Wherein Our Hero Either Tells a Shaggy Dog Story or Points Out How The Leash Comes For You Next.

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN a little bit leery of the image of the striking WGA writers as representative of anything other than...striking writers. The whole war metaphor, it skeeves me out. But now here we are in week five, and there's a little something in the back of my brain that's starting to worry, not just about my industry or entertainment. I find myself buying in to the idea that maybe, just maybe, something way bigger is going on here.

I'll be the first to point out that writing is not like other work, and writers are not like other workers. It would be pretty cheeky for us to talk to an autoworker who's been replaced by a robot, or all the people out there seeing themselves squeezed out for economies of scale or globalization.

On the other hand, the atypical thing about this business is that the raw materials are intangible, and that it's people who come up with them. In a sense, we are both the materials that make the product, and the worker who crafts it. That's enough to take the issues of four cents for this or 2.5 percent that into higgledy-piggeldy land.

The one thing we can agree on? People love TeeVee. They bond with beloved TeeVee characters like nothing else. A movie franchise character is a love affair consummated in trysts every few years. And sometimes, because it's such an event, you can't even hear or really see them over all the whomping and thudding.

But there's Dr. House, misanthroping his way into your living room, each week. Every seven days, you get to check in with Kate and Sawyer, or root for Betty, or see what the women on Wisteria Lane are wearing. Whatever you're going through in your life, you know that Jim, Pam and Michael (okay, maybe not Michael) are on parallel tracks. And that's comforting. No wonder we're all fixing to miss it so much.

It's gratifying when I read that a great portion of the public does see that there is basic unfairness at work here, and that the writers do have great support. And you try to keep in mind that there's some number out there that will solve this whole thing, and then we can all get back to enjoying those ficitonal people in our homes.

But.

There are some extraordinary things happening around the margins. The first is that I'm not sure that I quite knew that there were only six companies that were behind this now. That's a lot of consolidation.

The second is, like everybody, I was kind of pulled in and duped a bit by the advance word of progress last week, which turned to disappointment when it became clear that there wasn't really anything new being offered.

And then you start to see things like this, and this. And you wonder, maybe the dark scenarios are really all right:

In his book Confessions of a Union Buster, Martin Jay Levitt details the techniques he learned in his many years attacking unions. A key element is the demoralization of the union members during any industrial action against the company. Taking away people's hopes, their aspirations for a quick resolution to any labor dispute – that was Levitt's job. "If you can, make the union fight drag on long enough, workers...lose faith, lose interest, lose hope." According to Robert Muehlenkamp, an SEIU Local 1199 organizer at Harper Grace hospital in the 70's, where Levitt was hired to consult management:

"Union busters wield great power through a program of terror and manipulation – people don't, can't possibly know what's going on and who's telling the truth.... The first time this happens to regular people, they're terrified."

And terror is the goal. The union buster hopes to control employees by employing terror.

This is, of course, precisely the situation we find ourselves in today. We are the example that is being used to intimidate the other unions. The studios want the actors, the directors, the Teamsters, IATSE, all to look at our struggle and see us lose. See us fractured and divided. With the hope that they will be frightened by what they see, and accept whatever deal the studios offer.

The idea is also to make us appear demoralized, then divided. To the public, and to ourselves. Diminish the pickets (LA Times: the "relentless picketing" which was one element in bringing the AMPTP back to the table); split off core groups (oh no! Carlton Cuse has gone back to work! The Showrunners are all abandoning us!); fragment the internal leadership (the Captain's meeting Friday, although generally cordial, did show signs of strain as one writer, concerned for his laid-off production team asked "What do I tell them?" to be admonished by another member that "We are on strike!"); and create a sense that our strike is useless.

