Biztech News and Events

The steering committee of chapter 3 has been discussing the issue of the recent Oakland City tax impacting its members and other creative workers. Members in other cities it the bay area may soon be affected as well. Chair Jack Rasmus has been meeting and discussing with Oakland groups and the Alameda city council on possible protest actions to try and reverse the tax on writers who file ‘home office’ deductions on their income tax. The steering committee will send a survey to all chapter 3 members to solicit their views and opinions on what course of action the union might take to protest the tax. Check out the minutes of the steering committee for more detail. Look for an email survey from the union soon and respond with your opinion and input.

Join the NWU’s Oppose Offshoring campaign!

The goal of this campaign is to mobilize NWU members and other writers to help win passage of legislation that regulates the offshoring of high-tech and professional jobs. As the first step it targets legislation that

• Curtails the use of public monies to promote offshoring of U.S. jobs. See Government Offshoring.
• Protects personal privacy by restricting or prohibiting the offshoring of personal financial and medical data. See Offshoring Privacy Threat.

Sign the Petition

Campaign Overview-Click Here

October 23, 2004 | Offshoring, the corporate practice of moving high-wage jobs to overseas locations to escape paying fair wages, will be the topic of a special BizTech division meeting in San Francisco Saturday, Oct. 23 at 11:00 a.m.

Business, technical, instructional and educational writers (BizTech for short) are among the NWU members most directly threatened by the offshoring wave. Several BizTech members have been working to put together a national “Oppose Offshoring” campaign, with a website and an offshoring strategy discussion list. We’ll share ideas about this campaign, and enlist your help in forming a Bay Area offshoring committee, the first in the country.

Our goal is to help build a national movement to push back this latest assault on our jobs and professional practice. To do this, we need your ideas and participation. And we need an active BizTech group, so we’ll also elect a BizTech chair and come up with a regular meeting schedule.

Things to note:

There are a few things about this meeting that are different from our usual habits.

• BizTech meetings usually feature wide-ranging conversation about job hunting, technical challenges and industry gossip. We’ll get back to that in the future, but for this meeting we’ll put all that aside and focus on the critical issue of offshoring. Please bring ideas and an open mind.
• BizTech writers traditionally meet on weekday evenings, and nosh while we talk. This time we’ll meet on a Saturday at mid-day, and nosh while we talk. Refreshments will be provided. Bring something to share if you like.
• We’ll meet this time at Ted Kuster’s place in San Francisco’s Sunset district.

Directions:

The address is 2463 32d Ave., San Francisco, 94116. The phone number is 415-661-1708. Here is a link to a map at the Mapquest website: http://tinyurl.com/4h4ob

Public transportation:

From the East Bay, take BART to downtown San Francisco. At the Civic Center station, transfer to the outbound L Taraval Muni line.

From the Peninsula, you can take CalTrain to downtown San Francisco. Take the N Judah at the nearby Muni station. Transfer to the outbound L Taraval at Civic Center. Get off at 32d Ave. and walk half a block south. (That is to the left, relative to the direction of the train.) The house is on the right.

You can also take BART from the Peninsula. Get off at Daly City and take the No. 29 Muni bus. Get off at Sunset Blvd. and Taraval St. Walk east (to the right, relative to the direction of the bus) to 32d Ave. Turn right (south) and go half a block. The house is on the right.

Are you an Oakland writer with a home office?

Maybe you make a few extra bucks on the weekend to help pay the rent. Maybe you are one of the talented and lucky few who make a living freelancing. Either way, watch out for the City of Oakland tax police.

Whether you get paid $10 or $10,000 a year, the City of Oakland wants you to pay for the privilege of operating out of your kitchen, your spare bedroom or your garage. It is a regressive tax that the city is newly applying to anyone who claims a home office deduction on their state tax forms—it does not matter to Oakland whether you make any profit whatsoever. They city wants you to pay for a city business license.

A combination of a two-year-old state law and the maturation of data mining software allows the city to look into your personal tax records. If you claim a home office, then the city wants you to provide them a fee—just as if you were a storefront or a business office. While the city has a sliding fee, it bases its taxation on gross receipts, and so, hits the poorest and most struggling amongst us. If you record even a single legitimate penny (and up to $5,000), the city wants $60/year out of you for the tax. The scale goes up from there.

Oakland will note only tax you for the license but all back years that you have not paid for this newly-imposed fee, plus penalties and interest. The city threatens to destroy the credit ratings of those who do not pay this tax.

The National Writers Union believes this tax to be unfair, applied to those who can least afford it, and punitive.

NWU successfully routed a similar attempt to tax writers in Washington D.C. NWU is beginning its organization to beat back the tax here in Oakland. You don’t have to pay the tax and its penalties lying down.

Join the union to fight this taxation. Contact the NWU chair@unionwriters.org

August 7, 2004 | Local chapter 3 of the Writers Union will be sponsoring a joint workshop on copyright with the Independent Press Association (IPA) of San Francisco on August 7, 2004. All NWU members and interested writers are welcomed to attend.

The Publishers’ and Writers’ Copyright Workshop is scheduled from 1:30 to 5:30pm on Saturday, August 7, at the IPA offices located at 2729 Mission St., Suite #201, San Francisco. Veteran and long time NWU Local 3 member, Mike Bradley, an expert in copyright matters, will represent the Union as its spokesperson on the panel.

In addition to Mike, the panel will include an attorney and a publisher/editor. The initial 2.5 hours of the workshop will be an extended presentation by the attorney, Andrew Bridges, of the law firm of Winston & Strawn. He will speak on various copyright law topics, followed by presentations by Mike Bradley and the publisher/editor. An extended Q&A will follow to conclude the event.

This event should be an excellent experience for anyone interested in copyright issues. Cost of the workshop is $40.

For more information, contact Jo Ellen Green Kaiser of the IPA at jgkaiser@earthlink.net or call the IPA’s offices in San Francisco at 415-939-0823. Or email the Writers Union at chair@unionwriters.org

March 17, 2004 | It’s time for our annual St. Patrick’s Day NWU Writers Meeting. This month: Jobs, rates, offshoring, companies, and so on.

February 18, 2004 | NWU Technical Writers monthly meeting on Wednesday, February 18th: jobs, the NWU, and whatever else you’d like to talk about.