So there I was as president after like two and a half years of activism and I began to realize that all the work I was doing for the union was more gratifying to me than my academic work. I felt it had more of a real impact on the world. As opposed to writing these esoteric articles that maybe a handful of people would read even if they were published, I thought I was doing something important. The academic community started to feel very insular and sterile.

I never finished school. Instead, around 1996 I moved to New York City to work for the National Writers' Union. It's a larger organization than the Association of Graduate Students and I was drawn here by the chance to have more responsibilities, more challenges, different problems to deal with. This is a very tough time for writers, particularly freelance journalists, who are mostly who I work with. The publishing industry is changing and publishers are trying to shift the terms of their standard contracts to what's called all-rights contracts. These contracts demand that the writer give the print publisher all rights to their pieces in every publishing medium--CD-ROMs, databases, web sites--basically all media now known or yet to be invented, throughout the universe, in perpetuity. The problem is that in order for a freelancer to earn a living, it is really critical for them to be able to re-sell their work and the all-rights contract basically destroys their ability to do this and thereby earn a living at their trade.

Ten years ago, freelance writers generally didn't sign a contract at all, in which case the default was that they licensed only first North American serial rights, or they signed a contract in which they explicitly licensed their North American serial rights. And if they licensed additional rights, they received additional compensation for it. Some publishers are starting to do that again in response to our writers' demands, but many of them are trying to get away with keeping all the additional proceeds for themselves.

So it's a critical time in the industry and it's very important that we stand together and stop these all-rights contracts now. The opportunity could be lost and all-rights contracts could become the standard. We're fighting this on a number of fronts. At the national level, in Congress, we're pushing legislation. And at the local level, we're trying to get freelancers to write letters to management, distribute informational leaflets, get community support, and basically do whatever they can to get the publishers to come to the table to negotiate better terms.

What I spend most of my time doing is talking to people on the phone. I am responsible for servicing all the locals in my region, which means maintaining regular contact with them, conducting evaluation planning meetings for them and providing regular written reports on what's happening throughout the union. I'm also currently working on editing a guide to fighting all-rights contracts that we can give to people in the locals when these contracts are issued. And I work on some recruitment literature and I prepare a lot of training material for our phone handlers.

Almost every day, I am on the phone with writers who have grievances or questions about contracts. People are calling all the time in real crisis about being forced to sign a contract and they want to know how they should change the language and what strategy to use. I've been especially involved in a long dispute we've been having with the Village Voice. Last year, they issued an all-rights contract to all of their freelancers. The writers started to protest, and the Voice said they would give no future assignments to anyone who had not signed the all-rights contract. They were really draconian in enforcing this policy and in preventing writers from changing a word of the contract. And they would not negotiate anything.

So the writers got the union involved. We started out by sending a letter to the president of the Voice, David Schneiderman, signed by fifty writers, demanding to talk about their contract. Schneiderman referred the letter to his lawyer. The lawyer never responded, so then we wrote a series of letters to the editors of the paper. In the past, the Village Voice had published letters to the editors about their labor disputes because it liked to think of itself as a progressive, liberal paper with a commitment to the First Amendment. No longer. They refused to print any of the letters. So we went and got publicity about the situation in the New York Observer and Newsday, and then there was an exchange of letters to the editor in the New York Times. We also did information leafleting in front of the office of the Voice. And we spent hours and hours on the phone contacting freelancers, urging them not to sign the contract and counseling them on how to deal with the pressure the Voice was putting on them. The dispute is ongoing. A lot of writers found work elsewhere or, in some cases, they signed the contract.

Probably the hardest thing about this job is giving our writers this kind of advice. I mean, generally, I'm urging them to hold out and not sign their contracts and there's no real guarantee of success, you know? And people's livelihoods are at stake. So there are times when you take a step back and say, "Oh, my god. I hope I'm not leading them down the wrong path. I hope we're going to be able to get something out of this." It's frightening. I have encouraged people not to sign certain contracts, which may mean they don't write for certain publications any more. But that's a decision they are making with their eyes open, and I think personal sacrifices are sometimes necessary in order to achieve larger goals. It's hard to ask people to put themselves on the line and give up work because of a principle, but I believe that is what we have to do in order to change the industry and I'm committed to doing it.

I know I'm an ideologue, but I consider myself a thoughtful ideologue. I'll never really push too hard. For instance, if someone calls me and tells me they feel compelled to sign an all-rights contract, I talk it through with them. I'm not going to necessarily say, "Absolutely, whatever you do, don't sign." It depends on their situation and, you know, do they really need this money to pay next month's rent? At the very least, I'll try and suggest that they change some language, but every situation is different. The main thing is, I explain to people very clearly the situation and what are the risks, so that no one is ever making a decision on insufficient data.

To become a member of this union, you just fill out a member application and pay your dues. The eligibility criteria are really minimal because we start educating people in the terms and the conditions they should be demanding at the very beginning of their careers so they don't undermine the conditions of more established writers. The requirements are just one book or three articles published, or an equivalent amount of unpublished material that you're trying to get published. So it's quite minimal requirements and the benefits of joining the union are numerous. There's the group health insurance plan. There's contract advising and grievance representation. There's the networking which is very important for freelancers who work in the isolation of their own homes--both for purposes of getting new jobs and also just for getting human contact. There's the agents database for people looking for agents. And there's also a whole panoply of written resource material that's available only to members, including a standard journalism contract and a guide to book contracts. That's a lot of benefits.

The writers' union has a total membership of around 4,500. We are an affiliate of the United Auto Workers, which sounds incongruous to a lot of people, but it really isn't. It's just a sign of how much the labor movement has changed in the last twenty years. The UAW, like many other industrial unions, does not just represent industrial workers anymore. There's a whole technical and professional department within the UAW which includes clerical workers, lawyers, engineers, graduate students, and writers. They have a commitment to organizing un-traditional workers. In fact, the UAW has provided a great deal of financial assistance to us because they see us as being in the vanguard of the labor movement. As there are more and more contingent and temporary workers, the UAW needs to develop new methods of organizing them, and that's what the National Writers Union is doing. It is really exciting to be in this position at this point in time.

As an ideologue, I'm uncomfortable speaking badly about the union. There's a bureaucracy, and sometimes it's cumbersome to get authorization for things, but when it's really important, we can get things done more quickly too. So I really have no complaints. In fact, I deeply admire the UAW. Way back in the 1930s, when they were first going into the auto plants in Michigan, they were organizing African-American workers right alongside white workers. They have a very good civil rights history right up to this day. And they were the first national union to establish a women's department immediately following World War II and did not adopt the position that some other unions took that women should leave the factories to open those jobs up to men returning from the war. And they protested the Vietnam war. It's a very progressive, democratic union and I'm proud to be a part of it.

There is a tradition in the labor movement of chewing up organizers and spitting them out. I can't predict the future, but I love this job and I thrive on its stimulation and it's hard for me at this point to imagine growing tired of it. Still, I understand why so many organizers quit. It is hard to do this kind of work and have a family, or even sustain a relationship. It can be done, I suppose, if you're really good at setting boundaries. I'm not. Lately, I've been working twelve-hour days and weekends. I don't always do that, but I never work less than fifty hours a week. Fortunately, I don't have a strong desire to have children, so I don't see that as a problem. But if I did, I'm not sure this kind of work is compatible with having a family and I would tell someone who is thinking about entering it to really evaluate their priorities. For me, it's perfect. I'm promoting principles that I believe in, which are part of creating a more egalitarian society. And I really don't think there's anything more important in life.

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TO ARCHIVE