In a groundbreaking year for Hollywood labor, actors and writers united in a historic double strike to reshape an industry undergoing significant transformation. As the battles raged on AI implementation and fair compensation in the streaming age, the salaries of chief negotiators for striking unions, as well as the directors' union, were unveiled, positioning them as top earners in Hollywood.

According to the latest LM-2 filings from SAG-AFTRA, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director, secured the top spot with a gross salary of $1,016,182. Following closely behind was Russell Hollander, the national executive director of the Directors Guild of America, with a gross salary of $775,000. In third place came Ellen Stutzman, the executive director of the Writers Guild of America West, earning $682,692 in gross wages. These figures encompassed the 2023 Hollywood strikes, and the data was compiled from both 2024 and 2023 LM-2 reports, covering the period from January 2023 to April 2024.

Matthew Loeb, who had held the top position in IATSE for 16 years, secured the fourth spot with a gross salary of $553,487. Alvin Vincent Jr., the executive director for Actors' Equity, the Broadway actor and stage manager union, earned $437,528 during the same period. Cathy Repola, the outgoing national executive director of the Motion Picture Editors Guild, took home $374,210, while Lowell Peterson, the former executive director of WGA East, earned $349,061.

The leaders of major Teamsters unions in the entertainment industry, namely Thomas J. O'Donnell from Local 817 in the New York area and Lindsay Dougherty from Local 399 in Los Angeles, earned $312,325 and $272,962, respectively. It's important to note that the figures for Lindsay Dougherty were a combination of her salary as the principal officer for Local 399 and her earnings as a vp of the international union.

While some might perceive entertainment labor leaders' wages as disproportionately high, experts suggest they are not surprising given the industry's financial landscape. Marick Masters, a professor emeritus at Wayne State University Mike Ilitch School of Business, highlights that out of 12,753 employees from national labor unions, only 90 earned over $350,000 in 2023.

Robert Bruno, the director of the Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Labor and Employment Relations, adds that union leaders' salaries should be evaluated in the context of the mean or median earnings of union members, the size of the union, the contribution workers make to the industry, and the value of individual contracts. Additionally, comparing these salaries to what industry CEOs earn helps to contextualize the compensation of union leaders.

Amidst the discourse on labor wages, it is worth noting that Hollywood studios and streamers have not held back when it comes to compensating their CEOs. In 2023, while the double strike endured for months, top executives like Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, co-CEOs of Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and former Paramount president and CEO Bob Bakish all earned more than $30 million, nearly 30 times more than the reported earnings of Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.

As the Hollywood labor landscape continues to evolve, the debate surrounding fair compensation for industry professionals and union leaders remains a crucial topic that will shape the future of the entertainment industry.