Meet the Writers Strike's Secret Weapon: Hollywood Teamster Boss Lindsay Dougherty - Vanity Fair

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f--k around and find out

“We are the hammer to their pencil”: How a woman who “gives no f--ks” is determined to unite entertainment industry labor.

By Joy Press

May 17, 2023

Meet the Writers Strikes Secret Weapon Hollywood Teamster Boss Lindsay Dougherty

By Fred Nye.

Two weeks in, the writers strike already has at least one icon—and she’s not a writer. Lindsay Dougherty is a Teamster boss who heads up Los Angeles’s Local 399 and is director of the Teamsters Motion Picture Division, among other jobs. She got screenwriters’ attention when she appeared, along with other entertainment industry union heads, at the first big WGA members’ meeting after the strike was called against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, the association that represents film and television studios. Standing on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium, she told the crowd that the Teamster trucks that are so crucial to production would not cross picket lines. And she sent a raucous message that rang out through Hollywood: “What I’d like to say to the studios is: If you want to fuck around, you’re gonna find out.”

Sitting in her North Hollywood office under a photo of the late Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa, Dougherty smiles when I ask her about that speech. “Fuck around and find out,” she repeats quietly. “I’m angry, you know? Building this bond with the writers over the last six months has been great, realizing that writers fight every day for their livelihood, that we collectively have these issues.”

The people she represents in Local 399 are not just truckers; they include casting directors, location managers, prop warehouse workers, and animal trainers. Some of them might feel they have nothing in common with screenwriters and showrunners. “I think it’s important that we continue to say: We have to be together. Because the studios are together. They may not agree, but at the end of the day, they have one message,” says Dougherty, tapping her black-polished fingernails against her desk. The studios negotiate collectively via the AMPTP, enabling them to play various entertainment industry unions and guilds against one another. “These companies are not going to do us any favors. The studios would rather lose billions of dollars to starve out an industry than make money, because they’re teaching [us] a lesson.”

Dougherty says she was in the room for the first day of bargaining between the WGA and the AMPTP, and it was very disillusioning: “I was so upset because I knew deep in my core that the studios were not trying to make a deal with the writers…. I felt [the studios] were going through the motions just to get to this point, which was to put the writers out on strike.”

She believes the studios didn’t really have a sense of how this strike—and the slowdown that led up to it—would disrupt all of Hollywood. “This impacts not only the writers, it impacts all of the other unions and guilds. It impacts my members. We have people that haven’t worked for months—their health care and pensions are going to be impacted for years to come, and obviously their pocketbooks, their families, the bills they need to pay.”

Raised in Detroit by a union family (her father, Pat Dougherty, was a Teamster boss), Dougherty recalls a childhood of union meetings, food drives, and picket lines. “I definitely drank the [Teamster] Kool-Aid a long time ago,” she jokes. But she was also going to techno clubs when she was underage and dreaming of ditching Detroit for Hollywood. That self-professed “wild child” side is still visible, through the tattoos that cover her arms and her willingness (or maybe determination) to piss off the rich and powerful.

Although she wakes up to work out at 5 a.m. every day, “it still can’t beat the rage out of me,” Dougherty says wryly. “I don’t mind saying the F-bomb because I’m fucking pissed. It’s affecting all of us, because they’re being so spiteful and greedy.” Yet Teamsters’ refusal to cross WGA pickets has helped to shut down filming across the country, and writers are taking note. They are specifically noticing Dougherty, who has inspired respect (showrunner David Simon tweeted: “I hear Detroit and Hoffa every time this lady speaks”), as well as signs and a T-shirt designed by TV writer Dana Braziel-Solovy featuring Dougherty as Rosie the Riveter with her take-no-prisoners quote: “I’m stepping on dicks.”

Dougherty talks to Vanity Fair about calling out the studios, dealing with physical threats, and finding unity between Teamsters and screenwriters.

Vanity Fair: Talking to industry people for a recent story, I noticed class friction in Hollywood. Writers complain that actors get better pay and privilege, while grips and editors and truckers wonder what the hell writers are complaining about. Does that make it hard to unite people?

Lindsay Dougherty: I think the companies have done a really good job at dividing us. We hear it now, like, The writers aren’t gonna support you! But we are really communicating to our members the importance of sticking together and how we all collectively can help each other. Because we all have strengths and weaknesses. Our strength is on the ground. We are the hammer to their pencil. Local 399 has 6,500 members, but the political power and the strike funds and the things that the Teamsters come along with is important.

Teamster trucks are refusing to cross WGA picket lines, and that has waylaid a lot of productions. Do you get reports when your members don’t cross a picket line?

The picket line language that we have in the majority of our Teamster contracts gives us the ability to not cross and not be disciplined or terminated based on that. Teamsters don’t cross picket lines—that’s very much been in our DNA. But that’s been a difficult thing to manage. Because they’re the ones that are shutting it down, essentially, the drivers feel the pressure. We are very mindful of that—we want to make sure that they feel comfortable, that they’re not being retaliated against, and that they understand what they’re doing is noble, honorable, and, really, for the greater good for this industry. We are fighting for the livelihoods of all of our members, and for the future viability of their jobs.

Do your members have overlapping concerns with the WGA?

