Art imitating life, Washington style

Some TV occupants of the White House are getting in the middle of the high-stakes fight over a bill that would make it easier for unions to organize.

Today, actors from "The West Wing" will join workers and members of Congress to unveil a new ad and grassroots campaign called “Faces of the Employee Free Choice Act."

Then, the actors -- Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford, and Richard Schiff -- will join in lobbying on Capitol Hill for the legislation, according to the labor coalitions pushing it.

UPDATE: "It's a human rights issue," Sheen, who played president Josiah Bartlet, said, according to the Associated Press. "It's just bottom line fair that workers should be paid for their labor fairly."

Whitford, a union member and board member of the pro-labor group American Rights at Work, said he was behind the event. "I call this process celebrity lubrication," Whitford joked to reporters.

The pro-business Workforce Fairness Institute responded with this missive: “Today’s event on Capitol Hill with actors who played fictional political powerbrokers addressing a fictional problem is like a work of fiction that would be better suited for a comedy if their proposed ‘solution’ wasn’t so devastating to our nation’s economy,” said Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute. “Job creators don’t need policy prescriptions from out-of-touch, Hollywood elite who want to drive up costs and encourage a hostile takeover of American small businesses.”