Chris Pizzello/AP Photo
At the union offices of IATSE Local 80 in Burbank, California
It’s a shame that the film and television industry, which is all about making stories that connect us at our most fundamentally human level, routinely dehumanizes its workers. As many have said before, we’re not saving lives or curing cancer—we’re making a TV show. Yet it’s our lives that need saving now.
Since May, my union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has been at the bargaining table negotiating for seemingly basic human needs, like rest and meal breaks. The major studios, represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), want to move to rolling breaks, meaning that there is no set time for a break. Instead, workers will take breaks “when it’s convenient.”
The executives know that this will result in many departments not breaking at all. During a 12-hour-plus workday, thousands of workers will not have time to go to the bathroom or eat, let alone call a loved one or make a doctor’s appointment. Because of COVID, food is no longer allowed on set, so certain departments would just have to go without, all day, every day.
The AMPTP is made up of some of the richest companies in the world, like Amazon, Apple, Disney, and Netflix.
The issue of meal breaks isn’t that some days a production might need to work through lunch, it’s that some productions are already scheduling their shoots so that, by design, they never take a break.
Another human need is rest. It seems absurd to be discussing this in 2021, but currently it’s not unusual for “below the line” workers to work 16-, 18-, 22-, or even 24-hour days and then return to work just a few hours later. Back in 1898, a worker employed at a sweatshop described making coats: “They say a day has 24 hours. That’s a bluff. A day has 12 coats.” Just as it was for the coat maker, in Hollywood, a day is only done when the work is finished.
I work in television most often as a script coordinator, a job most akin to a copywriter that requires intense attention to detail, technical and written skills, and an intimate understanding of how television production works. Once, a former employer asked me to process four television scripts in one day. Each new script takes me four to six hours to proof, format, and track for any continuity issues. I was given all four at once; that’s 16 to 24 hours of straight work. This happened when we were not in production. There was no crew waiting at the ready for these drafts.
Sometime that night, after 12 hours of staring at a computer screen, I hit a wall. I sat on my kitchen floor and cried, knowing that I would have to pick myself up to finish the job. And I did.
I was paid $18 per hour for my work, far below a living wage in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, the studio routinely asked me to lie on my time card and give them a “pass” on my overtime hours.
I tell you this not because I need sympathy, but because I want you to know why so many workers in Hollywood are so damn tired. The studios are burning us out. It doesn’t matter if a worker is on the set, in postproduction, or in the writers’ room. Studios burn people out, not because they need to, but because they can.
The cost of burnout falls on the workers. Employees pay the price in missed birthdays, failed marriages, and fatal car crashes. The human cost is staggering, but the AMPTP is made up of some of the richest companies in the world, like Amazon, Apple, Disney, and Netflix. We are asking them to pay their fair share.
I voted “yes” to give IATSE President Matthew Loeb the authorization to call a strike for 60,000 workers because we need to make it inconvenient and costly for studios to plan poorly and inhumanely. This would be the largest strike in the United States, in any industry, since the General Motors strike in 2007, and the largest entertainment strike since 1945.
In the end, it took me over 24 hours of solid work to finish processing those four scripts. I would do it all over again, as long as I got breaks and proper rest. Working in the writers’ office is my dream. But I’m prepared to walk away, along with thousands of my fellow workers, if the AMPTP fails to recognize that as much as we love our jobs, we’re human beings who need proper rest and meals.