The most powerful tactic in strike-breaking is propagandistic. The union (and particularly the leadership) is portrayed as power-hungry, control-seeking, strike-happy, aloof. Leadership is described as detached from the membership and inaccessible to their demands (Patric responded to over 500 e-mails over the Thanksgiving break.) The strike is described as rudderless and futile, with declining numbers on the picket lines. The creation of a Strike Rules committee is described as fascistic. The companies are portrayed as avuncular and concerned: "We're just trying to get everyone back to work."

Divide and conquer. Divide and conquer. That's the union buster's strategy.

The fact that Americans have been so down on unionism for a while now has always been something that bothered me. If you study anything about the history of labor, you quickly come to realize that there's not a single gain that came out of "management's desire to have a great relationship with its employees." Maybe in small business, where that manager is the guy in the cubicle or down the workbench from you...but we're down to six companies here -- we're down to six, or two, or one company in a lot of industries these days. And management never gives anything up willingly.

If you believe that there's an element of organized, methodical union busting to this, then that's one thing. At the same time, there's the propaganda that went out at the beginning portraying writers on the line as pampered and rich.

For the sake of the argument, let's say that's true. Okay, not true. But let's say that writers are better off than a lot of people in America.

They also make a product that most people love. That makes people's lives easier and more enjoyable.

They do it in an industry where they rub arms with stars, and in our star obsessed universe, that patina of glamor goes a long way.

And yet...the six media companies behind the AMPTP are willing to screw around and union bust these people. Because they've decided that's how they can make the most money now and in the future. It's not about fair. It's not about right. It's just business.

I'm not the first person to say this, but I will be the next:

If they're willing to burn and break the group of people who make good money, who make the product that people write obsessive fan websites about, who hang out with stars, people who have the power to get their side of the story out in articulate and clever and funny YouTube videos and message campaigns featuring the most recognized faces on earth -- if they crush THOSE people, how do you think workers in industries with NO glamour -- in Raleigh or Portsmouth, or Muncie or Ocala or El Paso or Savannah or Calgary or Red Deer or Tacoma or Scottsdale or Santa Fe are going to do when they go for a contract?

There is an industry -- marshalling the power of the internet and research and all these 21st century tools, whose job it essentially is to browbeat and defeat workers and prevent unionism -- the force that made the rise of the middle class in the 20th century possible. They've been very good at it. Unionism is at a low in America now. And many Americans have a very low opinion of unionism -- lower than it's been for years.

I know there are legitimate beefs with the union movement, and that there are horror stories out there where the union becomes an impediment to a worker. But I also know that in my experience, I've had friends that were getting screwed over who only got justice because there was a union rep helping them; and I know that my own union, the WGC, has helped me out on more than one occasion where I was having a problem.

The difference is that the big corporations ALWAYS act in their own interest. The union busting industry, and a lot of the election results over the last little while, prove that people are more malleable. You can goad them into going against their best interests.

In order to do that in this current strike, they have to demoralize, shake loose, and divide and conquer. Hasn't happened thus far. But it still might.

The middle class -- and working writers mostly count themselves in that bunch -- is disappearing. Fast. It's getting squeezed down, and down, while a smaller number of CEO's concentrate wealth at levels that make them untouchable.

This has been going on for a while now. And oh yeah, those six companies that control all your entertainment also control your news. Is it any wonder that the news that comes out about Labor, generally, isn't good?

What if this strike isn't about something trivial? What if the greatest stake to you isn't the loss of those beloved weekly visits by characters you've grown to think of as almost part of the family?

For a relatively small number of workers, this strike gets alot of coverage because it's about, and in the entertainment world. And if you want to criticise me or other people for taking notice now that it's about us, and that there's an element of solipsism to this, then fine, yes, guilty. That doesn't change the facts. It doesn't change the fact that underlying this sucker are issues of labor, intellectual property, the new economy, and compensation for work, that actually will shape the next few decades.

From Enron on down, we've seen over the last few years what happens when corporate and people's interests collide. Here's a hint: People don't win.

If they'll do this to the high profile guys, what will they do to you?

What if you had a dog in this hunt?

Because I'm starting to think that you might.