The Telltale situation, as relayed here, reminds me of an incident I read about while researching my @FPSWeekly article, one which spurred the formation of the major Hollywood guilds in the 1930s... 1/
From @mmmbanksy's sterling THE WRITERS: During the Depression, movie studio head Louis B. Mayer persuaded his writers, directors, and actors to all take a 50% pay cut, making an emotional plea to their solidarity as a community. (pg. 29) 
Mayer's plea was most likely a ruse of a performance. Also, of course the executives did not take a pay cut. The resentment over this swindle was a major impetus for the formation of the Screen Writers Guild.
When people describe these issues as systemic-structural, it's this: if Mayer did not make these cuts and all the other studios did, he would be at a competitive disadvantage. If he did not make his employees believe there was a greater purpose to them, he would face a backlash.
And so with the Telltale situation: couching the free labor of crunch within appeals to passion and solidarity then terminating them with 30 min. notice to leave the building. Painting financial struggles as a shared failing, while floating the idea of contracted replacement work
These are hurtful decisions. And yet they are legal (because the powerful write and adjudicate the laws) and they are deemed mostly socially acceptable (because the voices of the most marginalized are muted).
(Though the potential WARN Act violation might say otherwise)
(Though the potential WARN Act violation might say otherwise)
Mass layoffs and piecemeal rehiring are one of these systemic-structural issues. It's hard to build a base for workplace organizing when that workplace is smashed and scattered to the wind. It's hard to build much of anything when you are continuously unmoored and precarious.
A single manager may not consider that their individual actions are designed to hurt the prospects of labor mobilization (though I'm sure some do), but in aggregate, management "washing" of the workforce through layoffs and rehiring achieves that effect nonetheless.
If you are just starting a new job after dealing with a recent firing and unemployment, there is a greater pressure to not "cause trouble." And if you are always starting anew somewhere else, that pressure is always there.
One of the things that unions do, once they are established in high-turnover industries, is they provide an institutional memory and recourse that mitigates that pressure and exists outside it.
The coda to the Mayer story: the other group that avoided pay cuts were the below-the-line craft workers, who were already organized under IATSE. They refused the cuts and threatened to strike. With them, Mayer relented.
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