From “Hollywood on the Line,” which appeared in the January 1984 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the magazine’s entire 173-year archive—is available online at harpers.org/archive.

Union politics as practiced by the Screen Actors Guild can look to the baffled outsider like a sitcom headed for cancellation. But that’s what we expect from Hollywood. More surprising is that SAG’s recent history since the 1980 actors’ strike reflects tensions that run throughout the labor movement. So the question suggested by the past three years of SAG headlines is a practical one: What’s in…