Contested elections for the National Executive Committee officers have occasionally been the subject of great controversy within the NWU, and a considerable level of acrimony has inevitably developed.

Despite its name, wrote Peterson, on behalf of the NWU and President Jonathan Tasini, the union was in fact not legally a "labor organization," since its members are freelancers.

Peterson's position was felt by many members to undermine two decades of work in establishing the NWU as writers' legitimate bargaining representative under Federal labor law.

[5] In 2008, NWU joined over 60 other art licensing businesses (including the Artists Rights Society, Association of American Editorial Cartoonists, Illustrator's Partnership of America, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Stock Artists Alliance, and the Advertising Photographers of America, among others) in opposing both The Orphan Works Act of 2008 and The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008.

[8] In February 2019, the NWU published a statement by a number of author organizations regarding the Internet Archive's Open Library project.

[9] The statement called for "a dialogue among writers, authors, publishers, and librarians on how to enable and create the digital libraries we all want, in ways that fully respect authors’ rights"[10] The Freelance Solidarity Project was organized by NWU in September 2019 with the aim of organizing freelance, permalance, staff, and contract workers.