The Oscars in Labor History: Union-Busting Is at the Roots of the Ceremony

The story of the Academy Awards starts with Louis B. Mayer’s beach house. In 1926, Mayer was working as West Coast chief for the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a position vested with extreme wealth and power. As film critic and historian David Thompson wrote in Vanity Fair, Mayer wanted to build his family a relaxing getaway, and to do so quickly. Conventional laborers would be too slow, he thought, so he decided to use studio construction workers, who he knew could work fast. 

Previously, theater stagehands who migrated to Hollywood in the early film industry belonged to the theatrical union, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). By 1925, IATSE was attempting to organize technical workers in earnest. For Mayer, this meant concerns about the price of studio labor going up. 

The organizing of technical workers resulted in the Studio Basic Agreement. The agreement, signed on November 29, 1926, wasn’t a formal labor contract, but rather a serious promise allowing union representatives to meet with select producers to hash out grievances and labor disputes. It was approved by nine major production corporations along with five unions. Today, IATSE remains a major union for Hollywood crew members.  

But ultimately, according to Thompson’s reporting, Mayer got what he wanted. By using a few studio laborers and relying on cheap, outsourced labor, he quickly completed his beach house. Still, news of labor organizing left him concerned about what might happen if the “talent” — actors, directors, and writers — started to unionize. 

At the time, Hollywood was run by the studio system, in which a few studios controlled everything from film production to distribution. Actors signed contracts with a particular studio, which gave them significantly less creative control than they have today. Studios were just beginning to understand how actors could be used to generate publicity and promote films. In other words, without control of their talent, studios had a lot to lose. 

Mayer founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in 1927. AMPAS was initially designed to seem like an advocate for employees, effectively trying to replace the need for a union. However, membership in the organization was by invite only, and its loyalties clearly rested with management. Peter Decherney, a professor of cinema studies and author of Hollywood and the Cultural Elite tells Teen Vogue, “The Academy promised to be this industry-wide body that could help set standards. It never worked that way. It was often dismissed as the studio-heads' union.” 

The desire for industry control also inspired the creation of the Academy Awards in 1929. After a number of scandals, the awards offered an opportunity to generate positive publicity. Mayer is even quoted in one of his biographies specifically identifying the awards as a means for creative control. He said if he gave filmmakers “cups and awards, they'd kill themselves to produce what I wanted." 

Decherney argues the awards were designed so talent would think of themselves as artists rather than laborers, thereby driving a wedge between them and technical, union workers. “Giving people awards shows that what they do is creative rather than labor,” Decherney explains. “Also, it awards a few individuals rather than thinking about the much larger community of actors and writers. Most don't get awards or even get invited to the ceremony.” 

The formation of AMPAS didn’t stop talent from unionizing, but it did delay the process by several years. The Actor’s Equity Association, which began in 1919 as a theatrical union, attempted to organize actors in 1921, with its efforts coming to a head in a 1929 strike against the studios to demand the formation of a union shop. Despite supporting a 10% wage cut across the board, AMPAS secured actors a baseline contract with a grievance process. Actors were mostly happy with these initial gains and Equity left Hollywood, according to the 1947 journal article, “Labor Relations in Hollywood,” by writer and economist Murray Ross. 

A similar scenario played out for screenwriters who demanded satisfactory compensation, onscreen credits, and a standard contract. Again, AMPAS successfully negotiated some demands while declining to set forth an official contract for freelance screenwriters. Still, the screenwriters continued to distrust AMPAS. 

Any faith that workers had left in AMPAS broke during the Great Depression, when the film industry was hit so hard its leaders considered shutting down all studios due to financial troubles. In 1933, studios demanded a 50% pay reduction for everyone except executives and unionized crew members. This move was supported by AMPAS, which deeply angered the talent, especially highly paid actors. 

The same year, driven by dissatisfaction with AMPAS, union activity for creative talent hit two important milestones: The Screen Actors Guild (SGA) was formed in a secret meeting at actor Kenneth Thomson’s home, and the Screen Writers Guild (SWG) was officially established. Both organizations encouraged members to resign from AMPAS. 

In the following years, AMPAS continued to face pushback from unions. Before the 1936 Oscars ceremony, the guilds called for a boycott of the awards due to AMPAS’s continued involvement in labor negotiations. They also wanted to inspire new negotiations with producers, to urge them to bargain directly with them instead, PhD student Monica Sandler explained in the 2015 Media Industries Journal article, “PR and Politics at Hollywood’s Biggest Night: The Academy Awards and Unionization.” The boycott didn’t produce much actionable change, but it did increase awareness and prompted two winners to refuse their awards. As of 1937, AMPAS began to restructure, withdrawing directly from labor negotiations.

Today, Hollywood is a union town. SAG, SWG, and the Screen Directors Guild (the latter two now known as the Writers Guild of America and Directors Guild of America, respectively) are still going strong. But at the Academy Awards, the same struggle for industry control — the clash between art and business — rages on. 

Gil Robertson, cofounder and president of the African American Film Critics Association, tells Teen Vogue, “There's always been tension there and probably always will. The way the Oscars and Hollywood operate is no different than any other company or institution in this country.” He adds, “So, whether or not that's good or bad, people who have more money have more privilege.”

This privilege is encapsulated in the campaign process, which became costly in the 2000s when now disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein began launching elaborate campaigns for his films. These campaigns create barriers to entry for lower-budget films seeking recognition. This year, Andrea Riseborough’s surprise nomination for the small, independent film To Leslie put a spotlight back on the campaign process. As the New York Times recounted, Riseborough allegedly got her nomination because her manager and his wife enlisted celebrity pals to publicly advocate for her. Some people called the campaign unfair, but Tom Salinsky, cohost of Best Pick, a podcast about the Oscars, points out for Teen Vogue the distinction between Riseborough’s campaign and the typical Oscar campaign equates to “having more money to spend than everyone else” vs. “having fancier friends than everyone else.” 

Producers are willing to pull out all the stops because Oscar nominations can give films a second wind at the box office. For actors, winning an Oscar can also translate into job offers. A study published in 2015 found that Oscar nominees starred in more films than non-nominees, and Oscar winners starred in more films than nominees. These material consequences demonstrate the importance of #OscarsSoWhite, the hashtag and boycott launched in 2015 that called attention to the lack of racial diversity among nominees. 

“If you're a movie lover, you have lots and lots of choices,” Mike Sargent, chief film critic for WBAI radio’s ReelWorld tells Teen Vogue. “But at the same time, if the people who are judging it have a narrow point of view, a narrow reference, then the people who were even given the opportunity to do work, if they don't get acknowledged, they won't get more work.” 

As audiences have changed and calls for greater representation in film have grown stronger, the Academy has taken steps to reinvent itself. In 2018, the Oscars accepted its largest new cohort of members to date, increasing its racial diversity. According to Statista, in 2022, 67% of Academy members were men and 81% identified as white. 

“It's an institution that is in flux. It's evolving,” Robertson says, expressing optimism about the Academy’s capacity for change. “The approach that the Academy continues to make toward better representation within its membership ranks speaks to an honest effort. [They seem to be] trying to become an organization that is representative of the diversity found in this country.”

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