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Most writers' organizations focus on some combination of the following: social networking, writing instruction and peer-critique, career advancement (how to get an agent, how to publicize a book, job referrals, networking, and so on), copyright issues as they affect writers, and freedom-of-speech issues.

Writers' unions like the National Writers Union usually do all of the above except teaching how to write. But the primary purpose of a writers' union is to address economic issues affecting writers in the marketplace (pay rates, abuses, unfair treatment, and so forth) and particularly the inequalities of power between publishers/employers and writers. Most non-union writers' organizations see themselves as industry associations promoting the interests of the industry as a whole; they do not address conflicts, abuses, and inequalities within the industry. And, indeed, most cannot do so because they include both and publishers/employers and writers in their memberships.

That was why our union was founded. The NWU arose out of two conferences of freelance writers, one in New York and one in San Francisco, organized by The Nation magazine in 1980. According to NWU President Jerry Colby, "As the authors compared stories of their problems with publishers, the writers realized that their problems were not their fault, but were endemic in the industry. Some of these problems were breach of contracts, poor royalty rates, and incomprehensible royalty statements." And, of course, poor pay. For example, in my treasurer's report to the 1999 Delegates Assembly, I noted that our roughly 5,000 members earned around $40 million in 1998 (for an average of $8,000 each). But that same year Michael Eisner, the CEO of the Disney empire (which at that time included six daily newspapers, six magazine groups, and three book publishers in addition to all the other Disney stuff), was paid $57 million. That one man was paid $17 million more than all of our members combined. There is no way that the contribution of one man -- no matter how talented -- could be worth 7,000 times what a writer earned. That inequality of income was based not on true market value, but on inequality of power.

Out of those conferences came union organizing committees in a dozen cities. After almost a year's work, the organizing committee elected delegates to the union's founding convention in 1981. At that time, many, probably the majority, of the conference participants already belonged to one or more other writers' organizations. But the reason they proposed a union was that the other organizations they belonged to were not chartered or designed to confront the information industry on economic issues. What the founding writers wanted was an organization different than the others, one that would be explicitly adversarial and confrontational. One that would address marketplace issues, defend writers against abuses by publishers and employers, and campaign for better pay. One that would be, in a word, a union. A union for freelance writers to take its place alongside the existing unions for staff journalists, screen writers, dramatists, and all other types of writers.

Writers' unions recognize that between author and publisher there is an inherently adversarial relationship. The publisher wants to make more money by paying us less; we want to earn more money from our work. This is not a radical notion. That there is an economic conflict of interest between buyer and seller is the underlying premise of the entire free market system, which intended to be an adversarial system. The publishers/employers are well organized; they have strong organizations, lobbyists, law firms, and other forms of interest groups. As individuals, writers have little power; only by standing together as a group can we have any hope of countering this inequality of power.

Bruce Hartford was NWU Secretary-Treasurer from 1990 to 2001