SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher has excoriated Disney CEO Bob Iger for his comments about the strike, calling them “repugnant” and “tone deaf.” While speaking to Variety, she said that Iger’s comments showed that he was out of touch with the reality of what actors and writers are facing. She pointed out that Iger makes millions of dollars a year, while many actors and writers are struggling to make ends meet. “I found them terribly repugnant and out of touch. Positively tone deaf. I don’t think it served him well. If I were that company, I would lock him behind doors and never let him talk to anybody about this, because it’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground with hard working people that don’t make anywhere near the salary he is making.”
She added, “High seven figures, eight figures, this is crazy money that they make, and they don’t care if they’re land barons of a medieval time.”
What had Bob Iger said?
Iger, for his part, said that he understood the desire of labour unions to get the best possible deal for their members, but that he believed the demands of SAG-AFTRA and the WGA were unrealistic. He said that the studios were already facing a number of challenges, and that the strikes were making things worse. He conducted his interview with CNBC at Sun Valley shortly before Drescher officially called for a SAG-AFTRA strike, initiating picketing on July 14. He said, “It’s very disturbing to me. We’ve talked about disruptive forces on this business and all the challenges we’re facing, the recovery from COVID which is ongoing, it’s not completely back. This is the worst time in the world to add to that disruption.”
He added, “I understand any labour organisation’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver. We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the directors guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business. We wanted to do the same thing with the writers, and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors. There’s a level of expectation that they have, that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
“What happens here is important because what’s happening to us is happening across all fields of labour, when employers make Wall Street and greed their priority and they forget about the essential contributors that make the machine run,” she said.
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