Unite the Write?
Why new attempts to bring the lowly freelance writer into the union fold may be wrong
BY Julie Crysler
Illustration by Evan Munday
This was my first job after school: trying to sell a few articles to pay my rent. Harder than it sounds when you’re paid by the word and the words come slowly. That blank page is cruel, and it always takes longer than it should to fill it. It’s a profession I wouldn’t wish on anyone—and one I regularly discourage young people from taking up.
It’s not because freelance writing doesn’t have its perks. You get to read and write and talk to smart people all day. Struggling to squeeze clarity and grace from this awkward language, it feels virtuous, somehow. You can take a break (or hell, a nap) whenever you want. There’s no wheezing manager leaning over your shoulder, making sure you’re cranking out your quota of paragraphs.
The problem is a simple one: The pay is terrible. Even if you write for the fanciest magazines, you’re looking at a dollar a word. And while that big feature might score you a few grand, it will probably take you weeks—or months—to research and write it. That’s not counting the time you spend hounding and harassing editors into buying your ideas in the first place, or invoicing and accounting after the work is done. Freelance journalists at the top of their profession are happy to gross $40,000 a year. Most get by on a whole lot less. And that’s with no benefits, no pension, no security—nothing.
Given the lot of the lowly freelancer, it’s not surprising that there have long been rumblings that there ought to be a union. The Periodical Writers Association of Canada (PWAC) has been toying with the idea for years. John Degen, PWAC’s executive director (and, full disclosure, chair of the board of This Magazine), says the question comes up at almost every annual meeting, but has never been resolved.
That could soon change. Two of North America’s largest media unions are set to swell their ranks with freelance members. The Newspaper Guild approved a plan to admit freelance members at its 2004 convention. The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) union has also launched a campaign to organize independent contractors working in journalism and communications.
Peter Murdoch, CEP’s media vice-president, says the idea is to bring together a critical mass of freelancers to negotiate minimum fees. He envisions the union working on a guild or “craft” model, a structure that’s common in the performing arts.
“Look, if you want to be an actor in this country, you’re going to be a member of ACTRA, which is essentially a freelance actors’ union,” he says. Similar groups represent screenwriters, directors, musicians and other cultural workers. “Now why hasn’t that happened in print?”
It’s a fair question. Actors, like freelance writers, are independent contractors. And, like freelance writers, they are in fierce competition with one another. Most actors—like most writers—toil in relative obscurity and struggle to pay the rent. The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) negotiates and enforces minimum standards. Because of ACTRA’s collective agreement with CTV, for example, when you land a starring role on one of the network’s fine Canadian dramas, you’ll make at least $40.50 per hour. Nice work if you can get it.
Not just anyone can join ACTRA. But a non-member who wants to perform on a program that’s subject to an ACTRA collective agreement has to cough up 75 bucks, plus permit fees. Once you’ve amassed a certain number of performances (usually six), you can apply for full membership in the union.
The system works because members are only allowed to take work that’s subject to ACTRA’s collective agreements. ACTRA employers agree to hire only ACTRA members (and people who’ve bought the work permits). This means that there is no good way for actors to make a living—or for producers to find actors—outside the union.
ACTRA grew out of a syndicate of radio performers that formed in the 1940s. It has been successful because of its sheer size (21,000 members), because it represents just about every well-known actor in this country and because the CBC (its first and biggest employer) didn’t try to bust it when it was first getting started.
For a freelance writers’ union to make any headway, the CEP will likely need a similar level of buy-in from writers across the country. It will also need a supportive employer to play the role that CBC has for ACTRA. CEP has at least one thing going for it—a strong presence at many major Canadian media outlets, including the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, the Toronto Star and the Victoria Times-Colonist.
Catherine McKercher teaches journalism at Carleton University and is the author of Newsworkers Unite: Labour, Convergence and North American Newspapers. She says these large media organizations would likely be the first targets for the freelancers’ unions. “The potential is that anyone who works for this employer belongs to the same union and is going to get the same kind of fair deal,” she says.
It’s a basic principle of industrial relations—when you enlarge the bargaining unit you strengthen your bargaining position. But here’s the rub: One way the CEP and other media unions ensure job security for their members is by negotiating collective agreements that limit the use of freelancers. That’s the big issue at those annual PWAC meetings: join the union and the freelancers pay the dues, but the staffers keep the jobs. Like it or not, freelancers are in a price war. Their work is cheaper because the employer doesn’t have to pay for pesky frills like dental plans and pensions. The interests of freelancers and staffers may be similar, but they are not the same. It’s not clear how the union will balance them.
If that were the worst obstacle, there might be power in a freelancers’ union. But CEP will have to deal with issues that are even more vexing: How on earth do you unite a group of people crazy enough to try to make money by writing? How do you get employers to sign on? Would freelancers back up their wage demands with a work stoppage? Would staffers support them? What about that fresh new crop of scabs the J-schools unleash each year?
Even if the CEP succeeds in upping the pay rates, it won’t change the economic reality that’s driving them down: oversupply and lack of demand. New technologies have cut the staff of a typical magazine in half. Statistics Canada studies show that the number of people who read Canadian magazines and newspapers has been in steady decline since the early 1990s. The math is depressing. Raise the pay rates and all you’re looking at is fewer slices of a shrinking pie.
And while it’s fine to dream about a closed guild for writers, there are structural reasons why these organizations are common in the performing arts and not the mass media. Performing is piecework by nature. Producers need actors, directors and screenwriters to work very hard for a limited period of time. After the production is over, those workers are no longer needed. As Catherine McKercher points out, newspapers and magazines are structurally more like small-batch manufacturing operations. Most of the work involved in newsgathering is ongoing—and has been traditionally done by staffers. Only recently have large volumes of the work been hived off to independent contractors.
What’s happening to media workers is better understood as part of another trend: the shedding of permanent jobs and the growth of the contingent workforce. It’s a reality that the labour movement has been slow to address—thus the precipitous decline in union density over the past two decades. It’s encouraging to see CEP reaching out to a part of the workforce that has long been outside the union movement’s sphere of influence; it’s just too bad they had to pick the least united and most cantankerous band of contingent workers out there. It makes me think of that old joke: Ask five journalists the same question you’ll get six different answers. My fear is that CEP will spend a great deal of time and effort debating the pros and cons of union membership only to duplicate work of organizations such as PWAC and the Canadian Association of Journalists.
It is a sad fact that writing has never been a good way to make a living. It is little more than bloody-mindedness that keeps these quixotic souls in the business. When I sit down to a dinner of rice and beans at a table I got at the Salvation Army, I sometimes comfort myself with the thought that if things ever get really rough, I can always sell out for something in PR. Much as I may bitch and moan, I know I am one of the lucky ones. I have an education and a choice. Not all contingent workers do.
