The Sunday Story: Year of the Union
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Am I shara? go. And this is a sunday story. This year, workers have been asserting their power a big way.

What has to go? Massive labor strikes have rocked hollywood, the auto industry and major care institutions. There have also been smaller strikes at hotel, hospital, schools and threatened strikes by airline pilots, ups drivers. Why do we want IT is all the sign that many workers are fed up, some of us about money, but that's not all that's going on.

That's what's been about the day. One is get a fair reamer for our membership. We don't want to be our own strike. We going to do everything going to do to get IT. So let's get a up.

everybody joining us to talk about this year of the union and was been driving all this discontent our M P R. As labor and workplace correspondent Andrea shoe and epr culture correspondent man delete debark.

Welcome to you both. Thank you.

Hi sure. And and so is not just my imagination, Andrea, like there were a lot of strikes this year.

right? IT was not your we have seen more than half a million workers go on strike this year. That's close to three times as many people striking as we saw last year.

I talked to john y. Kalis about this. He runs cornels labor action tracker, and he crushed those numbers.

He told me the last time we saw this many workers striking was twenty, eighteen and twenty nine. When teachers went on strike in arizona, kentucky, in oklahoma and other states, you, those were government workers. What's different .

about this year is these strikes were really rooted in the private sector.

And what's interesting about that is that companies are where unions have traditionally been the weakest. But this year, we've seen strikes all over the private sector in all kinds of industries.

So we're going to hear um some details from a couple of those industries in a minute. But first I want to ask like why now like why are people so fed up this year?

Well, IT was a combination of things. And for many of these union workers, this was the first contract negotiations since the pandemic. And I used that, the pendel c change.

So much for workers. You know, that was this unprecedented disruption. You had mass layoffs, lowed by severe labor shortages, and lots of people rethinking their jobs and their own value. You know, you had people in jobs that had to be done in person, like manufacturing and health care and retail.

They started thinking to themselves, if i'm truly essential, if I risked my life going to work so that others could stay home, don't I deserve to be paid more? So, you know, airline pilots, U. P.

S. Drivers, health care workers, other workers, this was the first opportunity. Many of them had to ask for changes to their pay and benefits. And don't forget, this was happening at a time when people were experiencing steep inflation. So even if you've gotta raise, you felt like you were fallowing behind, like you were actually .

getting a pay cut. Your dollar isn't stretching as far, which would make you get pretty set up, I could imagine.

Yeah and you know, all of this contributed to the kinds of demands that unions put forward this year. John y. Kellas mentioned to me that back in the one thousand nine hundred and seventy, strikes were far more common.

But they were also often defensive. They were about trying to stop companies from offshoring jobs are getting rid of their costly benefits. But this year, strikes were not that .

these strikes are certainly had defensive. I mean, workers are really fighting to secure higher pay, to secure Better staffing. These are very much offence of strikes.

And that also been driven by the fact that many of these companies sell. Their profits soar in the pandemic. So workers are feeling like they deserve a bigger share of the pie.

But this wasn't just happening and in factories or or or warehouses, right? Mandy, like we saw this over in your neck of the words.

yeah, we did. We saw hollywood workers fed up to when screen writers and actors and other performers went on strike. There was a lot of resentment directed not just at this old legacy movie studios, but even more at the big streaming companies like netflix and amazon.

And in many ways, those have taken over the film and T, V business. And those strikes stretched out more than six months. I went to so many picket lines where met strikers like actors Christian mclagan and Jordan hall.

these CEO that are making millions and millions of dollars. And they think that we're being ridiculous asking to have fair wages. We're not asking for an obscene amount. We're just asking to be able to survive.

Writers and actors and directors and everyone in front behind the camera are the reason that movies are made. And so we deserve compensation. And so I hope this studio corporate grade had started to realize that. okay. So madness less dive into what happened in hollywood.

sir. Well, you first you have to understand that this year's dull strikes by writers and performers almost completely shut down the film. In TV industries, movie premiers were delayed and T, V shows went on hiatus.

There were no red carpets and even some independent productions. Almost no one in hollywood was working, not the actors, not the people writing the scripts, not the cruise or even the behind the scenes people. And the thing is, I isa a door strike in hollywood hasn't happened since nineteen sixty, when Ronald reagan was president.

