I keep alluding here to the upcoming labor nastiness in Hollywood which may include either a monumental strike by the Writers Guild and/or the Screen Actors guild, or one or both of those unions getting its teeth kicked in, or both. There are some other possibilities but I'm not expecting any that involve everyone linking arms, singing happy songs around the campfire and life as we know it continuing unchanged.
This website has a very simple explanation of how the process works, at least from the WGA perspective. I disagree with the suggestion that my Guild "lost" the 1988 strike. In fact, I think one of the problems we've gotten into is this tendency to view a labor negotiation like a Jai Alai game where one side must emerge as undisputed winner and the other as loser. If you can get away from that mindset — and sadly, some folks like the bloodshed and don't want to — it's possible to arrive at a deal that works for both. It's also possible to wind up "winning" a strike the way some wars are "won" — i.e., fewer of your people got killed. So you still lose when you win. I believe the future of labor negotations, at least in Hollywood, involves moving away from the win/lose attitude and getting to the "works for both sides" mentality. I'm not sure though that the folks with whom we bargain are there yet.
Anyway, like I said, I don't think we lost the '88 strike. I don't think we won, either. I think we were forced into a situation where being on strike for five months was the less damaging of two bad options…and there were only two. When we get closer to when the '07 strike might commence, I'll try to write more about what I think happened in '88. But in the meantime, read that piece to which I'm linking. It's a good primer on the situation.