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From Film.com:

The average American spends more time watching television in a day than doing anything else besides working and sleeping, so it stands to reason that people might be more emotionally invested in the WGA strike than in your average labor dispute. The WGA isn't especially large for a national union, but because it involves television and because the economic impact is potentially enormous, the strike is getting quite a bit of attention. What's becoming clear as one follows the news is that those in the general public who are most interested in the strike have tended to be on the side of the writers.

This is not a common stance when it comes to labor disputes. Since a strike involves the withholding of labor, the knee-jerk reaction of many people is to take out their frustrations on those doing the withholding, whether the strike involves bus drivers or teachers or steelworkers. "They're lucky to even have a job" is a phrase we've all no doubt heard before. While there may be an acknowledgment that there are issues besides pure greed underlying a strike, Joe Public isn't always in the mood to hear the workers out when he's being inconvenienced.

This tendency to dislike strikers is even more extreme when those walking out are involved in the entertainment industry. The most prominent strikes involving entertainers have not been in the arena of show business, but in the field of sports. I feel safe in saying that there has never been a players' strike in a pro sports league where public opinion was on the side of the players--never mind that those who own the teams are far richer; never mind that players once had no freedom to do what is fundamental for almost everyone else, which is to allow differing parties to bid for their services. The attitude that entertainers have no right to strike when most people would kill to be in their position is prevalent.

The WGA strike is an entertainment strike, but those on the picket lines seem to have mostly avoided the scorn of the public. This is no doubt because hardly anyone in the WGA is famous, or at least not famous solely based on their writing. While the assumption is that anyone who writes for a television show is making a very good living, there does seem to be an understanding of the fact that writing is a precarious field, and virtually no WGA member is so well compensated that they can last for long without new work.