After members are officially on strike. The union representing
160,000 performers including Hollywood's biggest stars announced to stop work
yesterday. Our new senior reporter Michelle Castillo is at
one of the picket sites at 30 rock here in
New York. Michelle, a lot of activity behind
you tell us what's going on. This is the
first of the planned strikes for Sag Ara. They're
protesting what they feel are unfair pay conditions, especially
when it comes to the streaming world as well as
the concerns over A I taking over their jobs.
So as I mentioned here in New York City,
there are four planned protest sites. We're here at
30 rock. If you look behind me, you
can see that people have just started to gather,
pick it. We spoke to some people earlier and
they said they are willing to stay as long as
it takes to get fair compensation for what they believe
is their lives work. Now, behind me is
mostly Sag Ara actors. But around you'll start to
see some of those white and orange picket signs.
Those are actually members of the Writers Guild of America
East. They are in support of SA A.
Now during the writers strike which started in May,
we saw plenty of actors join their picket lines.
Now, both groups are joining together to show support
in Los Angeles. We're going to see plenty of
other strikes. They're mostly targeting the studios and the
big media companies at this time. Of course,
30 rock, the headquarters for NBC. We're also
going to see strikes over in here in New York
, near Paramount, as well as HBO and Amazon
. So lots of going on here and these actors
are ready to stand up for what they believe in
. How are production studios like Disney per se reacting
to this news Michelle. Well, at the center
of this strike is really two main things, streaming
residuals, meaning every single time you watch a streaming
episode, actors will get payment for that similar to
the TV model and the growth of A I which
actors are concerned will take over their likenesses and voices
without permission. Now, studios say, hey,
we've been hit pretty hard, the pandemic. We
need the ability to make that money back so we
can keep this industry going. In fact, CEO
of Disney Bob Iger spoke at Sun Valley conference just
yesterday saying that he felt that the Actors Union was
being unfair. The association of motion picture and television
producers also said this was going to cause undue financial
hardship, they represent the studios. They believe that
the union was being too strong at this time,
especially at a time where everyone is still struggling,
whether it's actors or these big media companies which are
still trying to make their losses from the stop losses
during the COVID-19 pandemic. And the multi million dollar
question here, Michelle, how long do we think
the strike will last? We spoke to strike,
Captain Kevin Scullin and he said he's willing to stay
here as long as possible. The big question though
here again is the livelihood, New York City and
Los Angeles are such expensive cities to live in.
And that was one of the main reasons for the
strike to see if they could get more payments for
their work. A lot of people said they were
looking at jobs in the hospitality industry. I spoke
to some other organizations that said, training people to
work on social media, use those creative skills.
But again, it really will come down to,
we saw a line in a report in deadline saying
that the studios are willing to go until the actors
lost their apartments reportedly. So it really will determine
who is going to be the stronger foothold. Here
again, as you mentioned, 160,000 members of SA
A was about 11,000 and 500 members of the Writers
Guild of America. So that's plenty of people.
Also considering that with these productions shut down, you're
also looking at the shutdown of camera people, directors
and nothing can actually go on at this time.
In fact, that also includes promotional things. So
this is not just going to be a stop work
for actors and writers, it's also going to be
a stop work for the entire entertainment industry.