Burt wrote an oped for the LA Daily News about the writer’s strike:

I’VE been a member of the Writers Guild of America for nearly 40 years. That means that during the first two decades of my TV writing career, I was on strike just about every three years. But the last time we struck was in 1988. That one lasted almost six months. It hurt the TV networks because they lost viewers they never got back. It hurt writers because most of us aren’t wealthy, and it’s difficult to go that long without earning a living. It even harmed people who aren’t in show business, but whose livelihoods depend on those who are.

There’s not a lot of sympathy for our side because most think we’re a bunch of overpaid hacks and most think they could do what we do better if only they had decided to fritter away their lives on such tomfoolery.

The fact is that most of the 12,000 members of the Guild are living hand-to-mouth because only a small percent of that number manage to sell a script or get a writing gig in any given year.

Until last Monday, it had been 19 years since I walked a picket line. Moreover, it had been about 35 years since I walked one at the CBS Studio Center on Radford Avenue in Studio City. Back then, I worked for Talent Associates, an independent production company responsible for the Rock Hudson-Susan St. James series, “McMillan & Wife.”

Mainly because I haven’t had much of a TV writing career once I foolishly turned 50, and partly because the majority of its 12,000 members only joined the WGA during the past 10 or 15 years, I didn’t recognize a single face when I signed in for picket duty the other day. It seems that the Guild had underestimated the turnout. By the time I arrived, they had run out of picket signs. Still, I was assigned to join my fellow Guild members at the corner of Radford Avenue and Ventura Boulevard. I was undeniably self-conscious. It’s hard to feel more redundant than picketing without a picket sign, but in for a penny, in for a pound. So off I went.

There was a group of seven or eight fellows huddled by the stoplight and I decided I’d mingle there. At least they all had picket signs and I figured if I stood near them, it wouldn’t be as obvious that I didn’t. The last thing you want to look like at my age, after all, is a writers’ groupie.

However, as I approached, the group all began to chant, for reasons I can’t imagine, “We’re queer and we’re here!” While undeniably catchy, they’re probably not the words to put a chill in the heart of management. Still, they were enough to make me veer off at the last second. After standing around for about 15 brain-numbing minutes, I was on the verge of taking off when some busybody handed me his sign. Soon, one of the picketers suggested we split up into two groups, half of us crossing the boulevard. Then every time the light turned red, each group crossed the street in opposite directions. That at least gave us a sense of purpose beyond just standing around looking as if we were picketing the Samuel French Book Store.

Read it all.