A new season of Drew Barrymore’s talk show was supposed to begin today. The ongoing strikes by the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America have brought production on many shows to a stop, but Barrymore said she was going to press on without unionized workers. Then, she was bullied into changing her mind.

Barrymore personally would not be violating the terms of the strike by hosting her show. As an actress, she is a SAG-AFTRA member. But SAG-AFTRA has a separate contract with network television that includes daytime talk shows, and that contract was approved by union members, so she is permitted to work by the union.

The WGA, on the other hand, is on strike against the networks and has been since May. Barrymore’s show is produced by CBS Media Ventures. It has three unionized writers.

It’s possible to run a TV show without three writers. Barrymore initially insisted she would do that, and she cited the livelihoods of the rest of the show’s staff as part of the reason. The non-WGA employees — all but three of the show’s more than 150 workers — shouldn’t be denied the opportunity to work because the WGA is on strike.

But then Barrymore was bullied into changing her mind. The Los Angeles Times summarizes:

After the Sept. 10 announcement, the WGA immediately set up a picket line outside the studio in Manhattan. Audience members wearing WGA pins were kicked out of a taping. The National Book Foundation announced that it had rescinded Barrymore’s invitation to host the group’s annual awards ceremony. “Our commitment is to ensure that the focus of the Awards remains on celebrating writers and books,” the group said in a statement. On the platform formerly known as Twitter, professional writers piled on Barrymore with a kind of glee formerly reserved for Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav.

Yesterday, Barrymore issued an apology and announced new episodes of the show wouldn’t air until the strike is over. That snowballed into several other shows, including two other daytime talk shows and Real Time with Bill Maher, canceling their plans to return with new episodes.

Now, a world with fewer daytime talk shows and less Bill Maher doesn’t sound so bad. But the problem here is that the bullies won. If Barrymore or anyone else wants to work without violating the terms of their labor contracts, they should do so.

Barrymore said she didn’t stop her show during the pandemic, and she wanted to continue to provide entertainment to her viewers through tough times. That’s a perfectly legitimate reason for an entertainer to want to work. The View, the most-watched daytime talk show, has continued to air new episodes during the strike, without its two WGA writers. Why shouldn’t other daytime talk shows do the same?

This episode illustrates why so many Americans want no part of labor unions. It rightly offends our sense of fairness that one group of workers who are mad about one specific set of issues can demand “solidarity” from other, unrelated workers — especially when that “solidarity” is achieved through relentless bullying.