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National Writers’ Union Local 3

 Collection
Identifier: larc-ms-0126

Scope and Contents

The scope and content of this collection is heavily influenced by the fact that historically, NWU Local 3 has been a member, rather than staff, driven organization. For the first five years, for example, there were no paid staff. And until 1995 the "union office" was located in various members' homes. Therefore, the bulk of Local 3's work was done by a volunteer steering committee aided by other committees, ad hoc and on-going. For the most part, records were kept by the individual members who did the work.

The bulk of the records comprising this collection were saved by Celeste MacLeod, Bruce Hartford, and a few of the paid Coordinators, possibly Janet Jacobs. The collection gives a good idea of the union's activities but is particularly reflective of the work done by these individuals. There appear to be some gaps, particularly in grievance handling and trade group activity.

Local 3 attempted to organize freelancers employed by the Chronicle and Examiner between 1987 and 1990 and this effort is documented in the Organizing Campaigns Series. The NWU Conferences, Workshops, Events Series contains material from some of Local 3's well-attended events, including its annual writers' conferences (1988-1991) and the Prose to Poetry evening (1994).

Some of the union's activities at the National level are documented. While these documents are primarily in the Delegates Assembly and National Executive Board Series, evidence of National operations may be found throughout the collection, particularly in those files kept by Local 3 members who held national office or attended national events.

Finally, the Publications Series contains a somewhat complete run of Local 3's and the National's newsletters (Bay Area Writer, later Hear Say, and the American Writer).

Dates

  • 1982-1996

Biographical/Historical note

The concept of forming a writers' union was hatched at a Nation organized conference of freelance writers held in New York in 1981. Two years later the NWU was formally established at a convention in Brooklyn. The 1983 California Writers' Conference, organized by the Bay Area Writers' Organizing Committee, provided the impetus for Local 3's (San Francisco Bay Area) formation. In 1992, the NWU affiliated with the UAW, as Local 1981, which now funds a third of its budget.

The union is comprised of an at-large (for those writers living outside of the other locals' jurisdictions) and geographically based locals. The National Delegates Assembly is the highest policy-making body in the union. A National Executive Board is elected by members to carry out the policies established by the Delegates Assembly. Local 3 serves writers in six bay area counties and is led by an elected steering committee that oversees the work of volunteer committees and a part-time paid Coordinator.

Membership is open to (both published and unpublished) writers in all genres. In 1997 the NWU had roughly 4500 members. Dues are on a sliding scale based on income earned as a writer. The union's challenge is to develop ways to organize self-employed writers who are not centralized at a particular workplace. The union offers grievance resolution, contract advice, collective licensing, health and dental plans, networking, member education, and social events. It organizes industry campaigns and won a lawsuit, Tasini vs The New York Times, that challenged the electronic resale of articles without an author's permission, or compensation.

The preceding information was taken from a 1985 Fact Sheet (Box 1, Folder 3, NWU Collection, LARC) and from NWU's home page (http:jjwww.igc.apc.orgjnwu). Partial List of Local & National Officers:

Local 3 co-Chairs or President (elected):

  1. Celeste MacLeod 1983-1984
  2. Bruce Hartford 1985-1987
  3. Mike Bradley and Frank Free 1987-1989
  4. Janet Jacobs and Kathleen White 1990-1991
  5. Frank Free 1991-1993
  6. Karla Huebner and Kathleen White 1993-1994
  7. Bradley Cleveland and Kevin Hampton 1994-1995
  8. Bradley Cleveland 1995-1997

Local 3 Coordinator (paid position):

  1. Isadora Lomhoff 1987
  2. Nan Wiener 1988
  3. Janet Jacobs 1988-1992
  4. Stacy Frederick 1990-1991
  5. Rachel Hickerson 1992-1994
  6. Maureen Karpan 1995-1997
  7. Marcy Sheiner 1997

NWU National President (elected):

  1. Andrea Eagan 1983-1987
  2. Alec Dubro 1987-1990
  3. Jonathan Tasini 1990-1997

NWU Vice-President, Western Region (elected):

  1. George Fuller 1986-1987
  2. Steve Turner 1987-1988
  3. Eleanor Smith 1988-1989
  4. Frank Free 1989-1990
  5. Bradley Cleveland 1990-1991
  6. Janet Jacobs 1991-1993
  7. Dean Paton 1993-1995

NWU Secretary-Treasurer (elected):

  1. Nancy Duvergne Smith 1987-1989
  2. Bruce Hartford 1989-1997

MacLeod and Hartford, the first two donors of these records, were among the earliest Local 3 activists. MacLeod was Local 3's founding Chairperson. Hartford held the following positions: Local 3 vice-chair, 1983; Local 3 President, 1985-1987; National Executive Board member-at-large, 1987; National VP-at-large, 1988; and National Treasurer/secretary, 1989-1997.

Extent

17 boxes

Language of Materials

English

Additional Description

Abstract

The papers of the National Writers' Union spans 1982-1996, and represents the administrative work of the organization.

