Yeah, I'm reading Strategy of Conflict at the moment. Still, it seems that working out Schelling points would give us blackmail, whilst understanding blackmail some other way wouldn't give us schelling points (as the latter can be without communication, etc.)

A Schelling point is a kind of Nash equilbrium, right? It's the kind of equilibrium that an understanding of human psychology and the details of the situation says you should expect.

The union-firefighter looks like a variant on the hawk-dove/chicken game. If default is (Dove,Dove), which isn't an equilibrium, Hawk can be seen as a black mail action as it makes you worse of than default. So at (Hawk,Hawk) everyone is, in fact, being blackmailed, and this is, essentially, a coordination problem.