Customers want instant gratification. Workers say it’s pushing them to the brink

NEW YORK (AP) — Six straight days of 12-hour driving. Single digit paychecks. The complaints come from workers in very different industries: UPS delivery drivers and Hollywood actors and writers.

But they point to an underlying factor driving a wave of labor unrest: the cost to workers whose jobs have changed dramatically as companies struggle to meet customer expectations for speed and convenience in industries transformed by technology.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated those changes, pushing retailers to switch online and intensifying streaming competition among entertainment companies. Now, from the pickets, the workers are trying to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a show that can get drunk anytime or have dog food delivered to your doorstep with a swipe. the phone.

Overworked and underpaid employees are a persistent complaint in every industry, from delivery drivers to Starbucks baristas to airline pilots, where increases in consumer demand have collided with persistent shortages of labour. Workers are rejecting forced overtime, punishing hours or the company’s reliance on contract, part-time or lower-paid forces.

In question for Hollywood scriptwriters and actors who stage their first simultaneous strikes in 40 years it’s the way streaming has upended the entertainment economy, driving down salaries and forcing showrunners to produce content faster with smaller crews.

“This seems to happen in a lot of places when tech companies come in. Who are we crushing? It doesn’t matter,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a writer and showrunner for the negotiating team of the Writers Guild of America, whose members have been on strike since May. Earlier this month, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the writers union on the picket line.

Actors and writers have long relied on waste, or long-term payments, for reruns and other broadcasts of movies and TV shows. But reruns aren’t a problem on streaming services, where shows and movies just land and are left with no easy way, like box office returns or ratings, to determine their popularity.

Consequently, the residuals paid by broadcast companies often equate to a pittance, and screenwriters have been sharing stories of receiving single-digit checks.

Adam Shapiro, an actor known for the Netflix The hit “I’ve Never Done It” said many actors were initially happy to accept lower pay for the plethora of roles the broadcast suddenly offered. But the need for a more sustainable compensation model gained urgency as it became clear that streaming is not a sideshow, but rather the future of the business, she said.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve realized, ‘Oh, this is how Hollywood works now. It’s all broadcasting,’” Shapiro said during a recent union event.

Shapiro, who has been acting for 25 years, said he agreed to a contract offering 20% ​​of his normal fee for “I’ve Never Done It” because it seemed like “a great opportunity, and it’s going to be worldwide.” And that was. It was really. Unfortunately, we are all starting to realize that if we keep doing this, we won’t be able to pay our bills.”

Then there’s the growing use of “mini rooms,” in which a handful of writers are brought in to work only during pre-production, sometimes for a series that can take a year to greenlight, or never pick up at all.

Sánchez-Witzel, co-creator of the recently launched Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest,” said television shows traditionally hire strong writing teams during production. But Netflix refused to let her keep her team of five her writers beyond pre-production, forcing her to work around the clock on rewrites with just one other writer.

“It is not sustainable and I will never do it again,” he said.

Sánchez-Witzel said she was struck by the similarities between her experience and those of UPS drivers, some of whom joined the WGA in protest while threatening their own potentially crippling strike. UPS and the Teamsters reached a tentative contract last week to avoid the strike.

Jeffrey Palmerino, a full-time driver for UPS near Albany, New York, said forced overtime emerged as a major problem during the pandemic, as drivers faced a deluge of orders on par with the holiday season. Drivers never knew what time they would get home or if they could count on two days off a week, while 14-hour days in trucks without air conditioning became the norm.

“It was basically like Christmas on steroids for two years in a row. Many of us were forced to work six days a week, and that is not the way to live life,” said Palmerino, a Teamsters shop steward.

Along with pay raises and air conditioning, the Teamsters won concessions that Palmerino hopes will ease the overwork. UPS agreed to end forced overtime on days off and eliminate a category of lowest-paid drivers who work shifts that include weekends, making them full-time drivers. Union members have yet to ratify the agreement.

The Teamsters and labor activists hailed the tentative agreement as a game changer that would put pressure on other companies facing labor unrest to raise their standards. But similar results are far from certain in industries that lack the absolute financial indispensability of UPS or the influence of its 340,000-member union.

Efforts to organize at Starbucks and Amazon stalled as both companies aggressively fought unionization.

Still, labor protests are likely to gain momentum after the UPS contract, said Patricia Campos-Medina, executive director of the Workers’ Institute at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, which released a report this year that found the number of labor strikes. increased 52% in 2022.

“The whole idea that consumer convenience comes first fell apart during the pandemic. We started to think, ‘I’m at home making orders, but actually there is a worker who has to go to the supermarket, who has to cook this for me so that I can be comfortable,’” Campos-Medina said.

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Associated Press video journalist Leslie Ambriz contributed from Los Angeles.