But, but not of the U. S. right? That that was the eighties, right?

right? He was president of the screen actress killed. And here he is in hollywood, sixty three years ago, talking about that strike. I believe that in a spirit of goodwill and fair negotiations, we are now on our way to a settled of what has been a very .

regrettable and tragic affairs. Is a very different region .

on on that tape yeah much more old hollywood style, right? Well, you know, the strike was a big success and as a result, actors and writers got health care benefits, pensions and a compensation system of residuals when movies were aired on television. But, you know, we're in a really new reality with streaming.

Yeah, look, I have all the streaming services and and I have cable tvs. Very important to me, right? But IT has changed. Everything have IT like all of these different options. Yes.

right? That's so true.

yeah. But so you get in this moment, two thousand twenty three, what did the writers and actors? What and what do they get?

Well, let's start with the writer. Since they went on strike first in may, and besides wanting more pay, they complained about the way they asked to work for so many years. TV writers worked in writers rooms.

They hashed out story ideas and scripts together. But as the streaming companies cut costs, they've hire fewer writers for shows with fewer episodes the season. Now in so called many rooms, T, V writers are hired essentially as gig workers to work on parts of scripts that would be handed off to somebody else in production.

Writer said they could not go on sets or on location to rewrite or to make sure the storylines make sense. Know Howard rodman in his father had been A T. V. Writer in the thousand nine hundred and sixties, and he told me he was hired by one of the streamers earlier .

this year to work on a drama.

There was no room full of writing. There were just assignments that came in by text.

What other ways has the work changed for writers?

Well, the residuals, you know that the money writers get when their work gets rerun in the new streaming model. Those have shunk britain y nickles. She's a writer for the hit T. V show abbott elementary. SHE talked to me about getting paltry residuals in the mail.

You get a great novel of, like, all right, here we go, hopefully something goods in here. And then sometimes you just .

get a stack checks for seven things, I Helen exact. So how do you get so little money?

That's the question they had. So many writers I talk to in the picket lines told me very similar stories.

Okay, so then, so you have the writers going on a strike. But then, you know, the actions of people in front of the camera, the performers in sag attra, and they also go on strike.

yeah, exactly. Actors and dancers and stunt performers and voice over actors. They'd all been on the picket lines in solidarity with the writers. But then when their negotiations also broke down, they went on strike too.

And one of the main characters in their saga was frand rusher, the president of sag, after you might remember her from staring on the T. V. Show, the nani in the nineteen nineties. Well, friend just had her labor to this Normal ray moment when he called for the strike, and he gave the studios an impassion ad lib mouthful.

How they play poverty, that they're losing money left and right when giving hundreds of millions of dollars to their ceos. IT is disgusting. Shame on them. And he had .

quite a style, you know, during the contract talks, SHE brought in a small heart shape plush toy is something, a fan giver to the negotiating table for emotional support, or maybe a bargaining tactic. Here he is, an instagram.

I don't have to emulate male energy to lead. I can be exactly I am. I can lead with internet. I can live with wisdom. I can live with empathy. I can be me, and I can still rock a red lip OK OK friend, so shebeen come to play here OK so friend.

rusher style probably cut the big studio heads really off guard when they showed up to the bargaining tables themselves. And those CEO is began to feel the pressure of the strikes. Disney's bob igor got the actors and writers on strike really wild when he talked to about them on cnbc.

Level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to a set of chAllenges that these businesses already facing that is, quite Frankly, very disrupt that nothing really are.

They are not unrealistic. He sounds really dismissive of what workers are asking for. So did this attitude strike a nerve with some people?

Bet IT. Did I really angered a lot of people, but I, because we didn't really hear much from the studio heads, social media really fuel the writers and the actors, and that help them control the narrative. And you know, part of the story they tried to get out was that writers and actors are workers, not just leaving some lavish hollywood lifestyle. And that's what riders gill strike captain getting. Al lazarite told me he was one of the writers for the hit show bridge ton.

I think people had a perception of us before that we were all like comfortable wealth or not. The vast, vast majority of us are not. We have the same struggles.

