In pictures: A lowdown on what happened in the previous Hollywood strikes

The common refrain is that there’s nothing Hollywood loves so much as its own history — but that’s a history inextricable from its labour movements. As the industry comes to a momentous halt courtesy of dual strikes by its actors and screenwriters, it’s worth looking back at the effects of past protests, walkouts and other actions. The Screen Actors Guild and the Screen Writers Guild, the forerunner to today’s Writers Guild of America, were each founded in 1933, though threads of collective action and solidarity run to the very beginnings of the motion picture industry.

It may be tempting to prognosticate about the end of these concurrent strikes, but history is of little help here: Past strikes have spanned months and lasted minutes. Nonetheless, they’re instructive for how the issues that drove the conflicts and the resolutions set the stage for today’s disputes. Each success and failure has contributed to shaping the contemporary landscape. Here’s a look at some of the most significant strikes in Hollywood labour history.

2007-2008 Writers strike, 100 days. Key Issue: Compensation, including residual payments, for shows and movies distributed digitally. Main results: Jurisdiction over projects created for the internet under certain guidelines; set compensation for ad-supported streaming programmes; increased residuals for downloaded shows and movies. Since it was the most significant Hollywood strike in decades, it’s the one most etched in most people’s memories. All told, it had an estimated $2 billion (Dh7.35 billion) impact on the California economy and is often credited with sending programming further into reality television’s clutches (even if such gems as NBC’s 'My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad' didn’t have much staying power). While an analyst at the time told the AP the strike was “an unqualified success,” some WGA members felt they were pressured into accepting weaker terms because the Directors Guild of America negotiated their own contract on similar issues. A spectre of that discontent reared its head again 15 years later, when the DGA reached a “truly historic” tentative agreement with AMPTP a little over a month into the 2023 writers strike.

1988 writers strike: 154 days. Key Issue: Residuals for television shows sold to foreign markets. Main results: More creative control over scripts and the reacquisition of original screenplays; salary increases, though guild negotiators said they were less successful in winning larger payments for the foreign market reruns This contract was ratified on the 154th day of the strike, making it the longest WGA strike by a margin of one day. “It was a very difficult time. Over a period of time, some of the rancor and anger will be forgotten. I don’t think the spirit will be forgotten, though. They (the writers) will remember this for a long time,” WGA spokesperson Cheryl Rhoden said at the time. Fortmueller also noted that this strike really marked the birth of reality TV as a way to fill time in vacant schedule blocks.

1981 writers strike: 96 days; 1980 actors strike: 77 days. Key Issue: The fast-growing home video and pay TV markets. Main Results: Share of producer revenues from those markets; increase in base pay While these strikes happened nearly a year apart, the core issue was the same: Actors and writers wanted a portion of the revenue generated in quickly growing markets — there was money to be made on video cassettes.

In 1980, SAG, AFTRA and the American Federation of Musicians all went on strike. In the longest strike in their history, the actors ended up winning the industry’s first pay TV concessions. The musicians had no such luck, despite striking for 167 days.

1960 writers and actors strike: 153 days (WGA), 43 days (SAG) Key Issues: Foreign and subsidiary rights on television scripts, rerun rights, proceeds from the sale of post-1948 films to television, a pension system for SAG. Main results: Actors and writers won salary bumps, residual payments for films released to TV and — most crucially — the establishment of pension, health and welfare funds; writers agree to waive claims on revenue from the sale of pre-1960 movies to TV The writers quite literally struck first, and would strike longer, but it was SAG — with its starry membership — that would be first to secure pension, health and welfare funds. In a marked departure from today’s raucous and punny picket lines, the guilds did not picket or demonstrate, according to contemporaneous articles that called the nature of the strikes “firm but polite”. “This is what studios were afraid of in the ’20s and ’30s, is nobody wants to see your stars on a picket line. It’s not the optics that Hollywood wants,” Fortmueller said of how the actors’ decision to strike changed the calculus. Writers also tend to be on the same page, with similar responsibilities; so if a guild as diverse in roles as SAG-AFTRA is today overwhelmingly chooses to strike, she noted, that telegraphs the severity of the situation. SAG was helmed by Ronald Reagan, who represented his fellow actors at the bargaining table alongside arguably bigger celebrities of the time, like Oscar winner Charlton Heston and James Garner, then the star of TV ratings juggernaut 'Maverick'.