Secretary-Treasurer

In its 130th year of our union’s existence, the 103rd triennial international convention of the American Federation of Musicians of the US and Canada will convene next month in Ottawa, Ontario. AFM Conventions are working conventions. Delegates elected by the membership in Canadian and American locals will make the journey to Ottawa not to see friends, party, or be tourists. They will instead consider who will make up the AFM’s leadership team for the next three years and, more importantly, decide the framework within which members, local leaders, and Federation administration will work together to move the needle for those who have chosen music as a career.

I attended my first AFM Convention in 1983 in my mid-20s. Back then, and through the intervening decades, convention deliberations tended to be primarily focused on how to keep the Federation from going broke, which classifications of work were subject to work dues and at what rates, bylaw changes that would either expand or contract the authority of the Federation over its local unions, compensation for local union delegates to attend the conventions, bylaw changes restricting or liberalizing rules that apply to members doing gigs outside their home locals, and things of that nature—
essentially a lot of energetic rearranging of Federation deck chairs.

One of my most enduring memories from those years was a 1 1/2 hour furious and emotion-laden floor debate over a proposed requirement that each local must have a separate phone line (this was in the 1980s). A couple of conventions later saw the advent of “local minimum requirements,” i.e., the bare minimum aspects of a local operation to justify its existence—“far-reaching and radical” requirements such as having a certain number of meetings a year, sending newsletters to members, reporting on its financial condition annually, being reasonably visible to musicians and the general public—bonehead stuff that any local should do without having to be reduced to print in a Federation bylaw. But that is generally how I’d characterize conventions of the past—lots of internal operational adjustments that have little direct impact on the actual work of musicians. And so it goes.

My hope and expectation for this upcoming convention is that the delegates and leadership collectively lift our heads a bit higher than past assemblages—that together and with common understanding we begin to chart a path for the future that operates not just to the benefit of union administration, and not just to the benefit of our members today, but one that looks beyond today and into the future, for the benefit of musicians who will be stepping into their careers 10, 20, and 30 years from now. Anyone paying attention in this decade cannot credibly deny that music as a profession today is under an existential threat from many different directions.
This year may be one of our last meaningful opportunities to chart a substantive and meaningful action plan to ensure that real human-generated music and career-driven musicians have a solid stakehold in our society’s future.

As a kid, I was taught to leave a place in better shape than when I found it. The previous administration did just that by cashing up the AFM and saving it from bankruptcy, saving the US pension fund, and saving MPTF. The decisions that this next convention makes will provide a clear indication if we shall now take our Federation up a notch or two or three, or reprise the deck chair arrangement pageantry.

A common tenet among the First Nations indigenous peoples of this continent is to conduct themselves with regard not to the present, but with regard for their ancestors and descendants—to honor the seven generations that preceded them by investing their attention and energies toward the seven generations that will come after.

130 years of AFM existence doesn’t quite comprise a full seven generations of predecessors, but that need not constrain us at this upcoming convention in what we can do now that will move the needle meaningfully for professional musicians seven generations into the future. This next convention will be a success if we can leave Ottawa knowing that musicians 50 years from now will thank us for the decisions we made in 2026.

My late father was born in 1906 into the atmosphere of the central Pennsylvania Mennonites. In his mid-70s, he once remarked to me about the incredible pace of technological change that he had witnessed within his lifetime­—ice blocks to refrigeration; outhouses to indoor plumbing; telegraph to telephone to radio wave broadcast; the horse and buggy to automobiles to air travel to space travel—the list goes on.

I’ve often reflected on his perspective—the fast pace of change within one century compared to all the centuries that preceded­—and lately find myself considering whether my occupancy of the latter part of the previous century and the current one presents any parallels to my father’s experience. It does, although given my many years of involvement with the labor movement, my attention is more drawn toward the societal, political, and economic pace of change rather than the technological.

As a baby boomer, I grew up in the midst of the civil rights movement, environmental activism, the war on poverty, and the emergence of consumer protection laws—all of which was a logical extension of the rewiring of society following the Great Depression of the 1930s. That same era was marked by the Vietnam war protests, the generation gap, the “war on drugs,” and duplicity in political leadership, all of which imbued in some of us of that generation a strong sense of both what is right and wrong for the people. We saw Richard Nixon forced from office for abuse of power and the subsequent election of Jimmy Carter as a harbinger of a better, more just society to come, all held together by a government truly of the people.

