Looking back, labor unions were strangely central to a lot of the earliest hits of HBO’s prestige era. Corrupt union politics and all those “no show” construction jobs serve as an ambient background for many of The Sopranos’ plotlines; The Wire devoted its entire second season to the Shakespearean tragedy of Frank Sobotka and the International Brotherhood of Stevedores; Deadwood’s microcosmic American origin story was haunted, through its entire run, by the looming threat of brutal, strike-break