I never met John, but that feeling of having unions is/was very strong in my area. I was involved when Jonathan Tasini was president of the union. He fought the New York Times to get writer's paid when corporations re-used their work in electronic databases. He won, but it was a puric victory -- now all contracts are written so that you are signing away all your rights to any conceivable medium, whether its invented or not.

People do expect writers to write for free when they would never expect a plumber to do so. It's pretty wierd.