That didn’t last. The movement that brought Ronald Reagan into office persuaded society that virtue was embodied by unbridled aggregation of wealth, that government was the problem and big business was our salvation, that rugged individualism and “pulling one’s self up by one’s bootstraps” was the sacred center of Western civilization. (Note to self: I must have been doing it wrong, because when I tried pulling myself up from my bootstraps I didn’t get any taller, but as I leaned down to do so someone did kick me from behind …)

Regulation was the enemy, we were told, and we swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, which ingestion defines the fabric of our society still to this day.

Organized labor took a parallel hit during this era of deregulation persuasion, as did our own industry, as did our union. When I entered this profession, all across the US and Canada our union regulated bandleaders and contractors, booking agents and management companies, clubs and venues, record labels and movie producers, and accordingly stabilized and enhanced what we all got paid. Such was the professional environment that a musician could actually plan the trajectory of their career. In parallel, so, too, could managers, agents, clubs, labels, and producers plan their trajectories.

As the flood of deregulation washed across our land, however, the supports of our industry’s infrastructure got knocked out, one by one. A dependable, internally-regulated system of fair compensation for work fairly performed evaporated, and what remains is a patchwork of union-bargained contracts with individual employers, with the remainder infilled by those of us shoehorned into the gig-worker economy.

Regulation is not a bad word. Regulation once meant that we could enjoy a crystal-clear telephone conversation; that news reportage was balanced; that common carriers (buses and airlines) served all our communities; that we could depend on clean air and water; that we’d know the ingredients of our food; that we’d know the country of manufacture of our consumer goods; that we could fly across the country without our knees jammed into our nostrils and land at an airport without fear of a collision.

Organized labor and unions are all about regulation­—regulation not for the institutions, but for the people who are represented by the unions. Union regulation provides economic stability, economic parity, and fairness in the workplace. Union regulation removes our pay from the equation of competition between producers – if we’re all paid fairly, producers’ success depends on how well they do their business and not who gets away with paying their employees the least.

Government is not the reliable backstop that it once was, however, so we musicians must undertake to redesign what we once had in order for what we do to remain a viable career choice. I look forward to taking the first steps for creating that new blueprint when all our union delegates come together at the AFM’s 103rd international convention in Ottawa next June.

If you experience most of life today through your phone or your computer as I do, you will inevitably come across hackers, scammers, phishers, ID thieves, ransomware demands, sneaky links, malicious sites, and the like. I am pretty careful about all of these web-dwelling hazards. For my personal accounts, I signed up for Malwarebytes’ free scanning and Protonmail’s free VPN. But the tricks and gimmicks are getting increasingly sophisticated, and more than once (but less than five times) I’ve found myself halfway into a trap before I wake up and recognize it for what it is and quickly back out. So, I recently decided to go for broke and purchased a two-year subscription to Malwarebytes’ more complete internet security package.

With my new subscription allowing me the unfettered feeling of smugness and righteousness, I opened up my AFM email on a recent morning and discovered that Union Plus, affiliated with the AFL-CIO, is now offering US union members an ID protection program with more stuff than I subscribed to for less money than I paid, and which also comes with ID theft insurance ranging from $1 million to $5 million.

I don’t like being a shill for commercial enterprises, but sometimes even shills serve a useful purpose. Union Plus has partnered with Aura to launch ID Protection Plus, providing union members comprehensive ID protection at discounted members-only rates. By integrating identity protection, financial monitoring, and family safety into one consolidated interface, the program ensures union members’ tech and assets remain secure. Aura is provided through Securus Identity Solutions, LLC, located in Minnesota, and is rated the Best Identity Protection Service by US News & World Report.

Union members must enroll through the dedicated page to receive the discounted rates. Program information is available at UnionPlus.org/idprotection, featuring a dedicated page outlining the ID Protection Plus Program and its benefits.

As long as I’m engaged in shilling, I’d like to remind the US members that significant cellular discounts are available from AT&T for union members through the Union Plus AT&T Signature Program. The program offers savings of $10 per line, per month on the AT&T Unlimited Premium PL plan, up to $50 savings on activation and upgrade fees, 15% off qualified wireless plans, and 20% discount on eligible accessories. Visit unionplus.org/att.

And not wanting to be solely US-centric, Canadian members can find deep discounts for cellular service from Rogers, Telus, and Bell by navigating to unionsavings.ca/en/categories/mobile-phone-plans.

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The 103rd International Convention of the American Federation of Musicians of the US and Canada is just around the corner, to be held in Ottawa, Ontario, starting on June 20.

