What Were Contracts Like Before COVID?
One of the major benefits of belonging to a union, and one of the major powers that unions have, is the ability to collectively bargain. The AFL-CIO defines collective bargaining as "the process in which working people, through their unions, negotiate contracts with their employers to determine their terms of employment, including pay, benefits, hours, leave, job health and safety policies, ways to balance work and family, and more." These contracts are often negotiated by the union with major producers of their type of work, leading to a standard set of contracts that producers must abide by. Even prior to COVID, though, there has been displeasure among union members about the efficacy of their union's collective bargaining skills--almost always believing that the union gave up too much.
One such example is the numerous sets of negotiations by Actors' Equity leading to the current, bizarre, set of layered contracts that govern Equity national tours of plays and musicals. Andrew Briedis, under his comedic pseudonym "Annoying Actor Friend," describes the history of the SETA contract and more in hilarious fashion in his article "Drunk History: The National Tour" (excepted below).