SAG-AFTRA supporters, including SAG member Rebecca Schweitzer, from San Francisco, strike outside of the Netflix headquarters in Los Gatos, Calif., on Thursday, July 20, 2023. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
Hollywood’s strike came to Los Gatos Thursday afternoon as a group of more than a hundred actors, writers and allies picketed in front of Netflix headquarters.
The Northern California chapter of SAG-AFTRA, which organized the strike, is protesting the streaming model’s impact on actors’ income and uncertainty around artificial intelligence’s role in TV and films.
“More people are watching more programming for longer today than ever before, and we’re making less on residuals. It’s not fair,” said Michael X. Sommers, an Oakland-based actor known for roles in the film “Sorry to Bother You,” and the TV show “Sense8.”
This is the first time the organization has picketed in front of Netflix’s Los Gatos headquarters on 101 Albright Way, and comes after several other protests outside the streaming giant’s Los Angeles and New York offices in the past week. Many residents driving by joined in the chorus of chants by honking their horns and shouting support for the group.
Film and TV writers and actors made national headlines last week in the first dual strike from both SAG-AFTRA, which represents actors, and the Writers Guild of America, which represents writers, in more than 60 years. A representative from the WGA attended the strike Thursday afternoon in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA.
The organization said the streaming model for TV shows and movies has funneled money to executives, and cheated actors and writers out of their fair share.
Netflix could not be reached for comment.
Actor Anthony Abate brought his residual check for $0.01 for a television show he worked on in 2009 to the protest.
“Back when they released it in the theaters, or they showed it on TV again, you would get a residual–now you get nothing,” Abate said.
AI has been another concern for actors. Studios, production companies and streaming services have the technology to capture the likeness of an actor and program them into background scenes, paying actors for one day of filming rather than the weeks or months of work they’d typically see.
“We’re here in the tech capital of the world, and it’s made its way down to Los Angeles. And what was once this beautiful industry of these wonderful stories that were essentially talking about the human condition are now seen as these products and numbers and data,” actor Sedrick Cabrera said.
The South Bay Labor Council’s union leaders and allies were out striking in solidarity with the writers Thursday afternoon. Jean Cohen, Executive Officer of the SBLC said the council was there to support all workers and the SAG-AFTRA’s fight for equal pay.
“There’s an uprising in America right now, and workers from all industries are speaking out,” Cohen said. “This strike is a reflection of the broader struggles of working people in America to make sure we can have healthy families and an economy that thrives for everyone.”
Local elected officials came down to support the strikers as well.
“This is a historic strike – we have SAG-AFTRA coming together, because enough is enough, and the greed is real,” said Assemblymember Ash Kalra. “Being here in the heart of Silicon Valley, it’s wonderful to have technology, but that same technology… also creates the most egregious inequality.”
Steaming giant Netflix, which has a library of thousands TV shows and movies, recently cracked down on its subscriptions shared among people in different households. Its subscription base grew by nearly 6 million paid users after the switch, CNN reported.
