posted June 2, 2005
Staff Writers - Thinking Outside the Box
Thinking Outside the Box: Staff Writers in NWU?
Mike Bradley
Contract advisor, former National Grievance Officer, former SF
Co-Chair
Recently there have been discussions about the unthinkable - inviting
staff writers to join the Writers Union. In the chapter and on NWU
email lists, activists have proposed expanding our recruitment base to
include employees, whether full-time, part-time or temp. As the
discussion proceeded, I found myself more and more convinced that we
should do it - officially open our membership to staff writers.
For me, the key to enrolling staffers was to let go of preconceptions
about what a union should be. I’m happy to let go of those
preconceptions because, let’s face it, the traditional labor movement
isn’t setting any houses afire, except maybe its own. Unions need to
reinvent themselves, fast.
I don’t think enrolling staffers means plunging into the typical
collective bargaining mess. Instead, we can simply offer staffers the
same benefits and opportunities that we offer freelancers. Nothing
more. Nothing less.
The union was founded by freelancers who felt they had no one to stick
up for them, and sticking up for them would remain a core purpose. The
genre programs would remain, the special projects like the offshoring
campaign and the self-publishing kit, the contract advice, the health
insurance. Maybe, someday, we’d organize collective bargaining
contracts, but we certainly wouldn’t start out with that as our goal.
Would a staff writer want to join the union? Sure. We already have
numerous employees in our membership. Look around you at your next
union event. You’ll see staff writers who also write articles and
short stories; writing professionals who freelance for the extra
income, career advancement, or just plain pleasure. These writers are
generally indistinguishable from the full-time freelancers, so how
different can their interests be? Of course, their employment contract
is different from a freelancer’s, but in all other significant ways,
it’s hard to see much difference. Why not end the fiction of
separateness and open the door to their full membership?
Wouldn’t we have to represent the staffers in their contract
negotiations? What about grievances? Do we have the ability to handle
staff grievances? We could provide staffers the same kind of contract
help that we do now. When a contract advisor helps a freelancer
negotiate a contract, she doesn’t do the bargaining herself, she only
helps the writer bargain. Handling grievances would be more
complicated - employment law is an awful tangle. So maybe we would only
help staffers find the proper help for their grievances. But that’s
more help than the labor movement gives them now, right, so why not
do it?
The main objections that have been voiced are that enrolling staffers
is more than we can handle right now, that we should succeed with
freelancers before we expand to staffers, that staffers would embroil
us in a very different union environment. I think you could also add a
general uneasiness about losing our uniqueness. However, thinking
outside the box means just the opposite-keeping our uniqueness and
inviting more writers to enjoy it.