Arrangement

Missing Title

  1. By-laws and Constitution. 2 folders. 1983-1990. Documents from Local 3 and the National union.
  2. Steering Committee, Local 3. 11 folders. 1983-1995. Minutes from meetings held between 1983 and 1994 are located in the Meeting Materials folders.
  3. Committees. 10 folders. 1984-1992. This is a small sampling of documents from Local 3's trade group committees.
  4. Financial. 9 folders. 1985-1995. Primarily Local 3 financial statements but there are some National documents in this series.
  5. Membership. 18 folders. 1985-1995. This series contains applications for membership and renewals of Local 3 unionists. Since the union organized relatively few workplaces, members were often recruited on an individual basis. There are a few files in this series concerning this aspect of membership (Potential Recruits and Prospect Lists).
  6. Membership Benefits and Services. 3 folders. 1986-1992. This series is small because the health and welfare plan, the union's main benefit, was administered from the National office in New York. See the Employment Databases Series for untraditional union benefits offered by the NWU.
  7. Employment Databases. 11 folders. 1983-1991. The NWU, at both the local and national levels, kept databases about the publishing industry as a service for members and as a tool to help their organizing efforts. An undated overview of the concept is located in the Databases, overview folder. At various times there were the following union databases: Publications; Agents; Book Publishers; and Commercial Writers. A small file on the Technical Writers' Job Hotline, not technically a database, is included in this series.
  8. Elections. 3 folders. 1987-1993. Contains a partial record of local and national elections.
  9. Contracts and Agreements. 6 folders. 1985-1993. This series contains the few specific contracts negotiated at the national level and by Local 3. This series also contains many sample writer's agreements that its members could use in their dealings with publishers.
  10. Local 3, General. 29 folders. 1984-1994. This series is comprised of files relating to the general (e.g. an article on copyright law or repetitive strain injury) or office (letterhead, phone messages) operations of Local 3. Included in this series is a folder," Hartford Files," that covers Bruce Hartford's wide-ranging activities. See also Steering Committee Series for other Hartford files.
  11. Organizing Campaigns. 25 folders. 1986-1993, The Local's three-year organizing drive of freelancers for the Chronicle and Examiner newspapers is documented in this series. There are also files pertaining to other non-workplace based membership drives, such as "Each One Reach One" and the "Name Writer Campaign." See also Membership Series.
  12. Political and Social Action. 11 folders. 1989-1995. Contains information about anti-censorship and tax-reform campaigns, San Francisco Democratic Party activities, and other political actions taken by the union.
  13. Grievances. 7 folders. 1985-1992. This is a small series, centered on a few well-publicized cases, and may not be reflective of all of Local 3's grievance handling.
  14. NWU Conferences, Workshops, and Events. 18 folders. 1985-1994. The NWU organized a number of public events in order to provide membership education, networking opportunities, public relations, member recruitment, and fundraising. From 1988 to 1992 they hosted a large, annual writer's conference with such keynote speakers as Jessica Mitford and Paul Krassner. They also held other events such as a "Labor and the Media" Conference and an evening of "Prose to Poetry," featuring Isabel Allende. The quantity of material saved from these events varies, with some, "Prose to Poetry" for example, having quite a bit, and others, particularly their 1992 Annual Conference, Women in Print, having very little.
  15. National Executive Board. 13 folders. 1986-1995. These seem to be the files of Local 3 members who served on the National Executive Board, not the official records of that body. The years 1988 to 1990 are particularly well documented. See also By-Laws & Constitution Series.
  16. Delegates Assembly. 8 folders. 1986-1990. This series contains the files of Local 3 members who attended the Delegates Assembly during the years 1986 through 1990.
  17. Publications. 18 folders. 1982-1996. Contains almost complete runs of Local 3's newsletter and many issues of the National's publication. Brochures about the union may be found in other series as well.
  18. UAW. 1 folder. 1989-1992. The folder in this series contains documents from the UAW's New Directions Movement, a caucus advocating internal union democracy and greater labor militancy.

Accruals

In 1995, Celeste MacLeod, former Chairperson, National Writers' Union (NWU), Local 3, donated a box of newspapers and files about her work with the union to LARC. The following year, Bruce Hartford, then NWU Secretary-Treasurer, donated three boxes of materials that he had gathered as a national and local officer. In 1997, Marcy Sheiner, as Coordinator of Local 3, donated another three boxes of materials from the Local 3 office in Oakland. The three accessions were processed as one collection by Kim Klausner in the summer of 1997. Further accruals are expected.

Subjects

Finding Aid & Administrative Information

Title
Finding Aid to the National Writers' Union Local 3 Collection larc.ms.0126
Author
Finding aid prepared by Staff of the Labor Archives and Research Center
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Repository Details

Part of the Labor Archives and Research Center Repository

http://library.sfsu.edu/larc
Contact:
San Francisco State University
J. Paul Leonard Library, Room 460
1630 Holloway Ave
San Francisco 94132-1722 USA
(415) 405-5571

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