David Smith Says Hollywood Writers Strike Likely to Drag on in Los Angeles Times

As writers enter their sixth week of a strike, the season of labor discontent in Hollywood doesn’t appear to be winding down.

David Smith, a professor of economics at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, said actors could join writers on the picket lines and expects the standoff could last longer than the 2007-08 strike, which ended after 100 days.

“I still think this could be somewhat drawn out,” Smith said. “It’s really a tough time for the studios to be giving in to some pretty significant, large demands.”

The Directors Guild of America, one of three unions seeking new contracts from the major studios, announced that it had a “historic” deal for increased pay and conditions, with some significant gains in streaming compensation and other areas.

But the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA quickly poured cold water on any notion that the DGA pact with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers would apply to them. This was not like 15 years ago, they suggested, when a deal negotiated by the directors’ union created a template to end the previous writers’ strike.

Read the full article in the Los Angeles Times.