A Proposal For Unionizing Bloggers 259
mikesd81 writes "Coloumbia Journal Review writes about the possibility of unionizing bloggers. Chris Mooney writes 'Yes, dear reader: the Bloggers Guild of America may be on its way. The dispute between screen and television writers and media conglomerates has its roots, after all, in the Web.' He says, then, they get zero compensation for their products being distributed over the Internet. 'Bloggers often earn that same salary. There are exceptions, of course, those fortunate few who have become quasi-celebrities in their own right and found themselves, and their sites, snatched up by major media companies,' he goes on to say. He also adds that a bloggers guild could protect a blogger's intellectual property and help ensure they're compensated for it."
Not too surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
Three words (Score:2, Insightful)
What. The. Fuck.
Honestly, you make up a word for "people writing regularly writing online and letting others comment on it" and all of a sudden you think you're something special.
Am I missing something?
Unions - are they needed? (Score:3, Insightful)
A Union Doesn't Make Any Sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who loses money if the bloggers go on strike? For that matter, if they weren't blogging, how would we even know they were on strike? By the lack of updates? I doubt the print media would care enough to inform us.
A guild in the sense of a trade organization might make sense, but a union?
You might just as sensibly organize the elephants and have them strike if ivory poaching continues.
Once a union (Score:3, Insightful)
Unions had/have their place, but this isn't one of those places.
Would this be mandatory? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Three words (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, there are some really good employers. They are few and far between. The VAST majority of corporations are more than happy to screw their employers at every opportunity. That's what unions are for. Yes, many unions are corrupt and greedy and irrational. But so are many corporations. You NEED a union as a check on the power of the company/employers. Period.
Re:Not too surprising - anti-free speech (Score:0, Insightful)
no value so no leverage (Score:5, Insightful)
Where, exactly would a group of bloggers create enough value that "we" would be prepared to pay extra to have them continue?
They have no leverage as most of them are hobbyists and do it more for their own benefit and self-image than for anyone else. If they stopped, they would not be missed and there would not be a hole in our lives that needed filling (possibly the reverse!!!)
there's one problem with your cunning plan.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad, bad, bad idea!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Unions are the cause of a lot problems in the U.S. In Illinois, you are required to join a union if your job function is unionized. They're huge bureaucratic entities that are corrupt, they waste time, and they especially waste money. I've been in a union (UFCW), and it sucked. Unions are always talking about striking while at the same time take a large chunk of money out one's paycheck. These "union dues" or extortion fees would never, ever be seen again. And the biggest problem with unions is that it is very difficult to get rid of a crappy worker.
I'll be damned if I have to be forced to join a union because I write blogs. Unions were needed at the beginning of the 20th century because there were no laws to protect the worker. Today, there are laws in force that do protect the worker. Additional laws for bloggers would not be that tough to do. Plus, there wouldn't be any extortion fees to pay.
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:5, Insightful)
It should also be noted that there are still issues that unions are fighting on, obviously what these issues are depends on where you look, but they exist. A simple situation that unions can and do address is pay, employers often do not want to pay employee's (especially at the lowest level) what they are worth, sure they will pay the minimum legal wage, they may even pay more than the minimum possible wage, however for an employee to take unilateral action (i.e. protest or demand extra pay on threat of leaving) would be pointless, they would be dismissed and the situation would remain the same, the dismissal serving as a disincentive for any other employee considering the same path. Obviously a union makes it possible for the entire workforce (or the group affected) to take action.
Now that example in the context of the US is usually seen as negative, it is usually assumed that this pressure by unions for higher pay (and often job protection) is unfair on the employer, and in some cases it is, especially when an employer *is* paying a fair wage, or where an employer *Cannot* pay more. In these cases the union should always be looking to protect its members interest, that is to say to safeguard the jobs of its members and achieving the best possible collective agreements, not to harm its members by forcing an employer to become uncompetitive in the marketplace (leading to potential job cuts or insolvency).
So in short, unions are valuable and useful, if, the members of a union have sufficient sway within it (so as to be able to present their views, usually by way of a ballot), and also if the union organisation is rational and reasonable when dealing with employers. Most importantly there should always be good communication between unions and employers, strikes should be avoided and used only as a last resort against uncooperative and abusive employers.
Modern unions also generally provide additional protections and services to members, things like legal advice (not just related to employment) and insurance, due to the fact that they (generally) represent a large pool of employed individuals, they are also in a position to use their size to arrange preferential prices for goods and services (in some cases housing) for their members. Finally they are also a potential ally for an employer who has issues with a particular employee, they are after all a third party and therefore able to give (one would hope) rational and informed (and partially independent) advice and guidance with regard to disciplinary action.
