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

Whereas there are some uniquely Hollywood points on the core of the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America strikes, they’re in some ways a mirrored image of broader financial points within the U.S.

In a wide-ranging dialog concerning the strikes and the latest highlight on C-suite pay in Hollywood, Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and co-founder of Inequality Media and the Financial Coverage Institute, defined how the rise of monopolies and relative disappearance of unions has created market circumstances primed to boost financial disparity.

“The actual energy with regard to the leisure trade is in Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta,” Reich explains. “These big expertise corporations are shifting into the leisure area at a really speedy clip. The corporations I simply talked about have a complete capitalization of over $8 trillion. To place that in context, $8 trillion is greater than all the nationwide merchandise of each nation on the earth, besides the US and China. These are gigantic leviathans. That’s the place the ability is.”

Even because the WGA and Alliance of Movement Image and Tv Producers, which bargains on behalf of studios, appear poised to go again to the negotiating desk simply following the a hundredth day of the writers strike, many in Hollywood concern a decision continues to be months away. (Or, as one trade rep put it, the “optimistic” view is the strikes ending in November.)

“In the event you actually need to perceive how the deck is stacked, or the sport is rigged, all of it stems from these energy setters,” Reich says, including that doesn’t imply the mixed forces of SAG-AFTRA and WGA received’t be capable to make appreciable good points. “There will likely be contracts that come out of this that would conceivably alter how the winnings are break up, however it’s not going to be straightforward.”

Reich spoke with The Hollywood Reporter concerning the underlying financial elements and market forces impacting the leisure trade and the nation at giant.

How a lot of that is concerning the notion of significance [of the writers and actors and others who are creating content for these companies] and the way efficient are labor actions, and strikes, in shifting that notion?

We’ve seen an enormous change within the face of American labor over the previous 40, 50 years. Within the Nineteen Fifties over a 3rd of all staff in the US within the non-public sector have been unionized. That is big. Meaning even staff that aren’t unionized get the advantages of each union contract as a result of their employers are afraid that in the event that they don’t do the identical factor as all people else they’re going to be unionized subsequent.

At this time it’s 6 p.c. We’re down to six p.c of the employees within the non-public sector unionized, which mainly means nearly no energy in any respect. In truth, loads of younger individuals right this moment don’t even bear in mind unions. They see previous films, Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, or perhaps they hear from their grandparents about unions. However the union motion for lots of younger individuals shouldn’t be a dwelling, respiratory factor.

What we’re seeing, nevertheless, this 12 months is slightly little bit of a revival of union considering and union activism. The baristas in Starbucks, for instance. It seems just like the Teamsters simply bought an important contract with UPS. No person predicted it. The UAW is now making noises suggesting that when its contract is over with the massive three automakers there could also be a strike. Academics over the past couple of years have gone on wildcat strikes. We’re seeing one thing that used be fairly frequent in the US and, once more, with actors and with writers.

[The SAG and WGA strike] in 1960 was an enormous deal. It modified the way in which Hollywood operated, no less than for a time. So, what has been the case when it comes to energy migrating upward to the very high, to those large monopolies, shouldn’t be essentially at all times going to be the case. I believe individuals get fed up. They get indignant. They get resentful. The general public is now very pro-union although they don’t actually know a lot about unions, the younger individuals included. I believe there’s loads of sympathy out within the hinterland to the actors and the writers and never very a lot sympathy to the massive studios and the big tech corporations behind them.

How do you see this enjoying out?

I fear for the actors and the writers and the way little they’ve when it comes to their cushions going ahead. I hope that individuals who care concerning the writers and the actors will contribute to the striker funds and that lots of people who in any other case are very economically weak can get by this. It could possibly be a protracted strike. There’s loads of anger on either side, from what I hear. So long as no person’s being employed, no less than actors and writers, the studios are raking it in much more. They don’t should pay writers and actors. Synthetic intelligence looms on the horizon. That’s even scarier — and needs to be — to lots of people who’re creatives and who’re content material producers. That’s why the stakes are even increased this time round.

What are the broader implications right here?

General, I believe it’s necessary to grasp that this isn’t merely Hollywood. This isn’t only a bunch of writers and actors in opposition to some studios. That is all the American economic system and the path we’re getting in. That is gigantic high-tech corporations which can be monopolizing like mad, together with the leisure trade, together with streaming movies and video games and media platforms. They’re mining shopper information and getting even bigger. There’s gotta be adjustments within the regulation. We haven’t talked about this very a lot, however the purpose that these big corporations can change into monopolies, the explanation that these monopolies can bestow these extraordinary salaries and pay packages on choose CEOs and executives total, the explanation we see a construction of trade like this, shouldn’t be due to some essential market within the sky. Markets don’t exist in nature. That is due to how legal guidelines and guidelines have structured the market and made it very straightforward to monopolize and made it onerous to unionize, and made it troublesome for lots of content material suppliers to do effectively. So, hopefully out of all of it will come some change within the regulation that balances out what’s now a really distorted system that provides increasingly more energy to the monopolies and fewer and fewer energy to people.

What would that change within the regulation seem like?

Most certainly it will make it way more troublesome for the most important gamers — and, once more, I’m speaking largely about Amazon and Apple and Alphabet and Microsoft and Meta and Netflix and among the different gigantic gamers — to change into as giant as and as highly effective as they’re. It might make it not possible for Microsoft, for instance, to purchase Activision Blizzard. It might arrange guardrails. By the identical token, it will present some guidelines, within the case of actors and writers, with regard to residuals over streaming. It might give them extra energy on the bargaining desk. It might make it simpler for them to achieve extra members, for instance, and due to this fact [increase] their bargaining energy.

Is there the rest we haven’t talked about that you simply suppose is particularly necessary for individuals to bear in mind?

We’re in an economic system that carefully resembles the Gilded Age of the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century. We’re within the Second Gilded Age. The issue with that first Gilded Age — as big fortunes have been concentrated within the palms of some — was twofold. Primary, these fortunes corrupted democracy, main individuals like U.S. Supreme Courtroom Justice Louis Brandeis to say, “We are able to have democracy on this nation or we will have nice wealth concentrated within the palms of the few, however we will’t have each.” The second drawback is that when you could have a lot wealth within the palms of a only a few individuals, many of the relaxation don’t come up with the money for to purchase all the products and companies that the economic system can produce. That may result in issues like depressions, therefore the Nice Despair that began in 1929. So, we will’t merely sit again and assume that is regular or essential or inevitable.