Newsletter

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Social impact jobs + news go together like billionaires and private islands. You can't have one without the other! And since you aren't currently lounging on your own private island, reading this newsletter is the next best thing.

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Here's what we got on tap for you today

• Meme of the Week
• Article of the Week: Everything You Need to Know About the Hollywood Strike...Part 2
• New Job Opportunities
• Win of the Week: Egypt to Build One of the Largest Wind Farms in the World
• Bummer of the Week: Severe Weather Continues Around the World

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Meme of the Week

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Article of the Week

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Everything You Need to Know About the Hollywood Strike...Part 2

Hollywood is on strike, still (and again). You might remember back in May when we told you about the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) strike that would stop any new TV and film writing from taking place until an agreement was reached between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).

As of July 14, the Screen Actors Guild, aka the union that represents US actors, joined the writers and went on strike too. That means no more filming can take place (on union sets) until this is over.

TL;DR: both Hollywood actors and writers have stopped working until they reach deals with the AMPTP. Hope you like reality TV cause we’re about to get a sh*t ton of it.

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This double-whammy strike is significant for a couple of reasons:

1. It’s the first time that BOTH unions have been on strike since 1960, when none other than future Pres. Ronald Reagan was the president of the actor’s union (how’s that for manifesting?).
2. In the last several years since streaming platforms have taken over, Hollywood has essentially been turned into a tech industry, and we know how tech giants love to pay their laborers (as in: they don’t).
3. Writers and actors aren’t only fighting for better pay, they’re also trying to stop the studios from using AI tools to replace them.

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Ya might be wondering…in the grand scheme of things, is this really important? Like boo hoo movie stars don’t make enough money already?

But here’s the dealio: only 12.7 percent of SAG’s 160,000 members make more than $26,000 a year, which is the bar to qualify for healthcare. Hollywood isn’t made up of only Oscar winners and Marvel superheroes, it relies on the lesser-known actors who say, “he went that way!”  

And ya don’t reeeeeally want to be on the side of the studio execs right now. Disney president Bob Iger told a reporter that they’re willing to let the strike go on until writers and actors go so broke that they lose their homes. Jokes on him since they’re already that broke (also, he did this interview from the yearly billionaire summer camp in Idaho. REAL MATURE, Bob).

So anyway, life as we know it won’t be the same without new TV for a while, but this historic strike has already inspired unions in other industries to take action against their muppet villains, so we can suck it up. Maybe it’s time to rewatch all 14,000 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy?

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