Media

Hamilton Nolan, In These Times - One interesting side effect of writing a book about unions (as I recently did) is that it makes you more aware that the book industry is, for the most part, not unionized. On one hand: yeah, just like every other industry! On the other hand, there are some glaring reasons to think that the book business — the whole, sprawling chain, from writing to publishing to selling — is overdue for its own big wave of unionization. Book workers, unite! You have nothing to lose but the branded tote bags they give you instead of raises.... The book world has been something of an outlier. Writers themselves may very well have passed through unions when they were on campus or working in media, but the permanent workers of the book industry mostly have not. Of the ​“Big Five” publishers, only HarperCollins is unionized. (My own publisher, Hachette, is not.) Last year, workers at HarperCollins went on strike for more than two months in a fight over the modest demand of a $50,000 per year salary minimum, which gives you a good idea of the industry’s traditionally low wages.