Customers want instant gratification. Workers say it’s pushing them to the brink.

Six straight days of 12-hour driving. Single-digit paychecks. The complaints come from workers in vastly different industries: UPS delivery drivers and Hollywood actors and writers. But they point to an underlying factor driving a surge of labor unrest: The cost to workers whose jobs have changed drastically as companies scramble to meet customer expectations for speed and convenience in industries transformed by technology. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated those changes, pushing retailers to shift online and intensifying the streaming competition among entertainment companies. Now, from the picket lines, workers are trying to give consumers a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to produce a show that can be binged any time or get dog food delivered to their doorstep with a phone swipe. At issue for Hollywood screenwriters and actors staging their first simultaneous strikes in 40 years is the way streaming has upended entertainment economics, slashing pay and forcing showrunners to produce content faster with smaller teams. “This seems to happen to many places when the tech companies come in. Who are we crushing? It doesn’t matter,” said Danielle Sanchez-Witzel, a screenwriter and showrunner on the negotiating team for the Writers Guild of America, whose members have been on strike since May. Earlier this month, the Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists joined the writers’ union on the picket line. Sanchez-Witzel said she was struck by the similarities between her experience and those of UPS drivers, some of whom joined the WGA for protests as they threatened their own potentially crippling strike. UPS and the Teamsters last week reached a tentative contract staving off the strike. Jeffrey Palmerino, a full-time UPS driver near Albany, N.Y., said forced overtime emerged as a top issue during the pandemic as drivers coped with a crush of orders on par with the holiday season. “It was basically like Christmas on steroids for two straight years. said Palmerino, a Teamsters shop steward.