The future seems uncertain for the Writers’ Union of Quebec (UNEQ), after members refused to pay a membership fee. What credibility does the union now have to represent authors vis-à-vis publishers? Especially since it also emerges weakened by the major technical problems that followed one another during the general meeting on Wednesday.
During this extraordinary assembly, which stretched over nearly seven hours on Wednesday evening, the authors refused the proposal of the UNEQ to collect a union contribution of 2.5% on the income of its members, and 5% over those of non-member authors. Following a confusing electronic vote, just under 56% of members who were still online rejected UNEQ’s resolution, which said it needed the new revenue to complete its negotiations with publishers.
Small consolation for UNEQ: the members approved the sale of the Writers’ House by a narrow majority of 14 votes. But some now openly contest the legitimacy of this vote. The duty spoke to at least three authors who intended to vote no, but who say they were unable to decide because of deficiencies in the electronic voting system.
Others point out that the members considered the Writers’ House issue even before the results of the dues vote were revealed. If the participants had known beforehand that the resolution on the contributions was rejected, the outcome could have been different for the House of writers, believes the author Yvon Rivard.
“Surely there are people who would have understood that it would be useless to sell the house if, in any case, the UNEQ cannot raise contributions. Their argument for selling the house was that they needed the money for the negotiations. But without contributions, they will not have the means to carry out large expensive negotiations with a battery of lawyers”, he reasons.
That said, the ancestral building in Carré Saint-Louis will not be on the market before September 2024. During the next 18 months, UNEQ has undertaken to try to find a new buyer who agrees to keep the literary vocation of its historic headquarters.
Élisabeth Vonarburg is one of those who wanted to refuse the sale of the house as proposed by the board of directors. But she claims not to have been able to register her vote because of a technical problem during the general assembly. Despite everything, she maintains that she will comply with the result. “It is a matter of great amateurism on the part of the UNEQ, but nothing can be done about it. The important thing is that the resolution on dues has not passed, ”concludes this science fiction author.
Communication issues
The UNEQ had tried for the first time to impose dues of 2.5% on its members and 5% on its non-members. The decision was ratified at the general meeting of June 2022, during which barely 46 people took part in the vote. There followed an outcry within the literary community, especially since the UNEQ had waited until December to reveal the results. Finally, the union organized a new general assembly, which ended on Wednesday with the victory of the no.
“It shows that writers have difficulty having a union culture. Many writers have another job, where they are already unionized. They don’t see writing as something that deserves to be defended by a union,” analyzes Julien Lefort-Favreau, professor in the French studies department at Queen’s University in Kingston.
Personally, he is rather in favor of the unionization of authors and would therefore find it natural to pay a contribution in return. “There are big issues coming up concerning copyright, digital… And I think the UNEQ can help”, he underlines. But Julien Lefort-Favreau considers that the UNEQ has very poorly explained to its members what the benefits of having a strong union could be.
The one who is also an essayist agrees that the credibility of the UNEQ has taken a beating. To see now how, without the financial means it hoped for, the union will be able to carry out the negotiations in progress with the National Association of Book Publishers (ANEL) and the Sogides Group (Quebecor).
No interest in being unionized
Under the new Status of the Artist Act, the UNEQ, once more an association than a union, has the mandate to represent all authors in Quebec until 2025, membership fee or not. Previously, authors each had to negotiate their own terms with their publisher.
It is common knowledge that the vast majority of them receive around 10% of the sales of their books. And even being represented by UNEQ, many do not expect to have more generous publishing contracts.
“UNEQ was quite discreet on this. She never promised us, for example, to get 12%. On the other hand, she talked a lot about abusive contracts and bad publishers. But I suspect she exaggerated the problem. Everywhere around me, I think of people, and I don’t know anyone who is in a situation like that, ”recalls Yvon Rivard, who also voted no to contributions and who believes that everything has to be redone.
At the time these lines were written, early Thursday evening, UNEQ had still not reacted to the events of the previous day. The duty asked the office of the Minister of Culture, Mathieu Lacombe, if the UNEQ was still the right vehicle, in his opinion, to represent all the authors of Quebec; our question remained unanswered.