The International Brotherhood of Teamsters submitted a report to the U.S. Department of Justice urging it to block the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, warning of the impact that it could have on thousands of entertainment workers, including 15,000 Teamsters members who work in the motion picture industry.
“The film and television industry has been in a fragile and fluctuating state for the last several years and entertainment workers are simply trying to survive through that instabilit,” Teamsters Motion Picture Division Director Lindsay Dougherty said. “Another mega‑merger is the last thing this industry needs.”
Through the Teamsters’ motion picture division and Hollywood Local 399, Dougherty has been a vocal presence in entertainment labor against the wave of consolidation that has gripped the industry. Last fall, Dougherty and Hollywood Teamsters 399 connected the pause of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” over comments made by the late-night host on the death of Charlie Kirk to the merger of broadcast station companies Nexstar and Tegna, accusing FCC chair Brendan Carr of pressuring Nexstar into refusing to air the program.
But Teamsters’ criticism of the Paramount-Warner merger is now coming from the highest reaches of the union. General President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention and attended Donald Trump’s inauguration last year, also warned that the merger “threatens the livelihoods of the very workers who built these studios into industry giants.”
“We’ve seen what happens when corporations consolidate power: jobs disappear, production leaves American communities, and workers pay the price. The DOJ has a responsibility to stop deals that eliminate competition and harm working families,” O’Brien said. “Unless Paramount and Warner Bros. can guarantee enforceable protections for domestic production and labor standards, this merger can’t be allowed to move forward.”
But it is very uncertain how much action the DOJ will take against Paramount Skydance, as the company recently cleared a 10-day statutory waiting period for the antitrust division to request further information on the merger. Meanwhile, the DOJ abruptly settled an illegal monopoly case against Live Nation and Ticketmaster that sought to break up the two live event giants, forcing two dozen state attorneys general to try to continue the case on their own.
Paramount Skydance has expressed confidence that its merger with Warner will get regulatory approval, pledging to pay Warner $7 billion if the merger is blocked and an estimated $650 million “ticking” fee to shareholders for every quarter in which the merger is not finalized starting in 2027.
The company has also hired Makan Delrahim, who served as head of the DOJ Antitrust Division during Trump’s first term, as its Chief Legal Officer, furthering its ties to the Trump Administration as Delrahim has sought to expedite the regulatory process by sending the DOJ required information about the merger even before Warner Bros. chose Paramount’s revised $111 billion offer over an $82.7 billion offer from Netflix that it had chosen in December.
“We will work incredibly collaboratively with regulators to ensure that we get a quick path to closing and are confident in our ability to achieve that goal,” Paramount CEO David Ellison told analysts.
