Welcome, welcome! If you’re seeing this, then you’re a production or distribution company dealing with the consequences of the current writer and actor strikes, and either your internal affairs or one of your friendly competitors wants you to do your part in ending the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes! No judgment, these things happen. As always, your first step should be to politely tell your wayward employees to come back — a lot of the time, the lower class likes to imitate everyone else by pretending they’re reasonable, which is both adorable and advantageous! Just let them know that you don’t think anything needs to change, and that you’re willing to forget everything if they just come back. Usually, that should be en— oh. Hm. That’s not — that’s not in line with the profile I have for union workers. Okay, so they said no. Sure. Well, obviously you can’t agree to a good-faith negotiation, that’d be absurd. Lucky for you, there are plenty of alternatives. Let’s look at some Guerilla Negotiation Tactics™©.

Tactic One: Change Their Environment

So you might not know this, but strikers, unlike your average Joe, actually don’t have any servants to fan them with giant palm leaves. Truly, the poor put themselves through so much. If you trim back the trees they’re striking under, there’s no way they’ll continue their little crusade without proper shade. Remember, these aren’t people who’ve worked hard — they’re likely to quit their strike as soon as it gets tricky, and then they’ll go back to being grateful for everything you do for them. Ideally they’d be striking on your property and under your trees so you could trim them freely, but if not, don’t worry! Really, what is public property if not property that isn’t yet private? The fines for violating property laws are hardly of any consequence, truly a drop in the bucket compared to meeting the communist demands of the striker. If you can bribe nearby store owners to withhold service, making them travel further for water, that’d also work a treat, but often the working-class of other industries will refuse you out of ‘solidarity’, which is what they call sticking their noses where they don’t belong. Do what you can, and you’re sure to take the wind out of the strike’s sails!

Tactic Two: Start A Letter Campaign

It’s alright if they’re still out there, pithy signs and all — unions can be stubborn little pests! It’s time to identify the leaders of the strike: even though it’s partly an actor’s strike, famous strikers are often just figureheads. You can’t let your guard down. As middle- or lower-class citizens, union organizers are naturally greedier and more selfish than the majority of people. Your actors and writers may be on strike, but you should have plenty of paper pushers — use them! Find organizers’ addresses. Don’t worry about privacy regulations. It’s like my mother always said: “If the punishment is a fine, then there’s no need to whine!” Now, it’s time to start a letter-writing campaign. Politely write to the leaders and inform them of the consequences of their actions. You may be forced to reach out to your brother-in-law in the medical industry and request that strike leaders’ family members be moved to care more befitting of their station, or to your second cousin in real estate to ensure that when they lose their current home due to their own negligence, banks in the area may not want to give a mortgage to someone so flighty. Have some fun with it! Creative typography, singing telegrams delivered by increasingly buff men, there are so many fun and creative ways you can help union leaders come to the right conclusions. 

Tactic Three: Employee Outreach

Every strike has a couple of people who want to get with the program. A few truly reasonable individuals understand that fighting for their rights to their own likenesses and fair residuals is wrong, and is theft from us, the good guys. Let them cross that picket line right back into our loving arms. And let it not be said that we don’t reward good behavior: keep your scabs employed through the strike with our series of intimate, avant-garde reality shows. Experimental, contemporary plays like “Your House Is Under Foreclosure” and “Burglar In The House” let your actors stretch their improv chops with feedback from small, intimate audiences. For those more intimidatingly inclined, reality shows like “Mugging People In A Dark Alley,” hosted in the alleyway on the way home for the strike organizers, present a great opportunity to really work on living in the characters they play. We understand that it’s difficult to pull off stage combat when one participant doesn’t know they’re on stage, so feel free to let your actors just straight-up whale on strikers to get the point across. Some line-crossers may be a little too recognizable to be believable for your audience, and that’s fine, but a little tricky. You may want to work one-on-one with them identifying personal details about other big names that might encourage them to come back into the fold — or, if that’s a no-go, famous faces are also great for changing public opinion! Press conferences, news slots, any opportunity to have them discuss the benefits of ending the strike and the absurdity of demanding more from us lovely, hardworking corporations.