Everyone else does, like, how do I pay my bills? Had a way, you know, get my kid through school. People are rooting for us.

People are rooting for us. Andrea, you covered the U. A, W. Auto strike, which began during the shutdown in hollywood. What were there any kinds of echoes or connections or overlap that you could see in their grievances with what melly .

talked about? Yeah, actually quite a few. You know, I spend some time in michigan and ohio, and I heard from auto workers who said, I am living paycheck to paycheck.

I'll introduce you to is a bett by SHE builds ford broncos in van, michigan. And her story is, like so many others you hear, her father and her uncle both worked at forward and enjoy these solid middle ass lives. But SHE, on the other hand, in a SHE, told me she's been working at four for almost three years and was still making just over twenty dollars hour.

I just had to break my list of my apartment because I couldn't afford IT like i'm not making a livable weight here. I have too many bills and i'm not even the worst of.

And I even said, you know, auto workers went to set the gold standard for the middle class for generations. If you are building cars for gm forder Crystal er, you made enough money to afford a nice home, a nice car, family vacations, even a cottage at the lake. I talk to charlie ballad. He's a long time economist at michigan, stay in its lancing.

and he put IT this way. There was a generation people who graduated from lencs sex in high school who almost literally walked across the street to promote ends wages and benefits.

And he's talking gold plated benefits that included pensions and health care .

for life I mean for a life, uh, that is hard to beat and that and very hard to fine yes. Yeah, exactly.

Hardly any americans have that. And by two thousand seven, the american audience industry was in financial straits. Partly because of those benefits, the big three could not compete with foreign auto makers like honda and toyota because their labor costs were so high.

So with the future of the american auto industry on the line, the U. A, W. Agreed back in two thousand and seven to the creation of a second tear of workers.

So new hires aren't half as much and didn't get pensions or retirement health care. And thanks in no small part of that cost cutting, the big three recovered. And in the last decade, you've become hugely profitable.

Here is a video that the U. A, W. Put out last summer featured their new president, shaan fae.

Collectively, the big three have made just under a quarter of a trillion dollars in profits in north amErica between two thousand thirteen and twenty twenty two. That's trillion with a team as in time to pay up, throwing with a tea, as in time to in tears.

So basically, were auto workers looking to go back to how things used .

to be precisely. Shanghae went into these talks with what he called audacious demands, you know, forty percent and raises, plus cost of living adjustments, also the return of those pensions and health care for retirees. He acknowledged it's more than the U.

A. W. Had ever asked for at once. But he also said, this is what's needed to make up for the concessions that we've made over the last decade plus.

And he said, you know, otti workers work hard. And on that now, he even called for a thirty two hour work week for forty hours of pay. I talked to a bunch of workers about that had early on, I reached Jerry home and he built chips in toledo.

ohio. Know I would not have the I don't think the company is going to go for that because they they take Green.

And I heard that from you know quite a few workers.

When we come back, we hear about what those demands LED to. What happens to democracy when one political party has near complete power? That's the question at the heart of supermajority.

The series the new yorker just named one of the ten best podcast of twenty twenty four. Listen and hear what all the hype is about. IT sees a nineteen of N P R S embedded podcast.

There are celebrity interview shows and then there's wild card. It's a podcast from in P. R, that the new york times just named as one of the ten best of twenty twenty four. It's hosted by me.

Rhee Martin, I ask, guessed like isar ay and bowen yang, revealing questions like what's a place you consider sacred? Has ambition ever let you restrain and i'm telling you IT is such a good time. Listen to wild card wherever you get your podcast.

I'm just four twenty twenty four almost over but before it's gone, come laugh with us at the best stand up comedies. The year on both side will hear from tig natal, kao canada, Kimberly Clark, Lorry, kill Martin and many, many more. You might even hear your next favorite and stand up that's on bolli for maximum fund at work and then pr.

We're back with a Sandy's story talking to epr. Correspondents may delete the uber co. And Andrew, a shoe about the big year for unions and workers.

Andrea, you just told us about the audacious demands the U. A, W. Put forward, but auto workers weren't the only ones with such lofty goals, right?

That's right. We saw workers in all kinds of industries discover that they had a lot of leverage. We saw pilots at the major airlines threatened to disrupt summer travel.

