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National Writers Union (NWU), founded on 19 November 1981, is the trade union in the United States for freelance and contract writers: journalists, book and short fiction authors, business and technical writers, web content providers and poets. Organized into 17 local chapters nationwide, it had been Local 1981 of the
United Automobile Workers The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) ...
,
AFL–CIO The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL–CIO) is the largest federation of unions in the United States. It is made up of 56 national and international unions, together representing more than 12 million ac ...
since merging with them in 1992. On 11 May 2020, the NWU disaffiliated with the UAW.National Writers Union website: One Movement, Two Paths
/ref> NWU is affiliated with the
International Federation of Journalists The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is the largest global union federation of journalists' trade unions in the world. It represents more than 600,000 media workers from 187 organisations in 146 countries. The IFJ is an associate ...
(IFJ), the International Authors Forum (IAF), and the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO). National Writers Union website: Important Journalism Organizations
/ref>


Purpose

The NWU seeks to defend the rights of, and improve the economic and working conditions for, all writers. It offers advocacy, contract advice, grievance assistance, a job hotline, member education, press passes for qualified members, writer alerts and warnings, and access to group rate health and dental insurance (in certain geographic areas). The union also issues various publications and an irregular journal called ''American Writer''.


Structure

Ultimate power in the NWU rests in the biennial Delegate Assembly (DA), subject to the provisions of the
UAW The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers (UAW), is an American Labor unions in the United States, labor union that represents workers in the Un ...
's constitution. Delegates are elected to the assembly by local chapters and serve a term of two years. Each chapter is allocated a number of delegates according to the size of its membership. The DA sets over-all union strategy and policy, charters new locals, and establishes national working bodies that carry out union activities. Delegates are unpaid volunteers. The National Executive Committee (NEC) consists of 11 officers directly elected by the membership. The NEC administers the union between meetings of the National Executive Board (NEB), oversees union staff, initiates new union activities, and implements strategies, campaigns, projects, and policies adopted by the Delegate Assembly. The President is paid a full-time salary and the Vice presidents and Financial Secretary/Treasurer are paid part-time salaries. (The question of salaries is the subject of perennial debate within the NWU.) There is a National Executive Board (NEB), consisting of the 11 officers of the National Executive Committee plus the chairs of the 17 local chapters. The NEB meets annually to approve the annual budget and to review the implementation of policies adopted by the Delegate Assembly. Contested elections for the National Executive Committee officers have occasionally been the subject of great controversy within the NWU, and a considerable level of acrimony has inevitably developed. In particular, during one re-election attempt, a president was charged with using union funds to promote his campaign. The charge went to the US Department of Labor, but the Department refused to hear the case after Lowell Peterson, a United Auto Workers lawyer, insisted that Federal labor law did not apply to the Writers Union. Despite its name, wrote Peterson, on behalf of the NWU and President Jonathan Tasini, the union was in fact not legally a "labor organization," since its members are freelancers. Peterson's position was felt by many members to undermine two decades of work in establishing the NWU as writers' legitimate bargaining representative under Federal labor law.


Cases

The best-known activity of the NWU is probably the 2001 victory in '' Tasini v. Times'', in which the
United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
in a decisive 7–2 ruling affirmed the
copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
privileges of freelance writers whose works were originally published in
periodicals A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a Academic journal, journal ...
and then licensed by the publishers to electronic
databases In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...
without explicit permission of, or compensation to, the writers.National Writers Union website: $18 Million Settlement to Freelance Writers
/ref> In 2008, NWU joined over 60 other art licensing businesses (including the
Artists Rights Society Artists Rights Society (ARS) is a copyright, licensing, and monitoring organization for visual artists in the United States. Founded in 1987, ARS is a member of the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers and as such repre ...
,
Association of American Editorial Cartoonists The Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) is a professional association concerned with promoting the interests of staff, freelance and student editorial cartoonists in the United States, Canada and Mexico. With nearly 200 members, it ...
, Illustrator's Partnership of America,
Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) is a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization that acts as a network for the exchange of knowledge between writers, illustrators, editors, publishers, agents, librarians, educators, booksellers ...
, the
Stock Artists Alliance Founded in 2001, the Stock Artists Alliance was an international trade association of photographers who produce images for stock photography. The mission of SAA was to support and protect the business interests of professional stock photographers wi ...
, and the Advertising Photographers of America, among others) in opposing bot
The Orphan Works Act of 2008
an
The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008
Orphan Works Legislative Action Center: Groups Opposed to the Orphan Works Act
Known collectively as
Artists United Against the U.S. Orphan Works Acts
" the diverse organizations joined forces to oppose the bills, which the groups believe "permits, and even encourages, wide-scale infringements while depriving creators of protections currently available under the Copyright Act." In 2017, the NWU sued
Ebony Ebony is a dense black/brown hardwood, coming from several species in the genus ''Diospyros'', which also contains the persimmons. Unlike most woods, ebony is dense enough to sink in water. It is finely textured and has a mirror finish when pol ...
magazine for $200,000 on behalf of writers who were owed money. The suit was settled with writers being paid $74,000.


Other Advocacy

In February of 2019, the NWU published a statement by a number of author organizations regarding the Internet Archive's Open Library project. The NWU was concerned that freely distributing copies of authors' works violated the protections that those authors get from copyright laws. The statement called for "a dialogue among writers, authors, publishers, and librarians on how to enable and create the digital libraries we all want, in ways that fully respect authors’ rights" The
Freelance Solidarity Project The Freelance Solidarity Project is a division of the US-based National Writers Union (NWU) that organizes freelance media and communications workers. The group formed in 2018 out of meetings held by the Writers Guild of America, East The Write ...
was organized by NWU in September of 2019 with the aim of organizing
freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
, permalance, staff, and contract workers. FSP is overseen by a twelve-member committee that aims to set industry wide standards for freelancers.Digiday: New fronts will open in the media union wars in 2020
/ref>


See also

*
Writers Guild of America The Writers Guild of America is the joint efforts of two different US labor unions representing TV and film writers: * The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE), headquartered in New York City and affiliated with the AFL–CIO * The Writers Guil ...
*
Books in the United States As of 2018, several firms in the United States rank among the world's biggest publishers of books in terms of revenue: Cengage Learning, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Education, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley. H ...


References


External links

* {{Authority control American writers' organizations Trade unions affiliated with the United Auto Workers International Federation of Journalists Communications trade unions