Anyway, unions are a good thing, as long as they are reasonable, every one I have dealt with has been professional and showed common sense in their dealings, although I must say some of the stories I hear coming from the US are that the unions that exist there are not quite set up in the same manner, in some cases apparently acting more a labour cartel than an organisation geared to protect vulnerable workers from exploitation (I hope that that is not a correct picture but simply that horror stories are more fun to tell than stories about successes).
Re:Something smoking in Hollywood... (Score:3, Insightful)
rtfa, and then read it again. (Score:2, Insightful)
The article, in suggesting that bloggers organize to receive a cut of proceeds, is not talking about your next door neighbor and his diary-blog. The article is referring only to bloggers writing for websites that make considerable ad revenue.
I'm not all too familiar with the scene, but, according to the article, much of Daily Kos' and the Huffington Post's content is supplied by smalltime bloggers who write on those sites. The article is saying that those writers should be making a cut of the ad revenue. It then mentions a couple sites where that's already the case. And it ignores that the high-profile (read: already famous for some other reason) bloggers at the Huffington Post are certainly getting paid handsomely already.
Re:WIOTY award (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Would this be mandatory? (Score:1, Insightful)
Nothing prevents some other studio (who doesn't have a contract with the writer's guild) from making movies using non-guild writers. There is no law that binds them, only contracts.
Hence why this makes no sense with blogging. Who will the blogger's union negotiate with? The public at large? Obviously not. They can try and negotiate a deal with advertisers, of course. The deal would be something like "you can only advertise on guild blogs, and this is the minimum rate a guild blogger gets. If you agree to these terms, then you get access to the guild bloggers, who are 'the best' in the business." For this to work, the bloggers guild must first get important and powerful bloggers on their side, otherwise they have zero leverage. (Yet, of course, those are precisely the bloggers who don't need the protection of a union.)
And, even with a blogger union, nothing will prevent the myriad independent bloggers from posting to the web; and surely there will be advertisers willing to put ads on their sites.
In short, the whole thing seems silly. The blogosphere is too fragmented for a cohesive union to form. As I said, modern unions only evolve where there are a limited number of classes of stakeholder, so that consolidating everyone's 'needs' into a few headings is actually feasible. The Internet is not homogeneous.
No, No, Please No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce
No surprise there (Score:5, Insightful)
Like modern unions, this is a scam so that a few select people can wield power while deceiving everyone under them into thinking that they are necessary.
Unless someone is paying you to blog, blogging isn't a job. Shit, you certainly don't have to come home from your 9-5 job at Starbucks and blog about every fucking aspect of your life. Saying you want to be compensated for what you produce is like me asking the County to pay me for what I flush down the toilet. If you really do want to make a business out of it then charge for your content. I'm sure within a few, short days you'll realize how completely useless and trite the crap you spew out of your pie-hole is and exactly how little anyone really cares: 0.
I completely blame the media outlets for letting bloggers' egos get so ridiculously inflated to think that the trash they produce is somehow useful or important. People don't care what the 'blogosphere' is saying as they aren't a sample of any group but themselves. For fucks sake, if you want to write something meaningful, become a scientist and publish!
Re:Unions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the union that covers all metallurgic works, including car-making.
They actually have a war chest that covers salaries while on strike, so it can go-on for a longer time to FORCE the Bosses to give-in before it cost them their own bonuses.
=> Ig-Metal affiliates are among the best paid in their work line in Europe.
Please remember Capitalism is "rule of the strongest", and that as a worker you have to make it work for you, the lowest link in the pyramid.
"When everything else has failed, give it a kick. It will satisfy a deep urge and sometime even make it work" (Me) - works also quite well for the non-physical world.
Re:No surprise there (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of them do, and presumably he is in that article. But yes, the article is odd in that he seems to primarily be talking about people who don't get paid at all. The point of unions is to ensure rights for employees. There is some argument for capitalising on what you do - getting people to pay you - but that's not what I would call a union in the "worker's union" sense.
But then again, later on he does talk about primarily a union for people blogging for money, those that are "professional", so I think what he says isn't unreasonable.
Re:You have succinctly summed up leftist folly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:4, Insightful)
Companies get the unions they deserve.
When a company pays its employees well, honors vacation time, hires the right number of staff to do the work, and pays a competitive wage, they don't get unionized. When companies cut pay on the rank and file to pay for massive executive bonuses, or cut medical benefits while posting profits to Wall Street, they see union strikes as per the airlines.
Re:Not too surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
When the local factory is the only way to earn a living, organized labor helps a lot. It's monopoly of labor balancing out monopoly of employment. In cases like this it's merely the people who suck at their "job" wanting to ride the gravy train of those that succeed. If they can't make a living at blogging, they should go get one of the countless other jobs that pay fairly.
Re:Unions - are they needed? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)