They ended up securing forty percent rises over the life of their contracts. We saw ups drivers threatening to bring packaged delivery to a still nationwide. They ended up with the most lucrative contracts in ups history with some part time is getting raises of fifty five percent.

And so, you know, I know when the negotiations that the big three began, IT wasn't surprising to hear that auto workers were going for something historic. C, I think what was surprising was how IT played out. Shan fae, the way to be president, he started hosting these facebook lives attended by tens of thousands of people.

IT became this platform for reaching auto workers, but also for reaching the general public. And shan faye is no hollywood act or he's no friend rusher, but he wasn't shy with the theatrics. Let's listen to him talking about one of the early proposals that atlantis, formally known as .

chrysler, had put on the table stances. Proposals are slap in the face there, an insult to our member's hard work over the last four years. So I tell what I want to do with with their proposal. I want to file IT in its proper place, because that's where I belong. Gs, not trash, because that's what IT is.

So, I mean, he thought IT in the .

trash in a train. The bin, yeah. That became a big know. He kept calling the proposals from the big three garbage, basically.

So what did the other companies say in response?

Well, at the store, their public response at least, was pretty much know. Are you nuts? Here's what tim fery, the CEO ford, said on c nbc back in september. There's no way we can be sustainable. The company you want us .

to choose .

bank pacy over supporting our workers. But you know, under pressure from the six week strike, the auto companies ended up putting a lot more on the table. Ford started out with offers of nine percent raises, and in the end, all three of the big three settled on twenty five percent raises, plus cost of living allowances. And that's more in wage games than audit workers had seen in the past twenty two years combined.

So I mean, they didn't get everything, but they got some things right.

Sounds like IT yeah many of them say they did get back to the kinds of wages audit workers used to make. You know they also secure the bigger contributions to four one k retirement accounts and the right to strike over plant closures, which the union had never had before. But you're writes they did not get pensions. They did not get retirement health care back. The companies did not bend on those .

IT is still sounds like IT was a pretty big window for the auto workers, right?

Yeah, I think most auto workers, not all, but most, felt IT was a win after years and years of concessions and my dead.

how did the hollywood ood writers and actors fare in the end?

Well, in the deal that they finally got, union writers will now get residuals based on the number of views a show gets and bonuses for working on hitches. And that is really unprecedented. The streaming companies have been so reluctant to give up their viewing data, and IT was a Cliff hanger for a while for the performers. But in their new contract, they got wage increases, streaming bonuses and some protections against the use of artificial .

intelligence, OK, social intelligence. A I um that all you know anyone wants to talk about these days like, so what are writers and actors worried about when he comes to A I when you know .

the technology of A I has developed so quickly in so many in hollywood feel it's an existential threat. The writers worry about their scripts in their screen plays getting replaced by ChatGPT. Here's one TV rider I met outside universal studios, link to shell. SHE was worried studios will hire fewer writers and use them to just doctor up. Whatever the machines come up with were .

coming back fighting so that alex is and and what that aren't writing our stories. We're not here to rewrite a machine. We're not against the use, you know if if we can find a way to be reasonable, but they cannot be the genesis of any creation. We create these worlds.

Yeah, it's not just the written world. Actors are also really freaked out about being replaced or replicated by sthetic, as generated by A I. I spoke at length with just in bateman, the actress, writer and filmmaker.

And he has a degree in computer science. She's been sounding the alarm for months. You'll see every single person will be scanned.

It'll be like a word of fitting, which is very unsettling, that theyll be some sort of copy of you floating around. And, you know, this isn't just some sort of size. Fear of the future is already happening. I met background actors who told me theyve already been asked to be scanned so that, for instance, they could be cut and paste into big crowd scenes without having to hire more human actors. That sort of thing.

I I mean, you can see why halley wood might be interested in that to save money, but you can also see why if you're an extra that that that might not worked for you. Um so so what happened? Did actors and writers get the protections that they were seeking?

Well, you know, the contract that sag after ratified does say that performers need to give their informed consent and also to be compensated if they're replicated. But a lot of union members voted against IT, and I said the AI protections in the agreement don't nearly go far enough.

