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Just throwing this out there...

I'm a white collar worker, a sound designer, (I'm on a deadline this morning so I'll be brief) and the entire film industry is unionized, at least everywhere in the US that matters w/r/t film production, LA, NY and Chicago. I think that a union can be a very good thing for white collar workers given a certain configuration of the benefits, and I think our industry is a pretty good example of how it can work.

Some points

• My union is IATSE, and my particular classification is under the jurisdiction of Local 700, the Motion Picture Editor's Guild. All of the different jobs in film production are essentially under one gargantuan union (except for electricians, but this is minor). It never strikes against the industry as a whole (unlike some jerk unions I could mention), just against individual productions or producers that break the rules.
• Our retirement benefits and health plan are union benefits. But UNLIKE the UAW arrangement, the health plans and retirement bennies are administered by a half labor/half producer board of directors, and there is no continuing liability to the producers. In short, once the producer pays the fringes on my weekly salary, they're never liable for another dime. The money goes into a trust and the trust pays for the health and retirement. Production companies and studios can go bankrupt left and right, but our benefits (and their liabilities) are insulated through the trust fund mechanism
• Because most of the people in the film industry are freelancers, or because production companies and studios tend to do a LOT of hiring and firing on a just-in-time basis, my benefits follow me wherever I work in the business, as long as I work for a studio that's a signatory to the guild's collective bargaining agreement. I can work 5 months at Sony, 3 months at Disney and a month for an independent company, and as long as I work a minimum number of weeks every year I'll keep my benefits and stay up on my pension.

The system is not without its problems: I rarely ever go to union meetings, I don't really know people that are Big Into The Union and a lot of us complain about some of its weird work rules. Many of the people in the union are very tight with management, and many people in management used to be, or are currently in the union, so there are lots of conflicts of interest and going through the formal grievance process can be politically... fraught. But the benefits, particularly the health, are excellent, completely portable, and I make a very good wage (which is important if you're trying to live in LA).

It could be a model for IT folks if they find that suddenly the truly talented ones among them are being hired and fired in flocks and shipped across the country like cattle, which is about where the film industry was in the 1930s.

Actually, stagehands are represented by the IATSE - or the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes.

This is the sort of thing unions were created to fix. Crunch time means crunch pay.

Sysadmins need something like the IATSE Hollywood Basic Agreement, which covers most people working on a movie shoot other than the actors. When film productions go into crunch mode, pay goes through the roof. There's overtime. There's double overtime when hours per day go up. Emergency calls in the middle of the night carry a minimum of 4 hours of pay at double the normal rate, plus there's pay for being on-call.

Which is why producers and studios spend time on doing good film scheduling. When management screws up, management pays the bills.

Right. Everyone, start downloading good music, but instead of buying it send your money to the roadies and recording engineers like Steve Albini and Mixerman.

Because they have a union (darn, can't link to Wikipedia as it is undergoing maintenance). Devs and designers might want to consider forming their own.

I'm not necessarily pro-union, but SAG et al were started to protect those types of workers from slimeballs. As such, they get to wield muscle in these types of things. Every worker deserves protections or "special treatment", but in this unfair world they often don't get it unless they band together and demand it. Actors do not deserve it more than game devs, but the actors are organized enough to actually try to get some respect.

In the professional TV/Film/Theatre industry many of the folk involved have their own union or are a part of IATSE. Game devs might someday get fed up enough and form their own.

I don't know where you live, but if you're in Los Angeles, you contact IATSE Epileptic Camera Operators' Local #37. I think they cover all of Southern California, but the one in the Bay Area is different. Contact the IATSE National office, and they'll give you contact info for whatever the local is in your region.

Seeing as video-game developement is a creative field in the entertainment industry. Should IATSE(Internation Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employee's) expand to allow video game developers into it, as well as its curret grouping of Theatre and Film Industry workers? The problem might have already been solved.

Further, to "unionize" you do not need to form a new union from scratch, you can join an existing union and have them extend their charter to cover your field.

If you see unions strictly as a "blue collar" thing and don't think that unions are for technical and creative people, check out the Directors' Guild of America's basic agreement. Why aren't video game designers and video game directors represented by this union?

And you video game artists and programmers, why aren't you represented by IATSE? All of the digital special effects guys over at ILM are, and when _they_ go into crunch mode, it's _real_ crunch mode; and I'll tell you, they get _paid_.