union

Tens of thousands of Los Angeles County workers walked off their jobs and onto picket lines Tuesday, amid what their union described as a failure by the county to fairly bargain for a new contract.

SEIU Local 721, which represents roughly 55,000 workers, began a two-day strike Monday evening with social workers, nurses, clerical workers and other public employees walking off the job. The union said this is the first time in county history that all its members have joined a strike.

As a result, libraries, nonurgent health clinics and parks are closed. Public service counters throughout the county will be moving more slowly. Wildfire debris clearance may be paused.

A sea of workers in SEIU Local 721’s signature royal purple T-shirts descended on the county Hall of Administration in downtown L.A. on Tuesday for a rally marking the first full day of the strike.

Mike Long, a spokesperson for the union, said 14 members were arrested for refusing to disperse at a march after the rally, a tactic, he said, meant to underscore the severity of the situation.

The impetus for the strike, union leaders said, was 44 labor law violations allegedly committed by the county, including retaliation and contracting of jobs that are supposed to be filled by union workers. Union members said they were also insulted by the pay offered by county officials, who have said they can’t afford significant increases due to a dizzying number of financial woes.

“Does anyone remember what they tried to give us in the fall? Zeroes,” said union head David Green as workers dinged purple cowbells at the downtown rally. “Do we deserve zeros?”

L.A. County Chief Executive Fesia Davenport said county officials have “moved off” a zero raise offer in recent weeks but remained cautious about what they could offer.

“We don’t want to negotiate ourselves into a structural deficit,” Davenport said in an interview Monday. “We want to hold the line.”

Otherwise, she said, the county might have to cut positions down the road, similar to what Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has proposed. Last week, Bass released a budget proposal that included 1,650 layoffs to help close a nearly $1-billion deficit fueled in part by employee raises the city agreed to last year.

The county said it is now offering SEIU Local 721 members a $5,000 bonus in the first year of the contract, as well as a cost-of-living adjustment and an additional bonus.

“The County is offering what we believe is a fair three-year compensation package, considering the tremendous budgetary pressures we face,” Davenport’s office said in a statement.

Steve Koffroth, SEIU’s chief contract negotiator, said the county waited until the last moment to respond to the union’s first proposal for a new contract. The previous contract expired at the end of March.

“We got it to them before Christmas, and they sat on it for months,” Koffroth told the booing crowd.

When county officials made a counteroffer, he said, “they came with a pittance.”

The county had initially said it couldn’t afford raises this year because of wildfire costs, a massive sex abuse settlement and the loss of federal grants. Davenport said the union’s initial salary proposals could have cost the county billions of dollars.

Union members allege the county has spent too much money on outside contract workers rather than filling thousands of vacancies. Many speakers at the rally pointed to a union-led study last December that found the county spent billions on private firms, in what amounted to a “taxpayer-to-private-sector-pipeline.”

The county dismissed the report as a “misleading and erroneous” negotiation tactic.

Union members said the reliance on contractors has been particularly apparent in healthcare, where they said that vacancies are temporarily filled by highly paid contract workers.

“How would you feel if someone comes into your hospital for three weeks and makes four times your salary and leaves you,” said Theresa Velasco, a member of the union’s executive board, who works as a community health worker at Rancho Los Amigos, the county rehabilitation hospital.

Aside from their commercial prowess, “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” don’t seem to have much in common. One is a PG-rated, special effects-heavy comedy based on a video game with a huge fan base, and the other is an original Ryan Coogler-directed, R-rated period thriller with vampires.

However, both went viral online in ways that drove their success at the box office, in a boon to struggling theater owners and the studio that backed both projects, Warner Bros., which was in dire need of a pair of wins after a rough several months.

“Minecraft,” co-produced by Legendary with a reported production budget of $150 million, has grossed $816 million worldwide, while the acclaimed $90-million “Sinners” has collected $162 million. The latter film grossed $45 million domestically during its second weekend, a drop of only 6% from its opening — a clear sign that the movie has become a must-see.

