Movie and television script writers have been on strike since early May. And yesterday, movie and television actors have also gone on strike. The union representing actors claims that the giant corporations that stream movies are making enormous profits and that those profits should be shared more fairly with the actors. There are also issues about working conditions and the Screen Actors Guild, the body representing the actors, wants to protect actors from being usurped by digital replicas. They want guarantees that artificial intelligence and computer-generated faces and voices will not be used to replace actors.

I have to admit that I am largely unaffected by the strike. I don’t often watch television. I’m not one to stream movies. I don’t have a Netflix account. I don’t have access to our children’s Netflix accounts, either. For the most part, I don’t even recognize the names of the actors who will be walking the picket lines starting today. I am, however, intrigued by the process of negotiating contracts and what seems to be a rise in the effectiveness of unions in wage disputes in recent years.

Laborers and those who hire them have been negotiating disagreements for a very long time. The argument is not completely new. How much are employers obligated to share profits with the workers who produce those profits? What is a livable wage? Those questions and disagreements over the answers come at a time when corporate profits have been growing much faster than wages for a long time. This discrepancy is made even more visible by the presence of inflation. Growth in corporate profits is a big driver of inflation. When inflation is higher than the increase in wages, workers have less ability to purchase essential items.

I suspect that movie and television writers and actors have the ability to endure a long strike. The strike has the effect of reducing the profits of employers, but it also halts income for writers and actors while the strike is going on. Famous writers and actors who have received substantial wages, have enough savings to hold out for the terms they want. I suspect, however, that there are many lesser-known writers and actors who are scrambling to make ends meet under the work stoppage. When you live paycheck to paycheck, missing those checks can be devastating.

Meanwhile, I have been paying attention to another strike just across the border. Dock workers along the coast, most notably those in the large port of Vancouver, just 40 miles from where we live, had been on strike for 13 days when their union and their employers accepted a tentative deal yesterday ending the strike. While a 13-day strike has disrupted the ports and had threatened to create significant supply chain issues, 13 days of strike is relatively short and the result is a 4-year deal that is still subject to ratification, but is likely to hold.

It makes one wonder what is the difference between those Canadian negotiations and the ones that led to the spikes of screen writers and actors. Of course there are differences in labor laws in the two countries. I don’t know much about the technicalities of labor laws. I do know that the union and the employers in the dock workers strike had been working with professional mediators even before the strike was declared. It is my understanding that the work of mediators was instrumental in discovering the deal that is ending the strike. I don’t know if there are any mediators involved in the writers and actors strike in the United States. I haven’t found any evidence of mediators in the few news stories that I have read online.

I suspect that a dock workers strike just across the border carried more possibility to have impacts that I would feel than a strike of writers and actors in the entertainment business. Most days I share the Interstate with a lot of trucks moving goods across the border. Loads of shipping containers are common on the highway and warehouses just a few miles down the road from our house handle a lot of goods that have arrived on this continent through the Port of Vancouver. Had the strike persisted much longer, I’m sure that folks I know would have been feeling the effects.

As far as I know, the use of artificial intelligence was not a factor in the dock workers’ strike. I think workers have, for the most part, embraced technologies that have made the work of loading and unloading ships a bit less dangerous and a bit less labor intensive. So far the machines don’t seem to be threatening any jobs. Then again, I have trouble imagining how digitally created images might replace live actors. As I have said, I don’t watch many movies or much television. Maybe the technology is so fully refined that artificial intelligence might allow media corporations to continue to produce content while negotiating the strike. I suspect, however, that playing a lot of re-runs is a more likely scenario.

Shipping companies don’t have the option of playing reruns while huge cargo ships keep arriving at the port. Those ships have to be unloaded and reloaded with outgoing cargo. The financial impact of ships sitting idle while they wait for workers to unload and load them is significant. The stopping of ship traffic for even a dozen days has a significant impact on other workers. Truck drivers and retail store employees are dependent upon dock workers to pass along work to them.

Maybe the incentive to solve the disagreements was simply higher among dock workers than it is among screen writers. Perhaps there is simply more at stake. I suspect, however, that the difference in the length of the strike has something to do with the willingness and ability of those involved to compromise and negotiate deals.

I’m guessing that the mediators involved in discovering the resolution aren’t worried that they will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, I’m writing these words myself. Since there is no money involved, chances are good I’ll keep writing without a strike.