Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent remarks about striking Hollywood workers did not go over well.
In an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box earlier this month at the Sun Valley Conference in Idaho—dubbed “summer camp for billionaires”—Iger said that the simultaneous actors’ and writers’ strikes added to widespread existing entertainment industry disruption. Both unions are pushing for a slew of reforms, including increased base and residual pay, as well as stronger regulations on the use of artificial intelligence in contract negotiations.
“I understand any labor organization’s desire to work on behalf of its members to get the most compensation and to be compensated fairly based on the value that they deliver,” Iger said, mentioning that a month earlier, Disney agreed to a contract with the Directors Guild of America. “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 a set of challenges that this business is already facing that is quite frankly very disruptive and dangerous.”
The backlash was swift and strong, as celebrities and average social media users alike called him out for his comments.
“He stuck his foot in it so bad that, you notice, they’re not letting any of the other CEOs open their mouths,” Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists president Fran Drescher said during an interview with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. “There he is, sitting in his designer clothes, just got off his private yacht, at the billionaires’ camp, telling us we’re unrealistic. When he is making $78,000 a day. How do you deal with someone like that? Who is so tone-deaf? Are you an ignoramus?”
Actor Sean Gunn said Iger should “take a look in the mirror,” and David Simon, creator of TV show The Wire, tweeted out a short message to the CEO: “F*** you, Bob Iger.”
Iger—who returned to Disney as CEO last November after his successor Bob Chapek was ousted—receives base pay of $1 million a year, with an annual bonus of $1 million and approximately $25 million in stock awards. His expected $27 million salary for 2023 would be 535 times that of the Disney employee median ($54,256), according to an analysis by Insider. He recently signed on to continue as CEO through 2026.
By comparison, SAG-AFTRA actors made a median salary of $46,960 in 2021, with the lower quartile making an average of $30,040, according to SAG-AFTRA’s national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. And while residuals—payments to union members who worked on productions for reruns and other post-release airings—used to be enough to supplement an annual salary, many actors and writers receive pennies for their work in the streaming era.
Three PR experts whom Fortune spoke with say that Iger likely deviated from his media training, and his remarks come across as lacking in empathy, particularly in light of the huge pay gap between top management and average workers. It’s a lesson in what business leaders should avoid doing when making public comments on contentious issues—and why it’s important to stick to the script.
“It was a misstep from a communication standpoint,” says Stephanie Mattera, academic director and clinical assistant professor of marketing and public relations at New York University. “That’s not what people want to hear. People already survived a pandemic. They had financial challenges during that time. We’re dealing with inflation. Again, that economic disparity or pay ratio that we see between CEOs and the everyday worker, is still huge.”
Iger’s comments over the strike were a “little bit of a bad look,” says Jason Mudd, CEO and managing partner at Axia Public Relations. “He’s calling out the people who are demonstrating or picketing or boycotting; he’s calling them unreasonable. And they’re looking at him, and his lifestyle, and his income level, and cushy situation, and calling him unreasonable.”
Andrew Gilman, president and CEO of CommCore Consulting Group, said Iger broke a cardinal rule of PR—not repeating or introducing negative ideas, whether asked about them or not.
“If you think it was disappointing, let the university professor [or] a labor expert make those comments, that it’s ‘unrealistic,’ as opposed to you doing that,” says Gilman.
But Mudd adds that although Iger’s tone was harsh, and the reaction against him has been considerable, his comments may have been a negotiating tactic to set union expectations low so that Disney doesn’t have to “start from such a high number.”
“It may not be the best look, he may be losing in the court of public opinion, [but] he’s getting paid the big bucks to take a bad rap, ultimately, so he can get what the organization is looking for,” said Mudd.
What about the other entertainment bosses?
The backlash against Iger has been outsize compared with other studio CEOs who have also been swept up in the Hollywood strikes. Although some have commented on the strike, none have been singled out in the same way that Iger has.
Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish said at the onset of the Writers Guild of America strike in May that the company had “many levers to pull, and that’ll allow us to manage through this strike, even if it’s for an extended duration.” And both Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said they could weather a writers’ strike thanks to their vast content libraries.
It’s likely no mystery why most of them have stayed silent since Iger’s interview, and experts say their comms teams are probably advising them to tread carefully.
“PR people are advising them to be cautious. They’re already naturally cautious—that’s how they get and stay in these positions, [by] not putting themselves out there too soon,” says Mudd. “[Iger] was out there, he did it, and the response has got other people thinking twice before doing it, I’m sure.”
In contrast to Iger, when Sarandos talked about the strike on an earnings call last week, he portrayed himself as a man of the people, and mentioned his father was a union electrician.
“I remember his local because that union was very much a part of our lives when I was growing up. And I also remember on more than one occasion, my dad being out on strike. And I remember that because it takes an enormous toll on your family, financially and emotionally,” he said. He added that Netflix was “super committed” to reaching an agreement as soon as possible.
“His positionality was so good,” Mattera says of Sarandos. “He had empathy, and he led with his humanity. That’s what CEOs need to do.”
Doing damage control
Since Iger’s comments, Disney has remained silent on the ongoing strike.
Gilman thinks that moving forward, the company will better prepare Iger and other executives to answer strike-related questions. “I think he will, hopefully, use better, more neutral language. You’d probably say: ‘We value our writers, we value our directors, this is a tough era for our industry,’” says Gilman.
He would also advise Disney to start looking for actionable ways to repair its relationship with writers and actors when the strike is over.
“Where do you want to be as a company in your relationship to talent, three months, six months, eight months out?” says Gilman. That includes making clear the company values talent, and holding town halls with writers and actors.
“Sit down, do your walk arounds, have your town halls, be willing to take the tough questions because you need these people,” Gilman says. “You don‘t want to be playing tennis across the net. You want to be working together.”
