The Associated Press has reported that A group of bloggers have recently been attempting to develop a blogging union, similar to the primary union for writers: The National Writers Union. Unfortunately, there’s a small problem: It’s just not going to work. Ultimately, as TechCrunch points out, the movement will fail as a whole, simply because Blogging just isn’t ready to take its place among the union groups. Here’s why:

Most bloggers are not employees

Although there are people employed by a company to blog, these people are still incredibly rare. For the most part, bloggers are freelancers, and those who are employed are typically employed under the status of an Independent Contractor, which means they couldn’t get union benefits anyway. Furthermore, a good deal of bloggers consider themselves self-employed. So when they have unfair practices, who will they strike against? Themselves? HA! As Gaius of Blue Crab Boulevard puts it:

You either do this stuff because you enjoy it or you don’t blog. The public either chooses to read what you write or it doesn’t.

The blogging concept is too young

As I said above, most corporations have still not adopted blogging as prospective PR/news/updating within the corp. This is still a very young business we’re looking at, and it’s going to take some time before people hire bloggers exclusively to blog. While some people like John Chow or any of the Boing Boing writers could probably easily get a full-time blogging job, the same cannot be said of the average joe. Hence, there really is no point in hiring people yet.

Potential bias in Unionized versus Non-Unionized bloggers.

This one scares me greatly. What if the Union decided not to include a particular blogger? It could screw them over totally. Would you have to be employed by a company to be part of the union? What if you’re still a freelancer looking for employment? UncommonSense writes:

Would dues-paying members get to place a banner on their blogs that reads “Approved by the Bloggers’ Association?” What would be the purpose? People are drawn to blogs for their own reasons, and I don’t suspect that having an official stamp of approval is near the top of most people’s preferences.

If bloggers weren’t able to pay dues (And most bloggers tend to be quite broke,) they wouldn’t get the Blogger’s union approval, which could dent their reputation. Also, what happens if there is a strike? Anchor Rising writes that other bloggers could be labeled as “scab blogs.” If that happens, other bloggers will be shunned simply because they’re not in support of the union, or that they’re ironically in the same desperate need for employment that bloggers of our age were.  

Blogging right now needs to be that Wild West of the internets, order will come when the time comes, when bloggers are employed as full-time bloggers. Until that time, let the bloggers remain free of unions. If they want, they can join the NWU, but only if they’re full-time writers.