Hell no. Among the millions of users on eBay, a coordinated group could get maybe a few thousand to abandon their accounts. Obviously those won't include the top sellers, who benefited from the policy changes. Since the whole point of a strike is to have some bargaining power, the strike thus fails. EBay doesn't even notice the difference, since it's busy losing more money on Skype than any strike could cost. The difference between using the Internet and having a job is, your employer actually needs you.

Unless you're a writer. Then you're shit out of luck.

• Strikes! Strikes every week! After the initial blows of the 2003 Broadway musicians strike, the NYU adjunct teachers near-strike, and the 2005 transit strike, the end of 2007 has seen a new golden age of walkouts. Our striking writers are crippling the entertainment industry with no end in sight. Our stagehands nearly ruined Christmas. CBS News writers want to let down America's Sweetheart Katie Couric. The dudes who drive the vans that ferry our elderly and handicapped around are still striking. Now New York's office-building workers are threatening a walkout on New Year's Day! Our great city, the seat of our global empire, crippled daily by work stoppages and uppity trade unionists. Just like in 20th Century Paris.
  
• Decadence! The shiftless amorality of the idle, wealthy left rules the day in New York, as we all stumble merrily and chemically altered toward the end of the American experiment. But instead of sitting around "cafes" swilling "wine" while discussing "revolution" we pop ADD pills to produce a surfeit of meta-media content on the vast and redundant internet and then use our time off hiding in bar restrooms inhaling stimulants so we can babble about No Country For Old Men vs. There Will Be Blood longer and more efficiently. Not so much like Paris but still kinda the same thing!
  
• The War On Terror! Our decadent Marxist general-striking '60s Parisians were all against de Gaulle and his Algerian war, just like Graydon Carter and George Bush! And maybe, someday, 40 years after we victoriously leave Iraq, they'll be just as well off as their metaphorical counterparts.
  
• Hating America! Self-explanatory.

See? Pretty much the same! So let's all wear black and smoke cigarettes and listen to Johnny Hallyday while the world burns.

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are both going to repeats—though Jon Stewart has offered to pay two weeks of writer's salaries himself—and poor Amy Winehouse, the real victim in all this, will probably not be making her SNL debut this week, and no one seems clear on what Letterman will be doing, least of all Dave Letterman.

So now's your opportunity to do some scabbing, struggling unethical would-be writers of New York! Hop down to the real 30 Rock and make up some funny things for Tracy Morgan to say!

When we posted earlier about the angry union thespians hassling junior doll enthusiasts at the American Girl store in midtown, we had no idea we could later provide not one, but two hard-hitting investigative video pieces from the scene. Above, thrill to our own house flava videographer Richard Blakeley, focusing adroitly on the terror of children confronted for the first time with the twin horrors of theater nerds and organized labor. After the jump, independent lensman Boss Tweed spends more time with energetic harshing on the dolls themselves, set to the soothing strains of Bananarama.

Earlier: Every Time You Cross Our Picket Line, a Kitten Explodes

American Girl Place Actors and Actors' Equity Rally [Actor's Equity]

No worries, though, because Michael's is still open. When asked if any of the scheduled immigration rallies would be affecting their lunch schedule, the chipper hostess practically laughed at the idea. Makes sense — if you've gotten a job at Michael's, you're already bleached on the inside.

UPDATE: Readers report that Florent and Pump at 31st Street are closed for today; Chat 'n' Chew will not be chewing, though it's still open.

Related: Day Without Immigrants [1010 WINS]

(PS: Roger Toussaint, see, this is how it's done.)

Tentative Deal Averts Strike by Doormen [NYT]
Related: Gawker's coverage of the MTA strike.

Straphangers On Edge Over Strike Wait for the Other Shoe to Drop [NY1]

[T]here's a big strike going on here at NYU over the [graduate-student] union. No need to go into details, mostly because that's not the funny part. So they have this huge blow up rat in front of the library where people are picketing, something you have probably seen before if you have ever seen a labor union strike.

So yesterday I was walking through Washington Square Park and noticed another group of people picketing against the GA/NYU picketing. Weird, yes, but I figured they were against the issues at hand and didn't think much of it. But I went closer because I was curious to see who they were. Turns out they weren't picketing against the picketing on the basis of ethics or noise violations or anything like that. They were picketing against the use of a blow up rat as a negative symbol.

I'm not kidding, I couldn't make this up if I tried. There's this whole group of people who are pro-rats who work to try to change the image of rats (including changing their name to "Great pointed archer"). They gave my friend a t-shirt with a rat standing over a rainbow.

Here's their website, you have to check it out if you have time: http://www.greatpointedarchercom/.

Fascinating. I love this town.

We did check the site, and we think this thing is thoroughly tongue-in-cheek. Still, we very much like the idea of pro-rat picketers in Washington Square Park. And think how much less fun our days would be if NYU kids were obligated to, you know, do something productive instead.

Anyone have pix?

UPDATE: Ah. Apparently it's ad execs, not NYU kids, who have far too much free time on their hands.

Great Pointed Archer

French interns are striking.

Wearing white masks and bearing banners ("no contract, no salary, no rights"), they marched on Tuesday for steady wages and benefits in their internships, claiming companies were getting around labor laws by taking so many of them on.... A nationwide strike of interns is scheduled for November 14.

The Journal, naturally, views this job action as the Journal would: "In other words, [the interns] want a proper job, as opposed to, well, a stage, which they choose to take, presumably voluntarily." And this makes sense, of course, because we all know how often entry-level media people volunteer for unpaid internships rather than accepting all those job offers that are flying in.

And, yet, at the same time — and loath though we are to agree with the Journal on such matters — we can't help but hope this trend doesn't spread to the United States. Because while we feel interns' pain, we also have no idea how Anna Wintour — hell, how any magazine editor — would get coffee without them.

Revolt of the Interns [WSJ]