The Bach­mann shoot got plen­ty of cov­er­age every­where you’d expect: the Huff­in­g­ton Post , the Guardian , Medi­aite , Vox . What none of these news arti­cles point­ed out was the actu­al news: that the Shark­na­do movie in ques­tion is work­ing with a scab crew after fir­ing the entire pro­duc­tion team when they sought union representation.

This week, the cot­tage indus­try of sites for­mer­ly ded­i­cat­ed to cov­er­ing ex-Con­gress­woman Michele Bachmann’s every move had rea­son to cel­e­brate, as she resur­faced in Wash­ing­ton, film­ing a scene for Shark­na­do 3, the lat­est install­ment in the so-bad-it’s‑actually-really-bad sci­ence fic­tion fran­chise. This wasn’t the first bit of con­ser­v­a­tive stunt-cast­ing for the SyFy sequel: Ann Coul­ter will report­ed­ly play the Vice Pres­i­dent, right-wing celeb Bo Derek has a role and the pro­duc­ers sought out Oliv­er North and Col­in Powell.

Because you go to war with the media you have, the Inter­na­tion­al Alliance of The­atri­cal Stage Employ­ees (IATSE) has used the hash­tag #Strike­na­do to pub­li­cize their action. And they’ve got­ten a lot of mileage on social media, where Shark­na­do hate-watch­ing has been refined to an art form. But beyond the delight in all things schlock, this is anoth­er effort to break the sol­i­dar­i­ty on Hol­ly­wood work crews and depress one of the last skilled man­u­al labor jobs in Amer­i­ca that pays above-aver­age wages.

Shark­na­do 2 was actu­al­ly a union pro­duc­tion. The Asy­lum, the com­pa­ny that pro­duces the movies, does not have a term agree­ment with IATSE, but they signed a stand­alone agree­ment on Shark­na­do 2. ​“There are finan­cial ben­e­fits for the com­pa­ny for a term agree­ment, but we allow com­pa­nies to sign sin­gu­lar pro­duc­tions,” says Vanes­sa Holt­grewe with IATSE West Coast.

But when time came around to put the sharks in the tor­na­do a third time, The Asy­lum nev­er got around to inform­ing the union. Film­ing start­ed in Flori­da and came to Los Ange­les on March 3. The crew met and vot­ed quick­ly for IATSE rep­re­sen­ta­tion. When they informed The Asy­lum, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny said they would all be fired. This is pre­cise­ly the maneu­ver that Bra­vo and Ryan Seacrest Pro­duc­tions attempt­ed with the post-pro­duc­tion crew on the real­i­ty show Shahs of Sun­set last year. That stand­off end­ed with the post-pro­duc­tion per­son­nel rat­i­fy­ing a union con­tract.

Forty crew mem­bers walked out on Shark­na­do 3 the day they were threat­ened, and pick­et­ed The Asy­lum offices and var­i­ous Los Ange­les set loca­tions, includ­ing a trail­er park north of the city and a hard­scrab­ble ware­house dis­trict pop­u­lat­ed most­ly with auto mechan­ics. The Asy­lum con­vert­ed the ware­house into a sound­stage, so if you con­stant­ly hear lug nuts being removed in all the Shark­na­do 3 inte­ri­or scenes, that’s why.

The crew wants union stan­dard pay and ben­e­fits, some­thing sore­ly lack­ing on the cur­rent pro­duc­tion, which is report­ed­ly clos­er to The Asylum’s stan­dard prac­tice. Work­ers have come for­ward on social media to describe long work­days at flat rates.

“Worked on Asy­lum set for $100 a day, 14 hour days & a cast of 10 year olds,” wrote cos­tume design­er Cather­ine Elhof­fer, allud­ing to vio­la­tions of child labor laws. Noe­lani Mei Lee, a script super­vi­sor who walked out on the Shark­na­do 3 set, made a host of claims: ​“checks with­held, safe­ty haz­ards, inten­tion­al gas leaks, lies to con­vince crew mem­bers to move out of state for min­i­mum wage and less, I could go on.” Anony­mous crew mem­bers told The Glide about unpaid over­time, pay below the min­i­mum wage, set­ting explo­sions with­out the pres­ence of a fire mar­shal and one instance where ​“the Art Depart­ment stayed up for 48 hours to com­plete a set.”

