Then -- and now

Robin Swicord, screenwriter-director, including the recently released “The Jane Austen Book Club.” In 1988, Swicord was unsure how she would handle the strike with two small children. Sometimes, they joined her on the picket line.

Unionism in a time before iPods, recalled Swicord, usually meant huge meetings in large halls where thousands of people might wait in line for hours to get to the microphone.

In 1988, “a rumor would go around and everyone would take it as truth. It’s not like that now,” she said. “People are very organized, doing outreach, there are e-mail updates and captains you can call to get your questions answered. Instead of one giant meeting, there are several. It’s easier.”

Swicord and her husband, writer Nicholas Kazan, were also required to photocopy whatever scripts they were still working on and haul them down to a collection area where they would be kept as safeguards against “scabs,” she said. If there were a challenge after the strike, someone could presumably check the registered script and determine whether the writer had continued working on it. “It was a mammoth undertaking,” she said. “I had a logistical question: Who is going to review all this stuff, and who is going to keep track of it?”

She said she never heard of anyone breaking the strike. “The one thing everyone did understand is the only way the strike would be effective is if everyone followed the rules. It’s a no-brainer.”

Living in a company town, she said, she’s aware of much talk about the economic impact of a writers strike and widespread anger directed toward the writers. “They say, ‘Who are these crazy people who like to go out on strike?’ ”

In fact, the industry follows pattern bargaining, in which gains for one guild can be used by another guild in its negotiations. “We are always the first,” she said. Whatever deal the writers make affects later negotiations by directors, actors, stagehands and technicians. Writers feel a responsibility to them.

“We love what we do,” she said. “The people we are ‘negotiating’ against are the people we enjoy working with. So it’s kind of confusing.”