The simplicity of subscribing to streaming services like Netflix also makes them simple to unsubscribe from. All you have to do is click “Cancel Membership.”
It could be the easiest yet most important boycott in decades. Yet the fact that union members and their liberal supporters are not advocating vociferously for such a boycott reveals deep flaws in today’s labor movement.
In 2023, Netflix’s stock has already soared over 40 percent. Those who think that the current actors’ and writers’ strikes are having much of an impact on investors’ outlook for Netflix’s future profits are fooling themselves. Executives at Netflix, and at the many other tech companies seeking to automate jobs, care far more about losing customers than employees.
The reason this particular strike is so important is that it directly addresses the threat of artificial intelligence to labor. The actors and writers’ unions are worried that text generators like ChatGPT could write screenplays and that an actor’s image could be used to create CGI characters without any humans involved. If consumers don’t show solidarity with actors and writers now, it will be their jobs that AI comes for next.
It is precisely such AI that investors driving up Netflix’s stock price are so excited about, despite the strike. Wall Street hopes that writers, actors and ultimately every costly human employee will be replaced by machines. The tech sector has been highly successful at automating its workforce in the past. Consider that Netflix, which has a stock market value of almost $190 billion, had 12,800 employees at the end of 2022. Blockbuster, Netflix’s original rival in home video distribution, once employed 84,000 people and was valued at $3 billion in the late 1990s before Netflix’s automated model wiped it out.
Labor is not a priority to tech companies; their algorithms and customers are. Any boycott-induced lapse in Netflix’s subscriber base will send its stock reeling and bring its executives to the bargaining table. I say this based on 25 years of writing about the stock market and fund managers, its top investors. Money managers follow those Netflix subscriber numbers religiously.
For instance, in April of 2022, when Netflix announced that it had lost 200,000 subscribers and expected to lose another 2 million in the year’s second quarter, its stock fell 35 percent in one day, losing $50 billion in market value. That’s when the company had 222 million subscribers. A potential subscriber loss of just 1 percent crushed the stock.
Netflix now has 238 million subscribers. How hard would it be for some of the world’s most influential people — celebrities like Meryl Streep or George Clooney who have joined the picket line — to get their loyal fans to boycott Netflix? Yet there seems little interest in this from the union, or from liberal fans who would rather debate the feminist merits of a film like “Barbie” than actually help the artists who created it.
This presents a stark contrast with right-wing activists, who have employed boycotts as an effective weapon. Anheuser-Busch Inbev recently announced that its quarterly U.S. revenue fell 10.5 percent from a year ago “primarily due to the volume decline of Bud Light.” That loss resulted from a boycott by conservatives outraged over the fact the company employed transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in online Bud Light ads. In response, the company quickly replaced Mulvaney’s online advertising spot with its usual nostalgia-infused fare, and it put the two executives responsible for the Mulvaney Instagram campaign on “extended leave.”
So far, the union representing screen, television and radio actors (SAG-AFTRA) has remained mum on the boycott issue. The few stories you will find about boycotting typically mention remarks by striking fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, who wrote on Tumblr that the WGA “has not called for anyone to boycott any of the streamers or to stop their streaming services yet. It’s not ‘crossing the picket line’ to watch something on a network that we are striking against…I’ve seen it being discussed, but until the WGA calls for it, I don’t suggest doing it.”
Gaiman also reblogged an oft-quoted post from sci-fi writer Ben Paddon: “Continuing to go see your movies, watch your shows, stream your favorites is one of the best ways to support the WGA and SAG-AFTRA right now. This content has been made, and it makes money. It helps immensely to show the studios the value of the work that writers and actors do.”
Such remarks are shortsighted and naïve, ignoring the fact that boycotts can be targeted to send clear specific messages. Netflix is the optimal target, as it is what Wall Street calls a “pure play” on streaming, as opposed to competitors like Apple and Amazon that have other revenue sources. Once Netflix is brought to heel, Disney can be next.
Netflix remains beloved by Wall Street and has $8.6 billion in cash on its balance sheet. Meanwhile, some 87 percent of SAG-AFTRA actors don’t make the $26,000 a year necessary to qualify for their union’s healthcare benefits. The residuals those members receive from Netflix are likely pennies — or nothing.
In contrast, Gaiman, who is an executive producer of “Good Omens” on Amazon and “The Sandman” on Netflix, may by receiving sizable checks from streamers, which would indicate a conflict of interest in his statements.
Worse, SAG-AFTRA has allowed work to continue for A-List celebrities such as Anne Hathaway and Dakota Fanning on over 100 independent films, arguing that such projects don’t benefit the big studios. But those films ultimately will provide a fresh supply of streaming content to sustain Netflix’s business.
Fran Drescher, SAG-AFTRA’s president, has said negotiations could take months as the big studios have so far been reluctant to meet. But with billions in their coffers, it behooves companies to wait. Such stalling tactics have worked to stifle strikers recently at Starbucks. The question is: without boycott pressure, how long can the average SAG-AFTRA worker hold out?
Lewis Braham is the author of “The House That Bogle Built,” a book about the history of Vanguard funds. His articles have appeared in numerous financial and business publications.