Tactic 4: Hire An Outside Contractor

Right, so your strikers should be gone by now, but mistakes happen! I promised that you absolutely will not have to listen to what the union members think they want, and I intend to keep that promise. If they’re still bugging you we may have to get serious with a tried and true tactic for avoiding paying benefits and getting unsavory things done — private contracting. You have resources. It’s time to ask your assistant to find you a person of poor character. Assistants are middle-class, so they’ll know someone. Discretion is of the utmost importance for this tidbit. If word gets out about this genius bit of business strategy, you may find yourself in a bit of a legal pickle! So, take your person of poor character and hire them to organize an intervention between themself and any large figureheads for the strike. It should be private and considerate of the organizer’s schedule — any time they may find themselves alone for an extended period of time. It wouldn’t do to catch them when someone else might be expecting them. Have your people move them to a second location, free of distractions — it’s important that for this time, the organizer be entirely alone with the person of poor character. And well, if it becomes clear that your interventee cannot be trusted to act in their own best interest by ending their involvement with the strike and the strike breaks down without its rallying point in their midst, then that’s just a handy bonus! For best results, multiple interventions at the same time will create concern in the group about who might need an intervention next, causing some to make the right decision and come back to our happy, healthy, and safe work environment.

Tactic 5: Get Back Into Having Henchmen
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Don’t henchmen have a union too? Isn’t that why we switched to having minions?” Yes they do, but they can’t strike until 2027 when their current contract expires, so until then go crazy! Invest some extra cash flow into teams of large henchmen with guns to solve your strike problem, permanently! You’ll want them to kidnap strikers for the sake of throwing them into your giant volcano. For cost efficiency this works best if your private island has its own volcano, but if not just buy another one that does, or pay to install a giant lava pit. Strikers can be disposed of via lava one by one, or if you can hack it, a skilled enough private security henchman team can round them up into groups. Don’t stress about subtlety. Your attorney general’s son wants a new Spider-Verse movie ASAP, and he isn’t up for reelection for a while, so a solid enough donation and the law will be on your side. This should only be used as a last resort, because it is a lot of staff to replace. But on the flip side, it ends a strike very neatly! No muss, no fuss, no strikers. And hiring new staff should be a pinch— with AI, you don’t need those pesky employees anyway. Just plug ‘Star Wars sequel military propaganda in the style of Wes Anderson’ into ChatGPT and let the internet do the work for you.

Welcome, welcome! If you’re seeing this, then you’re a production or distribution company dealing with the consequences of the current writer and actor strikes, and either your internal affairs or one of your friendly competitors wants you to do your part in ending the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strikes! No judgment, these things happen. As always, your first step should be to politely tell your wayward employees to come back — a lot of the time, the lower class likes to imitate everyone else by pretending they’re reasonable, which is both adorable and advantageous! Just let them know that you don’t think anything needs to change, and that you’re willing to forget everything if they just come back. Usually, that should be en— oh. Hm. That’s not — that’s not in line with the profile I have for union workers. Okay, so they said no. Sure. Well, obviously you can’t agree to a good-faith negotiation, that’d be absurd. Lucky for you, there are plenty of alternatives. Let’s look at some Guerilla Negotiation Tactics™©.

Tactic One: Change Their Environment

So you might not know this, but strikers, unlike your average Joe, actually don’t have any servants to fan them with giant palm leaves. Truly, the poor put themselves through so much. If you trim back the trees they’re striking under, there’s no way they’ll continue their little crusade without proper shade. Remember, these aren’t people who’ve worked hard — they’re likely to quit their strike as soon as it gets tricky, and then they’ll go back to being grateful for everything you do for them. Ideally they’d be striking on your property and under your trees so you could trim them freely, but if not, don’t worry! Really, what is public property if not property that isn’t yet private? The fines for violating property laws are hardly of any consequence, truly a drop in the bucket compared to meeting the communist demands of the striker. If you can bribe nearby store owners to withhold service, making them travel further for water, that’d also work a treat, but often the working-class of other industries will refuse you out of ‘solidarity’, which is what they call sticking their noses where they don’t belong. Do what you can, and you’re sure to take the wind out of the strike’s sails!

