people don’t understand that most of these people working on any production are self-employed.
It isn’t the case of people on the payroll continuing to get paid. These people cannot work if the production is shut down, and so cannot invoice for their work, and therefore have no income.

You really don't get it, do you? It is up to the people taking industrial action to decide what their action will comprise of, and how much it inconveniences other people is not remotely a factor - it is about winning.

Teachers don't call all out strikes because their unions know that they would lose the ballots - there are very few groups that would support all out strike because it means that their own members will lose all their pay too. It takes desperation to call an all out strike - you are so concerned about the loss of all their pay for others, but the actors (and the writers) are also losing all their pay. Nobody makes that choice lightly.

Strikes are about winning, and you go for winning or you don't go out at all. Half-hearted measures don't work - in fact you could argue that the "occasional strike days" strategy is why the government find it so easy to ignore them - they are only mildly inconvenienced, and a bunch of occasionally pissed off parents are easy to manage.

You also haven't factored in that this action is taking place in the USA, where labour laws and attitudes are very different, employment rights are poor and working conditions far, far worse than people in other developed nations expect to see. Comparing people taking indistrial action in the USA - where such measures are actually quite uncommon - to industrial action in the UK is like comparing apples and oranges.

Personally, I think that conflating pay and AI is actually a tactical error, because I suspect that the latter is unwinnable and so requires a more nuanced approach. Technology has never been stopped by industrial action - the Luddites proved that. And I also think that an all out indefinite strike could push employers in the opposite direction, and into looking at ways to reduce reliance on actors. I would have gone after pay and conditions, which are more winnable, and look at other strategies to manage AI. Any undertakings the employers might give on AI probably won't be worth the paper they are written on. But it isn't up to me.

@whataweirdo absolutely agree. These strikes aren't really inconveniencing the public are they? We have enough to watch nowadays that if nothing new gets made for a while, then really, does it actually matter. Even the streaming companies have enough material. These strikes should have consulted the thousands of people also involved in the film industry, they have been given no consideration at all and yes they are self employed.

You do all know that most US actors are mostly also self-employed? So not clear what relevance the employment status of other production members have has to anything.

Well I suppose the relevance is that the actors union chose to strike. The surrounding workers don’t have that choice (whether they support the strike or not). Like if the train drivers, for example, chose to strike then every job within the train station -cleaners/shops/cafes etc- all had to shut indefinitely as wellwithout pay on one days notice.