[ The American movie industry has been one of the most
consistently unionized sectors of the economy since the 1930s — but
to achieve that, workers had to overcome “the iron fist of the
moguls” and organized crime, says historian Gerald Horne]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

HOLLYWOOD IS A UNION TOWN, BUT THE HISTORY IS COMPLICATED  
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Steven Wishnia
August 7, 2023
The Indypendent
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_ The American movie industry has been one of the most consistently
unionized sectors of the economy since the 1930s — but to achieve
that, workers had to overcome “the iron fist of the moguls” and
organized crime, says historian Gerald Horne _

Members of SAG-AFTRA walk the picket line outside Disney Studios in
Burbank, California., Theo Sturz // The Indypendent

 

The American movie industry has been one of the most consistently
unionized sectors of the economy since the 1930s — but to achieve
that, workers had to overcome “the iron fist of the moguls” and
organized crime, says historian Gerald Horne, author of _Class
Struggle in Hollywood 1930-1950_.  

Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars,
Reds, and Trade Unionists [[link removed]]
by Gerald Horne
University of Texas Press; 468 pages
November 6, 2013
ISBN: 9780292750135

University of Texas Press
Craft workers — painters, plumbers, carpenters — were the first to
organize, joining the International Association of Theatrical and
Stage Employees (IATSE), founded in New York in 1893. Five hundred of
them went on strike in 1918. The Screen Writers Guild, ancestor of the
Writers Guild of America, was founded at a meeting of 10 writers in
February 1933, and the Screen Actors Guild, a few months later. (SAG
merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to
form SAG-AFTRA in 2012.) Teamsters Local 399, which now represents
drivers, casting directors and more, emerged in the early 1930s.

Hollywood’s moguls and the Depression’s brutal economy gave
workers a motive to organize: In March 1933, the main movie studios
announced a 50% pay cut. The unions also benefited from a core of
leftist militants, such as John Howard Lawson, the Screen Writers
Guild’s first president and a Communist Party member who Horne calls
“the spark.”

The Guild was elected bargaining agent for screenwriters in 1938,
under the protections established by the new National Labor Relations
Act. It did not win a full contract with the studios until 1941,
though.

SAG’s impetus was money and safety. Their salaries had already been
slashed in 1931, and Frankenstein star Boris Karloff complained about
having to do a 25-hour shoot. By the end of the year, it had attracted
stars like James Cagney and Groucho Marx, and membership reached 5,000
in 1935. It won its first contract in 1937. The American Federation of
Radio Artists, AFTRA’s predecessor, formed that year and won its
first contract in 1938.  

In October 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee held
hearings on “Communist infiltration” of Hollywood, featuring
“friendly witnesses” like Ronald Reagan and Ayn Rand.

IATSE already had a foothold in the film industry, with 9,000 members
by 1933. But in 1934, it was taken over by organized crime, which
installed George E. Browne as president. Browne and his partner,
gangster Willie Bioff, worked out low-wage deals with the studio
owners in exchange for bribes. They made several unsuccessful attempts
to take over SAG, took a 2% kickback on paychecks and sent goons to
break up a 1937 strike protesting such, and split up a local that
rebelled against mob control. 

The arrangement continued after Bioff and Browne were imprisoned on
federal racketeering charges in 1941, with Roy Brewer heading the
­Hollywood locals.

A rival federation, the Conference of Studio Unions, attracted craft
workers trying to get out from under that mob domination. Affiliated
with the national Carpenters union, it also included painters and
cartoonists and was headed by Herb Sorrell, a veteran of the failed
1937 strike.

The CSU’s numerous jurisdictional disputes with IATSE over who had
the right to do which jobs came to a head in March 1945. Set
decorators who had broken away from IATSE affiliated with CSU Local
1421. The studios refused to bargain with them, leading to a strike by
more than 10,000 CSU members. 