Tactic Two: Start A Letter Campaign

It’s alright if they’re still out there, pithy signs and all — unions can be stubborn little pests! It’s time to identify the leaders of the strike: even though it’s partly an actor’s strike, famous strikers are often just figureheads. You can’t let your guard down. As middle- or lower-class citizens, union organizers are naturally greedier and more selfish than the majority of people. Your actors and writers may be on strike, but you should have plenty of paper pushers — use them! Find organizers’ addresses. Don’t worry about privacy regulations. It’s like my mother always said: “If the punishment is a fine, then there’s no need to whine!” Now, it’s time to start a letter-writing campaign. Politely write to the leaders and inform them of the consequences of their actions. You may be forced to reach out to your brother-in-law in the medical industry and request that strike leaders’ family members be moved to care more befitting of their station, or to your second cousin in real estate to ensure that when they lose their current home due to their own negligence, banks in the area may not want to give a mortgage to someone so flighty. Have some fun with it! Creative typography, singing telegrams delivered by increasingly buff men, there are so many fun and creative ways you can help union leaders come to the right conclusions. 

Tactic Three: Employee Outreach

Every strike has a couple of people who want to get with the program. A few truly reasonable individuals understand that fighting for their rights to their own likenesses and fair residuals is wrong, and is theft from us, the good guys. Let them cross that picket line right back into our loving arms. And let it not be said that we don’t reward good behavior: keep your scabs employed through the strike with our series of intimate, avant-garde reality shows. Experimental, contemporary plays like “Your House Is Under Foreclosure” and “Burglar In The House” let your actors stretch their improv chops with feedback from small, intimate audiences. For those more intimidatingly inclined, reality shows like “Mugging People In A Dark Alley,” hosted in the alleyway on the way home for the strike organizers, present a great opportunity to really work on living in the characters they play. We understand that it’s difficult to pull off stage combat when one participant doesn’t know they’re on stage, so feel free to let your actors just straight-up whale on strikers to get the point across. Some line-crossers may be a little too recognizable to be believable for your audience, and that’s fine, but a little tricky. You may want to work one-on-one with them identifying personal details about other big names that might encourage them to come back into the fold — or, if that’s a no-go, famous faces are also great for changing public opinion! Press conferences, news slots, any opportunity to have them discuss the benefits of ending the strike and the absurdity of demanding more from us lovely, hardworking corporations.

Tactic 4: Hire An Outside Contractor

Right, so your strikers should be gone by now, but mistakes happen! I promised that you absolutely will not have to listen to what the union members think they want, and I intend to keep that promise. If they’re still bugging you we may have to get serious with a tried and true tactic for avoiding paying benefits and getting unsavory things done — private contracting. You have resources. It’s time to ask your assistant to find you a person of poor character. Assistants are middle-class, so they’ll know someone. Discretion is of the utmost importance for this tidbit. If word gets out about this genius bit of business strategy, you may find yourself in a bit of a legal pickle! So, take your person of poor character and hire them to organize an intervention between themself and any large figureheads for the strike. It should be private and considerate of the organizer’s schedule — any time they may find themselves alone for an extended period of time. It wouldn’t do to catch them when someone else might be expecting them. Have your people move them to a second location, free of distractions — it’s important that for this time, the organizer be entirely alone with the person of poor character. And well, if it becomes clear that your interventee cannot be trusted to act in their own best interest by ending their involvement with the strike and the strike breaks down without its rallying point in their midst, then that’s just a handy bonus! For best results, multiple interventions at the same time will create concern in the group about who might need an intervention next, causing some to make the right decision and come back to our happy, healthy, and safe work environment.

Tactic 5: Get Back Into Having Henchmen