• Historic strike Actors paralyze Hollywood
  • What does the strike mean? Your favorite series, in doubt

George Clooney, Margot Robbie, Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Rosario Dawson and Brian Cox are some of the actors who have supported in word or with a sign in hand the strikes of actors and screenwriters in demand of new collective agreements in their relations with the film, television and streaming producers of the United States. Their names explain how the negotiation has changed at least from the symbolic perspective. Where the writers' strike (called since May) had gone more or less unnoticed, the actors' fight is impossible to ignore.

The strikers also play their cards and announce that they are in no hurry to reach an agreement that lowers their expectations. Brian Cox, the Succession actor, said this weekend on Sky News that he doesn't expect the strikes to end before the end of the year. "It's a situation that could become very, unpleasant. And it could last for quite some time. They will take us to the limit and we will have to be prepared to go to the limit. This situation may not be resolved until the end of the year."

160,000 actors affiliated with SAG-AFTRA and 11,500 screenwriters who are members of the Writers Guild of America have joined the industry's largest strike in 60 years. Their main claims have to do with the collection of copyright for rebroadcasts on video platforms and with the demand for rules that protect human employment against the irruption of Artificial Intelligence.

What works in favor of actors and screenwriters to challenge their employers in this way? Basically, the state of American public opinion, which is changing its perception of labor demands. A Gallup Institute poll last summer found that 68% of respondents sympathized with unions. It had been 60 years since that rate had been so high. Low unemployment rates and recent successes by unions against companies like Amazon and Starbucks have led to a change of cycle in which it is workers who are in a position of unprecedented strength for decades.

Time may go against them, as in all strikes: if the strike lasts, the actors will receive pressure from professionals linked to film and television: their weakest colleagues, sent to the strike by someone else's strike.

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