The strike slowed but didn’t halt film production. Thousands of
IATSE members refused to cross the picket lines, according to Local
728’s website. But SAG members did, including a rising union
official named Ronald Reagan. 

Frustrated, CSU decided to try to stop production at the Warner
Brothers lot in Burbank with mass picketing. On Oct. 5, several
hundred picketers assembled outside the lot — they were assaulted by
strikebreakers and mob goons on one side, and by Los Angeles County
police with tear-gas bombs on the other. 

The strike was settled later that month, but the studios blacklisted
IATSE members who had refused to cross ­picket lines, and permanently
locked out the CSU the next year.

By then, the mogul-mob alliance had a powerful new weapon against the
unions: Anti-Communist hysteria was spreading rabidly across the
country, and anyone with a leftist history was a target. Reagan, then
beginning his devolution from a liberal to a far-right icon and soon
to become SAG president, accused the CSU of being part of a “Soviet
effort to gain control of Hollywood.” In reality, the Communist
Party had opposed the 1945 strike. 

In October 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee held
hearings on “Communist infiltration” of Hollywood, featuring
“friendly witnesses” like Reagan and Ayn Rand. The committee
vituperatively grilled the ten “unfriendly witnesses” about their
political associations. Two of them, John Howard Lawson and Lester
Cole, both among Writers’ Guild’s 10 founders, were imprisoned for
contempt of Congress after they refused to answer questions. They and
a third Guild cofounder, John Bright, were among the hundreds of
people blacklisted from working in the industry until the 1960s.

The federal Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union officials to swear
that they were not Communists, and most unions quickly went along. SAG
in 1953 voted almost unanimously to impose a similar loyalty oath on
new members. 

Union density in Hollywood stayed near-universal, however. Most
American employers in the 1950s didn’t have a problem with unions
that had tamed themselves by purging the left. Density was around 90%
in 1979, according to the Strikewave newsletter, but plummeted to less
than half in the Reagan 1980s.

Meanwhile, the industry’s economics were upended in 1948 by the
Supreme Court’s decision in _United States v. Paramount Pictures
Inc._, which prohibited studios from owning movie theaters. That led
to the end of the studio system, in which most workers were hired as
employees under long-term contracts, and effectively made them
freelancers. It coincided with the rise of television, making
residuals — payments for reuse of their work, such as movies
broadcast on TV or TV show reruns — an important source of income.

“Every industry-wide strike since 1950 has been about
residuals,” _Below the Stars_ author Kate Fortmueller wrote in
the _L.A. Review of Books_ in May. 

The unions finally won residuals in 1960, after overlapping strikes by
the Writers’ Guild and SAG. The Writers’ Guild has gone on strike
eight times since 1950, including a four-month walkout in 1973 that
won residuals for video sales and cable TV. SAG-AFTRA’s longest was
an 11-month strike by video-game actors in 2016. The abysmal residuals
for streaming are a main issue in the current strike.

Hollywood unions today, Horne says, “don’t have to face the tidal
wave of red-baiting that they did in 1945 and 1946.” He hasn’t
seen current SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher accused of being a
closet Communist, he notes.

On the other hand, he adds, “they could use the kind of selflessness
and energy that the Communists injected.”

_[STEVEN WISHNIA is an award-winning journalist and veteran editor.
His writing has appeared in the Nation, the Progressive, the Village
Voice, Alternet.org, and High Times, among other publications. As a
musician, he may be best known as the '80s punk band False Prophets'
bass player.]_

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* Hollywood
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* Hollywood studios
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* Hollywood Blacklist
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* Hollywood Strikes
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* Films
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* television
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* SAG
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* Screen Actors guild
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* SAG-AFTRA
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* WGA
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* Writers Guild of America
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* WGA Writers Strike
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* AI
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* artificial intelligence
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* royalties
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* residuals
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* streaming
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* IATSE
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* McCarthy Period
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* HUAC
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* Hollywood Ten
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* Gerald Horne
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