As of 12:01 a.m. on November 9, 2023, the SAG-AFTRA strike is officially over. The actors’ guild has come to terms with TV and film studios, ending a 118-day work stoppage.
The agreement still needs to be ratified by SAG-AFTRA’s national board, but the hardest work has been done. Actors will get pay increases, protections from AI, and streaming participation bonuses, and the studios will be able to turn their production pipelines back on.
“We have arrived at a contract that will enable SAG-AFTRA members from every category to build sustainable careers,” the union wrote in an email. “Many thousands of performers now and into the future will benefit from this work.”
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For the acting community, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from the longest labor stoppage in SAG-AFTRA history. In other industries, the takeaways are a bit murkier. As actors, writers, and Hollywood studios argued over new terms, digital content creators found themselves stuck in the middle. Without a strong union of their own, they turned to the striking guilds for guidance. SAG shared a guide to help influencers understand their role in the negotiations.
The SAG strike reminded us that the Hollywood dream is still alive.
In the early days of the 2023 Hollywood labor stoppages, many influencers canceled promotions after SAG warned them against working with studios and promised to bar them from the union if they followed through with their agreements. The creators who nixed those deals showed solidarity with striking workers, but they also sent clear messages to the actors’ guild: We want to keep our options open.
Though online video platforms are capturing attention on TV screens, the traditional entertainment industry still holds sway in our culture. Some creators are aspiring actors who see social media stardom as a path to a film or TV career. Hollywood has been forced to reimagine itself in the face of emerging technology, but the luster of A-list status still shines bright.
Some creators want to be actors. Others just want representation of their own.
Many of the issues addressed during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes also affect creators, who must contend with AI deepfakes and questionable pay structures. Now that actors and writers have secured better deals, it’s time to dust off a classic question: Do creators need their own union?
There have been some attempts to organize online video professionals, such as Hank Green’s Internet Creators Guild. But those efforts struggled to attract enough members, which prevented them from suitably representing the sprawling creator community.
In 2023, the creator economy is much bigger than it was in 2016 (when Green first launched the ICG), but calls for collective bargaining have only increased. A new service organization called the Creators Guild of America is looking to pick up where the ICG left off, and thousands of creators have signaled that solidarity is more important to them than social success.
The creators who signed a “Labor Over Likes” pledge collectively reach more than 90 million followers. Is that a big enough base for an online video union?
One thing’s for sure: This wasn’t like last time.
The 2007-08 WGA strike was a pivotal moment in online video history. An influx of traditional media talent on platforms like YouTube led to a creative explosion that produced classics like Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Some creators took time to show solidarity on behalf of striking writers. But the audience shift from TV reruns to internet originals also benefitted digital creators.
In the years since that stoppage ended, shows like Dr. Horrible have been recast as scab productions. Compared to the average creator from 2008, the average creator from 2023 thinks much more about the impact their work could have on striking workers. The popularity of the Labor Over Likes pledge shows us that the creative renaissance of 2008 was never in the cards for 2023. The entertainment industry has changed too much for that to happen — and the cultural shift underpinning that change has been even more dramatic.
