The Dagley Dagley Daily

By Janet Dagley Dagley
Covering the world from the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA

ISSN 1544-9114

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Union maid, part 2: Day of delay

I had hoped that by today, I'd be able to tell you about some of the people I was hanging out with in Las Vegas and in particular, their books or other writing available online. I still hope to do that, but instead of putting all that together, I've spent the day answering questions from some other delegates who didn't quite understand what I was up to here. I do clearly disclose that The Dagley Dagley Daily gets a piece of the action for each item sold through this site: that's how this blog hopes to support itself. So I won't be mentioning any authors or books today, and I hope all those questions are resolved soon.

Instead, let me tell you about the most controversial, most contended decision we made at the National Writers Union Delegates Assembly, with approximately 100 elected delegates, such as myself, representing the various local units of our union. New York has the most members, so we got the most delegates. As you may have noticed, the publishing industry, and therefore the freelance-writing industry, tends to be skewed toward New York. Of all the things we voted on over the four days of the assembly, including new bylaws and a dues increase, only one of the questions that came before us resulted in a tie that had to be broken by the president, and it was literally a bunch of writers arguing over a single word.

Our union has a slogan: "Good writing must be organized." It's been that way for years. A resolution was introduced in this assembly to change that to "Good writers must be organized," and the maker of the resolution believed that "good writing..." was a mistake, and that the people who came up with the slogan years ago had intended it to say "Good writers..." even though those members who were around way back then said "good writing..." was intentional.

Under the supervision of a professional parliamentarian, three speakers were allowed on each side, for or against the resolution. I rose to speak in opposition: "I am against the proposed change because it would exclude some writers," I told the assembly when it was my turn at the mic. "We don't want just good writers in our union. We want bad writers, mediocre writers, hacks. We want all writers." The roar of laughter was so loud I thought sure I'd swung the room to my point of view. But the discussion went on, with various delegates arguing that this or that was the "better pun." Finally we voted, and it was dead even. Our President, Marybeth Menaker, then cast the deciding vote, and so our slogan remains, "Good writing must be organized." I guess that'll show those publishers who demand we sign over all rights for all time in all universes, at no additional compensation, for something we sold them back in 1987 and then sold in other forms several times over in the intervening years so that we can't sign over those rights even if we wanted to. That ought to make it possible for people who want to buy health insurance to find someone to sell it to them. That ought to go a long way toward getting collective bargaining rights for freelance writers. And it ought to stop offshoring, too. If only we had no other concerns, so that we could spend all our time arguing over words.

posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:45 PM

24.9.03