smagik

The actors have joined the writers on the picket lines. Th billionaires are at summer camp in Sun Valley. The teamsters are gearing up for an unrelated strike against UPS. And the rest of us just realized the AI cliff we went over a few months ago, mixed with eight million other things, is going to change everything, everywhere, all at once.

Did you happen to see Episode 1 of Season 6 of “Black Mirror”(Joan is Awful)? I’ve since canceled my Netflix subscription but in that episode Netflix basically laid out what the actors, and all of us, are up against. As recently as June I assumed my unglamorous job of laundry, organization, and continuity was safe, but it never occurred to me that actors may no longer be necessary in movies. Nor writers. Nor directors, costumers, or humans.

As many of you know, I make my living as a costumer in the Film Industry and have for 20 years. At the end of May, two months into a what was to be a six month shoot, I was laid off from an HBO series, along with the rest of the crew and cast, when none of the IATSE crew, SAG-AFTRA actors, or Teamsters would cross the WGA picket line.
It is hard to explain the magnitude of what this industry is up against, though from what I hear there are few if any industries actually thriving at the moment (Cannabis? AI?) It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by the speed of change. And it’s not just us.

The Teamsters are set to strike against UPS on August 1st, upending the way we order and expect to receive those things we just ordered within 2 days. Another industry whose contract hasn’t been updated since everything about the way we shop, and live, changed. Another industry who watches as the Jeff Bezos’s of the world get richer on the backs of labor. The divide has never been bigger. Who would have thought that the Film Industry and UPS drivers would both be on strike at the same time, fighting for the same things, against the same forces?

Two years ago I spent the summer in Greece and Serbia working on Netflix’s “Glass Onion”. My costume department coworkers were from Germany and Croatia and though they had worked in film for years, they were not used to American style of filmmaking. They were accustomed to working 10 hour days while we typically work 14. They have health insurance and a pension through their government, not their employer, and couldn’t believe that the only reason I had these things they took for granted, just for being a citizen of a country, was because of my union.

Please consider canceling your online streaming services, ignoring new releases for a while, keeping your old iphone for a few extra months or years rather than buying a new one, refraining from ordering anything from Amazon, shipping only through the USPS rather than UPS, and supporting your local coffee shop rather than notoriously anti union Starbucks, until these labor disputes are settled. We are living in strange times but they’re only going to get stranger and worse for working people if these greedy fu**s keep profiting off our labor.

In Solidarity.