The common thread is that both films created a wave of excitement on social media that the studios were able to capitalize on to create a cultural moment.

With “A Minecraft Movie,” for example, screenings took on a “Rocky Horror Picture Show”-like atmosphere for Gen Z moviegoers, with audiences shouting lines back to the screen and videos of the mayhem taking over TikTok. (If the phrases “Chicken Jockey” and “I am Steve” mean nothing to you, it’s probably easier to Google it than to have me explain.)

The madness in the auditoriums has understandably irked theater operators and unsuspecting patrons, especially when one attendee brought a live chicken into a showing. Nonetheless, it has clearly contributed to the film’s popularity, and Warner Bros. and Legendary are cashing in on the momentum. On Monday, the studios announced a series of “Block Party Edition” screenings, encouraging fans to sing and talk during the movie.

For “Sinners,” the tenor of the reactions have been far different but were no less helpful for the box office. The company was able to lean on the enthusiasm and raw, emotional responses that moviegoers, including social media influencers, were having to the film.

None of this was expected, said Warner Bros. marketing co-lead Christian Davin. But it helped expand the audiences beyond people who were already fans of the “Minecraft” game, Coogler, “Sinners” star Michael B. Jordan and horror movies.

“At the outset of ‘Minecraft,’ did we think that people were gonna be screaming ‘Chicken Jockey’ back to the screen on opening weekend? Absolutely not,” Davin said. “At the outset of ‘Sinners,’ did we think that there was going to be this entire discourse on TikTok about various scenes? … But as we started to see those things, we started to fan the flames.”

The two have key lessons for marketers as they contend with intense competition for audiences’ attention and the unique interests and habits of younger consumers, which few people in Hollywood seem to understand.

At a time when audiences’ attention spans are short and constantly pulled in multiple directions, studios have to work harder than ever, especially in the last days of the campaign, executives said.

The Gen Z audience — so crucial to “A Minecraft Movie’s” performance — is suspicious of anything that feels overly corporate or inauthentic, which can pose challenges for marketing teams.

This was certainly the case for the early “Minecraft” campaign, which got off to a rocky start. The first teaser trailer was pilloried online by fans of the game, who were fiercely protective of the property. “Minecraft,” after all, is a game that rewards creativity, so players tend to feel a sense of ownership. What are you doing to our thing? the message seemed to be.

So the studios had to adjust. The second trailer included a cheeky intro (“Minecraft trailer, take two”), which acknowledged the misstep. From there, fans started to come around, sometimes begrudgingly. A key factor, executives said, was the involvement of Mojang Studios, the Stockholm-based developer behind “Minecraft,” which promoted the movie heavily, including with activations in the game itself.

From the start with both “Minecraft” and “Sinners,” it was all about listening to the audience and being willing to adapt, said Warner Bros. Pictures global marketing co-lead Dana Nussbaum. Another instance was the introduction of a Lava Chicken “menu hack” at McDonald’s through the companies’ co-branding initiative (again, if you know, you know).

“The audience will tell you every single time,” Nussbaum said. “And I think as long as you’re listening and you’re unafraid of being flexible, that’s where you can win.”

Nussbaum and Davin were tapped to lead Warner Bros.’ film marketing efforts following the dismissal of marketing chief Josh Goldstine in January, which was widely seen as a risky move, coming ahead of a high-stakes slate of films including “Superman” from James Gunn and “One Battle After Another” by Paul Thomas Anderson.

The people who made “Minecraft” — including stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa and director Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite”) — understood that the campaign wouldn’t work if players felt that they were being force-fed their own game back to them.

That was part of the rationale behind calling it “A Minecraft Movie,” rather than “The Minecraft Movie,” said Legendary Entertainment marketing chief Blair Rich.

Getting the quirky comedy right was also crucial. The “Minecraft” example is particularly instructive because of what it says about Gen Z, which responded to the chance to go out and celebrate something their parents don’t necessarily understand.

“For these fans, the game is such a strong community … They have pride of ownership, and it’s their game. It’s not some corporation’s game,” Rich said. “And so the marketing had to always draft off of that sensibility.”