[The writers] have the AI battle, and we have autonomous vehicles, which is very much a part of this conversation. The studios and these companies squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. And theres also this very bad habit of [saying]: “Just work for free. If you want this job, do this for me.” Our casting directors are doing [unpaid] things to hone their skills on a constant basis, like going to theater. They have experience and knowledge that makes them a great casting director, and then to have a company not want to compensate them for that is just ridiculous. And on productions, we have members that are working 16 hours a day, 18 hours a day, 20. It’s really a conversation that needs to be had, because this isn’t the way that they need to do business. They’re doing it simply because it’s cheaper. And they’re doing it on the backs of our members.

You have a Jimmy Hoffa tattoo on your arm. How old were you when you got it?

[Pulls up her sleeve] Early 20s. So it’s actually gotta get touched up. He needs a little face-lift.

What other tattoos are on that arm?

It’s actually a labor strike. You can see labor, and then this is Jimmy Hoffa’s fist coming down on corporate pigs with a wheelbarrow filled with money. And then you can see, like, the SWAT police involved—there’s, like, a police car on fire. I don’t know why that would ever happen!

Your union is so traditionally male that it’s actually called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Have you had to be extra tough or push back on expectations projected onto you?

I was lucky because I had a lot of male mentors growing up. Especially my father, who said, “You’re gonna have to work harder than everybody else”—not just because I was a female, but also because I was his daughter and the conversation about nepotism is very much still talked about within unions. But it’s who I am too. I’m going to be 40 years old, and I give no fucks at this point in my life, which is very freeing as an adult woman. Some of the stuff that comes out of my mouth, people are like, Oh, my God! I’m like, Whatever, you hear a man saying that every damn day.

“You’re a woman, you shouldn’t swear!” I’ve heard all of it, and I dare you to say it to my fucking face, because my tongue is quick. And then they’re afraid.

Writer Dana Braziel-Solovy picketing with her Lindsay Dougherty-inspired sign.

Courtesy L.A. City Films

Have you had that problem with the studios? I’m guessing the answer is yes because you are laughing.

Every. Single. Person. I’m like: “I’m gonna listen to what you have to say, but you have to listen to what I have to say.” There’s a lot of people I can’t stand, but I still talk to them. When you’re doing a job like this, you have to be able to do that. But ego comes into play. I really call it the dick-swinging contest, because that’s pretty much what it is when I’m surrounded by men. It’s just jockeying for who’s the toughest when I’m not even here to say how tough I am or any of it. Let’s just do what we need to do and move on.

You recently tweeted an old photo of Hoffa covertly flipping the bird in order to mock the studios that are upset with you for standing by the WGA.

They were crying about it. They’re all upset about this: Why is she calling us the common enemy?

Did studio folks call you directly?

Oh, yeah, someone basically told me: Everyone’s watching what you’re saying. I’m like: Good, I’m glad I got your fucking attention! But you’re not obviously listening to what I’m saying—to get back to the bargaining table with the writers. They’re upset that I’m so angry. What did you expect I was going to do, just sit here and twiddle my thumbs until the writers strike is over? They’re not used to people calling them out publicly. And this is CEOs that were upset.

You regularly negotiate with the studios for your own members. And many of the studios have very different agendas and financial models, even though they negotiate collectively under the AMPTP. Do you have a sense of what their weak spots are?

Oh, yeah, for sure. They like to say they’re together. They’re not. They have important things for their respective businesses, and some of them are in a better spot, whether it’s with profits or subscriptions.

Everyone is speculating how long the writers strike will last. I’ve heard everything from July to October as a possible end point. Do you have a guesstimate?

The AMPTP is currently bargaining with DGA until June 2, which means they’re not interested in speaking to the writers right now. And then June 7, they have [formal negotiations] scheduled with SAG-AFTRA. Both of those contracts expire on June 30. Who knows what those negotiations are going to look like, whether they’re contentious or not, or if SAG’s going to complete bargaining with AMPTP by June 30? Until that’s done, we anticipate the AMPTP is not going to even speak to the WGA.

I think [studios] are going on the ’07/’08 plan [from the previous WGA strike] of what happened during that bargaining cycle with the guilds. But now things have changed. They have productions which they surely thought they were going to complete but they’re not, because the writers are effectively picketing and the Teamsters are holding the line, which is slowing production. So I think a priority of the Writers Guild is to make certain that they’re gonna cost them some revenue. If the companies want to continue to film, then they’re gonna find out. One of the companies told me: “This is the worst strike I’ve ever been through.” I’m like, Holy shit, you’ve obviously never seen a Teamster strike!

Have you had people threaten you physically?

Oh, yeah! But that is not anything new. When you talk about being a female? Harassed? Yeah, for sure. When that kind of stuff happens, obviously it’s disconcerting. Like what happened with Gretchen Whitmer—she has to literally be afraid for her life. So I’ve always been careful about who I’m with, where I’m traveling. Especially if I’m speaking out against these giant corporations. I have conversations with other people that are doing the same thing, and we’re very mindful that we’re protected because there’s been incidents in the past. That’s why I usually don’t go to places by myself.

It’s part of it, unfortunately. But I think as a female, you just get more attacks in general anyway. Because how dare a female be in any kind of position of power? But I’m used to it. You gotta be tough—I wouldn’t have lasted in this job if I wasn’t.

You seem to be making an argument that you don’t want to piss off the Teamsters or the writers, because between the two groups, they can decimate you on multiple levels.

Who would have thought that the writers and the Teamsters are so much alike? Our thumb in the eye just looks a little bit different.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.