LEVER WEEKLY: What Workers Are Up Against

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Along with a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, and live events for all subscribers, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column. Along with a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, and live events for all subscribers, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column. In this week’s piece, The Lever’s Andrew Perez and Lucy Dean Stockton review how Hollywood studio executives are handling the writers and actors’ strike — and what workers everywhere can take away from it.

👇Following is an excerpt of our subscriber-only column, and below that is a recap of all of our other work from the week.

What Workers Are Up Against

By Andrew Perez and Lucy Dean Stockton

As the Hollywood writers’ strike entered its 10th week and actors were preparing to join them — in their first dual work stoppage in 63 years — studio executives screamed the quiet part out loud in an unusually clarifying manner.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” an anonymous executive told Deadline. According to the news outlet, an industry insider affirmed this approach, calling it “a cruel but necessary evil.”

Deadline further reported that the studios and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the trade group that negotiates for them, “believe that by October most writers will be running out of money after five months on the picket lines and no work.”

Big corporations — and bosses broadly...