Posted by barbarahales
The following is a press release that was just issued.
| Sisters and Brothers – This is an important week for our sisters at Heart and Soul, who are owed more than $135,000. This week we are taking this struggle to the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Convention in New Orleans. Some of our H&S members are there spreading the word.
You can help. Please post this press release on your website and FB page, and send to your contact lists. Spread the word. We are Union. We are NWU. Thanks.
For Immediate Release
Contact: Larry Goldbetter
National Writers Union
212-254-0279
larryg601@gmail.com
Editors, Writers of Heart & Soul Still Unpaid
New York, NY- (June 19, 2012) – The National Writers Union has issued an alert to writers and editors who are considering working for Heart & Soul magazine (H&S).
The 15-year-old publication out of Washington, DC, still owes over $135,000 to writers and editors who have joined the union, and tens of thousands of dollars more to designers, photographers and stylists who have not yet joined.
Roughly a dozen editors and contributors to H&S had gone unpaid for more than six months as of January 2012. By May 2012, several freelancers were paid, five of them in full. No payments have been made since then, even though H&S failed to fulfill repeated and documented promises to compensate all owed in full.
As one former H&S editor, whom has yet to be paid, stated:
“A group of African-American businessmen and women, including George Curry and Clarence Brown, have exploited a group of mostly African-American women in order to publish a publication geared towards women, while ignoring pleas for payment from contributors who were undergoing treatment for breast cancer, were at risk for foreclosure on their homes, or were nursing a new baby.”
To arrange an interview with some of the writers and editors who are party to this action, email nwu@nwu.org or call: 212.254.0279 .
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Again, this highlights the crucial need to get a partial payment of a writing job upfront before the work begins.
If a company is unwilling to establish milestones for the payment with work and a fifty percent payment upfront, it is a good indication that you will not be getting reimbursed for your intellectual property. No money should mean that you need not bother starting work in the first place.
Do you have stories that reflect this problem?
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