When YouTube launched 20 years ago, the first people posting videos didn’t expect that “content creator” would ever become a full-fledged career. But here we are in 2025, where creators and their support staffs have become so impactful that they’re shaping modern culture (and sometimes making big bucks doing it).
But despite all that pop culture punch, creators and the people working on their videos are notoriously underprotected in areas like labor and tax laws.
That could change soon.
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In April, SAG-AFTRA‘s national board members voted unanimously to create an influencer and digital creator committee. In August, during its board election cycle, the Writers Guild of America West had several candidates make creator inclusion a part of their platforms (alongside support from incumbents like Adam Conover, who worked at CollegeHumor–aka Dropout–and created the webseries Adam Ruins Everything).
These efforts have not yet resulted in a single, unified industry-wide bargaining group for creators, but now WGA West is reportedly organizing with the Motion Picture Editors Guild to establish a single-company group within Theorist, the YouTube production outfit founded by MatPat and Stephanie Patrick.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, WGA West and the MPEG are aiming to include over two dozen Theorist employees, all of whom either edit, write, produce, or do things like thumbnail and sound design for the company’s various channels. Those include The Game Theorists, The Food Theorists, The Film Theorists, Style Theory, and GTLive.
Nicole Cepeda, who does graphics work for Theorist, told THR, “For more than 20 years, we’ve watched terrific creators and their content shape YouTube into one of the most powerful platforms on Earth. Now it’s time for Theorist and other production companies to take it to the next level.”
She added, “By unionizing, our goal is to help raise professional standards and bring them in line with the broader entertainment industry. The work we do is real, and it deserves real protection.”
Writer Daniel Zemke explained that the union wants to negotiate wages, working conditions, and their “voice on the job,” as THR phrased it. He said that a union at Theorist would “[help] bring the labor movement to YouTube.” Whether that’s accurate would remain to be seen, but Theorist is a prominent YouTube production company, even with MatPat retired off camera and organizing elsewhere.
Theorist, which sold to London-based Lunar X in 2022, has apparently declined to voluntarily recognize the union, but didn’t issue a statement about its decision. Tubefilter reached out to ask why it would decline.
If Theorist continues to decline to voluntarily recognize a union, WGA West and MPEG could file a petition with the National Labor Relations Board to represent staffers anyway.