When asked about work con­di­tions at the shoot, Vanes­sa Holt­grewe of IATSE said that she would ​“let the crew tes­ti­mo­ny speak for itself.”

What we do know is that Shark­na­do 3 tried to com­plete their Los Ange­les shoot days with bare-bones scab crews, a rar­i­ty in a fair­ly tight-knit Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion com­mu­ni­ty. IATSE put out an alert warn­ing mem­bers to call the union if they were con­tact­ed to replace work­ers on Shark­na­do.

“They kept los­ing peo­ple, because they would real­ize they were cross­ing a pick­et line,” Holt­grewe says. ​“Two guys drove all night from Nebras­ka to be their sound team, real­ized what was going on after an hour and walked out.” A pro­duc­tion assis­tant record­ed sound, rumor has it.

On Mon­day, the pro­duc­tion wrapped out of Los Ange­les, and strik­ers expect­ed to find them in D.C. shoot­ing under a fake name, appar­ent­ly a com­mon prac­tice. When they showed up in front of the White House on Wednes­day film­ing Michele Bach­mann, a pic­ture tak­en by the Huff­in­g­ton Post’s Igor Bobic shows a crew of only a cam­era­man and a producer.

Fired Shark­na­do 3 work­ers out­side the White House, short­ly after Michelle Bach­mann and the scab crew left. (Strike­na­do / Facebook)

IATSE mem­bers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., inter­rupt­ed the shoot and vowed to pick­et wher­ev­er The Asy­lum attempts to film next. AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka met with crew mem­bers in Wash­ing­ton yes­ter­day and tweet­ed out a show of support.

If noth­ing else, Shark­na­do 3 has been scaled back and shift­ed around sig­nif­i­cant­ly, and the #Strike­na­do threat­ened dead­lines for the July broad­cast pre­mière of the Ian Ziering/​Tara Reid not-such-a-thriller.

The Asy­lum, which has report­ed­ly with­held checks from the strik­ing work­ers, has only made one com­ment on the dis­pute so far — a mock­ing state­ment through their lawyer: ​“We are hap­py to report that we have reached an agree­ment with the Inter­na­tion­al Broth­er­hood of Selachi­mor­pha, which rep­re­sents the sharks in our film. We will be increas­ing the amount of chum at the craft ser­vices table and will no longer require our employ­ees to sleep with­out mov­ing.” Sim­i­lar­ly wit­ty shark-relat­ed state­ments were not pro­vid­ed to this reporter upon request.

The Asy­lum is def­i­nite­ly try­ing to work a mod­el that might look very attrac­tive to man­age­ment: delib­er­ate­ly low-bud­get kitsch, ter­ri­ble pro­duc­tion val­ues and a savvy ​“we meant to do that” new media strat­e­gy. Com­bine it all and you have anoth­er non-union foothold in cable tele­vi­sion, this one for script­ed pro­duc­tions. This trans­lates into far high­er prof­its for the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, giv­en that the fran­chise has reeled in some of the high­est rat­ings in SyFy his­to­ry. And the com­pa­ny seems to have made a bet on union bust­ing, with the right-wing stunt-cast­ing and gen­er­al trollishness.

But the strik­ing crew, many of whom have moved on to oth­er projects, turned the Shark­na­do media buzz mod­el on its head, cre­at­ing the #Strike­na­do Face­book page, which has gen­er­at­ed over 2,500 likes. And giv­en the talk among the com­mu­ni­ty of cam­era­men, sound crews and gaffers that work behind the scenes, The Asy­lum will have a dif­fi­cult time find­ing any half-decent work­ers from here on out.

It’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly easy to get TV watch­ers to focus on the work con­di­tions of those who make their favorite pro­grams. But they may notice the severe drop in qual­i­ty, even for some­thing like Shark­na­do. At some lev­el, even garbage tele­vi­sion requires skill. As IATSE’s Vanes­sa Holt­grewe points out, ​“There are a lot of green screens because it involves fly­ing sharks.”

AFL-CIO Pres­i­dent Richard Trum­ka with Shark­na­do 3​’s fired work­ers. (Strike­na­do / Twitter)