Writers of the World Unite

When one is on strike, sign in hand and chant in voicebox, thoughts can turn quickly to the grandiose. Fully aware, then, that the weeks I have spent on the picket line may have gone to my head, I still say this: somehow the Writers Guild of America has become a legitimate vanguard for the labor movement in America, and this is odd, considering that a week before the strike I wasn't even sure we were a "real" union.

I got my first job writing for TV in 2004 and had to join the WGA, but I had very little idea with whom I was entering into union. The marriage had been arranged by the elders, and I was not allowed to see the bride. I was on staff for a show, so I at least knew what some other writers looked like. Was the rest of the Guild like my co-workers, smartasses of assorted but universally unimposing body types? This was a far cry from the knit caps, tin lunchboxes and brass knuckles of my ironically/appropriately Hollywoodized conception of a labor union.

Of course (sadly?), no modern unions look like that throwback stereotype. But we didn't look like those modern unions either. We didn't organize like the SEIU. We didn't lobby like the teachers. It was a union in name only--we had banded together for collective bargaining that happened every three years, clinically and distantly from the membership. Basically we were like a professional athletes' union but on a greater variety of drugs.

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