It’s early still, but I've seldom seen a strike being carried out as effectively as the one by our brothers and sisters in the Writer's Guild.   WGA is doing a great job of explaining their issues. They understand their struggle. They have organized themselves from top to bottom, with folks like Tina Fey, Julia Louis Dreyfus, Wanda Sykes, Zach Braff etc all on the line along with folks who wrote for Mr. Ed and are focusing just on keeping their health insurance.  They've been  media savvy and funny. They’ve built their coalitions well. Not only are the stars walking the picket line but Teamsters are turning their trucks around rather than cross.

It helps that the writers appear to be getting screwed. I hope that where we are as a country right now makes a lot of people more appreciative of the act of standing up for yourself and those around you than might have been the case a while ago. As for the Steve Carell reference, God bless him. Russo asks if  the strike is getting better coverage than teacher strikes because the media are writers too. It doesn’t hurt. As for why David Duchovny isn’t walking the line in Seneca Valley or Lehman? It’s a long commute and he’s never asked any teachers to take notes on how to punch up Mulder’s dialogue.  Really, it’s not his community, so it’s not fair to expect it to be his beat.

In other labor news, professional union baiter Richard Berman told a meeting of right wingers in Nevada that he’d secured funding from some sucker opponent of teacher unionism to run a lot of negative tv ads about teacher unions. Can’t wait. Berman’s gig is starting to remind me of this.  In happier news, Green Dot is in fact coming to NYC and the UFT is working with them. More on that to come.

Last month the National Labor Relations Board took another step to make it harder for workers in the private sector to have a union.  These are the same people who brought us this word from Steven Colbert.   On November 15, we’ll be rallying at the NLRB. You should be too.

Finally I want to link to a blog put together by Alan Lubin, who is one of the leaders of our New York State affiliate, NYSUT. Alan’s blog is about a trip with a labor delegation to the US-Mexico border in El Paso. One exerpt:

“One worker showed us his pay sheet for the day. He picked 73 baskets of chili peppers. He worked 7 hours today and was credited by his employer for 5 hours. He can't complain or go elsewhere because he would be blacklisted if he did.”

And that's in America. We'll have another labor blog round up in a week or so.