For both movies, influencers played an important role. Podcaster and movie influencer Juju Green (a.k.a. Straw Hat Goofy), for example, interviewed Coogler for “Sinners” and promoted the film with video breakdowns on social media. Those moves helped stoke interest among Black audiences and cinephiles more broadly.

“A Minecraft Movie’s” marketing strategy leaned heavily on digital influencers, even bringing some on set. Dozens of Minecraft gaming influencers were brought to the movie’s global premiere in London, where they had access to talent. The companies made sure to get not just the video game influencers but also general entertainment and family creators.

That helped lead to a meme-fueled campaign. One influencer went viral after singing a bombastic parody of “Pure Imagination” with catchphrases from the movie.

It’s the kind of thing that works for young audiences. According to a recent Deloitte survey of U.S. consumers, the majority of Gen Zers say they feel a stronger personal connection to social media creators than to TV personalities and actors.

Studio executives have been picking over both movies for tangible lessons as box-office revenue overall struggles to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood labor strikes and the long-term decline in theatrical attendance. Are video game movies replacing superhero movies? Does “Sinners” show that audiences want more original films?

One key takeaway is that audiences seek experiences in theaters that can’t be replicated at home. “A Minecraft Movie’s” audience participation aspect is an obvious example.

That doesn’t mean every movie needs a “Gentleminions” campaign or “Wicked”-style sing-along. “Sinners” has this advantage too but in a different way, where audiences are having intense emotional responses in the theater, Nussbaum noted.

“It was an incredibly emotional and visceral reaction that people were having and were wanting to have in groups and in communities,” she said. “And I think that was what was so rewarding about it.”

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About 55,000 L.A. County workers are poised to walk off their jobs Monday night, disrupting public services from healthcare and social work to libraries and parks.

Leaders of SEIU Local 721 said the two-day strike will start at 7 p.m. Monday, sparked by what they characterized as a failure by the county to fairly negotiate a new contract.

“Clearly, they thought they were above the law. They thought we would never strike,” said union head David Green in a statement. “They thought wrong.”

The union said it will be the first time all of its members walk off the job.

The strike, which is set to last until 7 p.m. Wednesday, will touch nearly all county departments. Libraries and some healthcare clinics will be closed, though hospitals will remain open. Wildfire debris cleanup may be paused. Public service counters at the Hall of Administration could be shut down.

Union leaders said the impetus for the strike was a string of 44 labor law violations allegedly committed by the county, including retaliation and contracting out work that’s supposed to be done by union members. The union’s contract expired at the end of March.

The union has also expressed outrage over what it described as an insultingly low pay offer. The county had initially said it couldn’t afford raises this year because of wildfire costs, a massive sex abuse settlement and the loss of federal grants. L.A. County Chief Executive Fesia Davenport said the union’s initial salary proposals could have cost the county billions.

Davenport said county officials have “moved off” a zero raise offer in recent weeks but remained cautious about what they could offer.

“We don’t want to negotiate ourselves into a structural deficit,” said Davenport in an interview Monday. “We want to hold the line.”

Otherwise, she said, the county might have to cut positions down the road, similar to what Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has proposed. Last week, Bass released a budget proposal that included 1,650 layoffs to help close a nearly $1-billion deficit fueled in part by employee raises the city agreed to last year.

Davenport also emphasized that she wanted to protect the county’s credit rating. The county has held onto its AAA rating from S&P Global Ratings, despite the looming $4-billion sex abuse settlement, due to its reserves, “manageable debt burden” and deep tax base, according to a release from the credit rating agency. S&P, meanwhile, recently downgraded the city of L.A.’s rating due to its “weakening financial position and an emerging structural imbalance.”

The strike comes as other unions have begun to publicly chastise the L.A. County Board of Supervisors for offers made at the bargaining table. A coalition of unions representing county first responders made a public plea last week for a pay bump, arguing that their members’ efforts during the unprecedented January wildfires had not been properly rewarded at the bargaining table.