Striking Workers Should Be Eligible for Unemployment Insurance
Most workers in the US are barred from claiming unemployment benefits if they go on strike, penalizing them for exercising one of their most fundamental rights. New legislation in California and elsewhere is trying to rectify that injustice.
Members of WGA and SAG-AFTRA walk a picket line outside of the HBO and Amazon New York City headquarters on September 7, 2023. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
Just before 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) joined 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) on picket lines across the United States, an anonymous executive explained their thinking in Deadline.
“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” the studio executive told the outlet, which is one of the three trade publications owned by the Penske Media Corporation that embattled Hollywood executives have used to launder their messaging during the work stoppage. Another “insider” called the approach “a cruel but necessary evil.”
Now, as the WGA strike enters its fourth month and the SAG-AFTRA strike nears month three, the executives’ hopes have come to pass. The Hollywood Reporter (another Penske property) reports that many strikers, owing months of back rent or falling behind on mortgage payments, are facing eviction.
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