FishbowlNYC today alerts raincoaster (and, no doubt, eighteen million other people) to the fact that the Writer’s Guild East has begun a return to the barefisted, take no prisoners style of union negotiation of yore. Jimmy Hoffa would be proud.

They’re using bagpipes.

If you were listening closely during this morning’s Early Show on CBS, you probably heard the dirge of bagpipes. Why bagpipes? “To mark the slow death of quality news at CBS,” says the Writers Guild of America East chapter, who staged the rally outside the Early Show studios to “call attention to the declining quality of news at CBS, quality they assert will further decline if CBS is successful in its contract negotiation demand to take newswriters/producers out of the union, under which protection they have worked for more than 40 years.”

CBS News staffers have been working without a contract since April 1, 2005.

One is reminded, one is, of the infamous Good-Looking Bagpiper Guy of Gastown a few years ago. This fellow was, indeed, very good-looking. But he was, verily, the worst bagpiper ever to manhandle a pipe, and that is saying a great deal.

They say that glass is not a solid but rather a supercooled liquid; I believe it, because when he played outside the windows of the store I worked in, you could almost see the molecules of glass scrambling over one another in a desperate bid to escape the pane.

Unfortunately, Mr. G-L B G o’G was far less mobile; he’d set up shop about 10:30 and play without rest or (apparently) breath, and certainly without benefit of lessons, for a good eight to ten hours a day. He made good money, too, because A) tourists can see better than they can hear, particularly when there are buses on the street and B) none of them had to stick around and listen to that for more than a couple of minutes.

We, however…

So our company finally took pity on us and, with a coalition of other local businesses, lobbied City Hall for a new bylaw that would limit the length of time a busker could stay in one place. We had nothing against the pan pipers, nor even the Chinese fellow who played that violin thing that sounded like a Siamese cat being tortured; we were focused solely on Mr. G-L B G o’G. And we lost.

So our very clever building management (who had their offices immediately above Mr. G-L B G o’G‘s favorite piping spot, although I am certain that didn’t factor into this at all, no, not at all) made a deal with the unsuspecting piper.

“Go play at City Hall on Tuesday and we’ll give you 150% of your normal daily earnings.”

Wednesday comes along and Hey, presto! Bylaw passed.