In fact, I spoke to one member of the negotiating team who said the contract is filled with A I loopholes, and Justine bateman SHE says IT will be up to every member to try to protect themselves. I recommend they both threat with your agent and your lawyer and understand what you're not protected over, and then put these things in your individual contracts. And so unlike the writers sgl t contract sag after contract doesn't spell out. The performances of human beings have to be done by humans. So as the A I, technology develops, any future contracts may have to get even more detailed in any kind of protections that they offer .

injured with their similar technology concerns. A in in the U A, W strike as well.

yeah. I mean, what kind of like A I in hollywood? There is this huge historic change happening in auto, whether people like IT or not, the transition from gas powered cars to electric vehicles.

Now that wasn't originally part of the official agenda in these last contract talks, but IT was on everybody's mind. The auto makers have warned this is going to be a really expensive transition. We need to reinvest our profits to make this happen and to be competitive with non union companies, you know, starting with tesla.

And workers, meanwhile, are fearing for their jobs. I talked jim Cooper on a picket line in toledo. He says he thinks all the time about his coworkers who build engines for the cheap wrangler.

A lot of those jobs would be got because I think at one point I saw a comparison where power train and a internal combustion in car was like a hundred and forty parts. And you can make an electric power train with seven, eight parts.

Not to mention there is this big question over whether jobs building evs and E V batteries will even be union jobs. That was not entirely resolved in these, but the union did make some headway, especially at gm, where existing battery workers were brought under the union contract. But there are still big questions hanging over the future just as there are in hollywood.

And so I mean IT does feel like this year with um all of these workers kind of rising up um I guess ah what we call that they were all rising up in solidarity yeah actually .

you know I do remove over the summer I went to a solidarity rally in downtown L A. And was called the union strike back. Hollywood writers and actors marched and chanted with nurses, public school teachers, hotel workers, janitors and so many other people. And during the rally, writers guild of american president, made of steam.

gave them all a pet talk. I think they misjudged our power. The back up we have from hollywood labor and L A.

labor. And by the way, when it's your turn, we will be there with you. I don't think the boss knew what they were up again when they failed to listen to us.

But they should look around. They should look at this crowd in this unity. And if they didn't know, well, now they know union.

Now, union forever. Let's go. Okay, that was twenty twenty three. What can we expect from the labor movement looking forward to twenty twenty four?

Well, I am definitely keeping an iron what the U A. W. Does now, you know, before the ink was even dry on those contracts that the big three Shawn fain had vowed to organize like never before at non union plans when .

we return to the bargaining table. And twenty and twenty eight IT won't just be with a big three, but with a big five or big six .

he's coming for. The big three is biggest rivals like test la hana toyota vokins wagon. But it's not going to be easy.

And already the U A W says some of these non union automakers are threatening and covers ing employees who are trying to get union campaigns going. And we've seen this player at new unions like at amazon and starbucks workers, their Randy y. spirted.

Organizing campaigns. They want their union elections. They got their unions certified. But the companies have spent millions and millions of dollars to fight back.

Their position is they don't want a union between them and their employees. And companies know labour laws are weak, there is little enforcement, so made a sea of legal battles. Collective bargaining at starbucks, at amazon installed. And none of these new unions has gotten any workplace to a first contract. So IT really remains an up pill climb.

And you know, in hollywood, visual effects workers and video game workers and animators and others join unions for the first time this year. Other behind the scenes workers are represented by ioc, the international alliance of theatrical stage employees, and they'll be negotiating their union contracts with the studios next year. So there may be even more strikes to stay tuned.

Well, thank you to you both for bringing ess is incredible reporting, I guess, will have to wait and see if the A I actors join together and want their own union for their rights. That would be something would that would be something right? All other groups.

god with to bring the .

terminator IT is .

is that i'll .

be back. This episode of the sunday story was produced by Andrew mambo and edited by june h. Met in palazzo way. The engineer for this episode was guilty moon.

Our team includes the on a symptoms and just sting in and I reine the gucci is our excepted producer we always love hearing from you. Feel free to reach out to us at the sunday story at epr dot org. Am I shark? O A first is back new feed tomorrow with all the news, you need to start your week. Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.

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