Unlike many other international unions, the AFM’s convention is truly a working convention. The local union delegates to the convention attend for four full days in the spirit of service to the membership. It is this triennial gathering that sets the stage for our union over the following three years, and the delegates approach it with the same sense of purpose as any musician does with practicing—something to be focused on seriously if there’s to be any improvement.

You will find in this and previous issues of International Musician detailed information for delegates pertaining to Ottawa hotels and rates, funding, candidacies, and the ever-popular section on how to properly submit a resolution for consideration by the convention.

What you will not see in the notice, however, is that any AFM member is welcome to attend the convention, at their own expense, as a guest observer. Guests are welcome to attend the regular sessions as well as the special events and preconvention gala on the eve of the convention, June 19, and, most importantly, guests also qualify for the swag bag.

If you are not a delegate but wish to experience a convention in the capital city of Canada during a particularly nice time of the year, contact your local and ask to be added to the local’s convention guest list. Hotel reservation information is in the convention notice on page 21, as well as online at AFM.org/convention.

It should be no surprise to anyone when I say that, outside the realm of traditional collective bargaining, the 20th century structure of our Federation does not match the 21st century ever-changing business of music and the needs of the musicians who must evolve with it. Technology, product distribution and consumption, AI, copyright, legal niceties or lack thereof, and a society that has been stood on its head have all conspired in a manner to place great economic pressure on musicians just to survive as such, not to mention the stresses placed upon the creative processes that are so much a major part of who we are. That’s why I find nothing more gratifying than to see a whole cadre of musicians that have identified a common need and who organize to demand satisfaction.

In my column last month, I made note of a few of the organizations that have formed just for that purpose­—UMAW, Music Workers Alliance, and the Indie Musicians Caucus of the AFM. I wrote about the obstacles that US labor law places in the way of musicians who need to organize outside of the traditional collective bargaining realm, and the potential legal sink holes that may confront any group of independents building for collective action outside the legal shield of a union. My purpose in that column was solely to bring into the light of day a quick exposition of unfairness of US labor law for American musicians and to state unequivocally that, notwithstanding legalities, what these groups seek is what we all want.

It was with a certain amount of bemusement, therefore, to receive a letter for “Feedback” from a passionate member who managed to glean meanings from my writing that were neither intended nor implied.

The main thrust of the member’s letter was focused on the AFM’s current bargaining with the record labels and the overarching imperative to lock down the “three C’s,” i.e., consent, credit, and compensation for musicians as that relates to the use of artificial intelligence in sound recording production, along with finding a way to realize meaningful health care benefits from the industry for musicians who don’t otherwise qualify for employee benefits. A quick read of AFM President Gagliardi’s column in this issue ought to provide some reassurance to the member of the bargaining team’s commitment to these goals.

What particularly caught my attention, though, was the member’s questioning of this union’s commitment to the needs and demands of indie and freelance musicians, both within the recording arena and beyond. Evading a core mission was certainly not the point of my writing, and—at least from my viewpoint—it would require the equivalent of an accomplished yoga practitioner to wrangle interpretation from what I wrote last month.

I acknowledge, however, that perception belongs to the reader, not the writer, and I therefore wish to state the following in as unambiguous a manner as possible.

The AFM International Executive Board has allocated an unprecedented near 10% of the 2026 budget in new expenditures toward building member strength, with the intention going forward to amplify that even more. The Organizing Department is expanding as I write this, specifically with the aim of directly partnering with local unions, both locally and regionally, to strengthen existing conditions and build solid local musician communities to manifest their goals. Strength and solidarity at the local level translates to strength at the international level.

The board has affirmatively determined that this union must devote its resources to organizing to build power to enable members to attain fairness in the labor market and justice in the political realm by building membership in touring, freelance, recording, and local gig markets and developing power to achieve strong contracts—whatever that means and whatever it takes—in the US and Canada—with or without helpful labor laws.

I like Canada. Like any nation, it has its flaws here and there, but I like it for its geological beauty, because national health care is part of public policy, because its elections are actually representative of the will of the citizenry, because its maple leaf flag reminds one of a connection to the natural world, and because it contains some of my favorite cities in the world.

I especially like Canada because any Canadian musician—employee, independent contractor, dependent contractor, and probably busker—can secure some level of labor union representation and protection in their work. This representation and protection is unavailable to a vast swath of their American counterpart musicians south of the border, thanks to American federal labor law.

Undergirding all American labor laws— and undergirding the US Constitution, in fact—is the idea that Commerce in all its Glory must not be disrupted. It takes no keen observer to see that the scales of American Blind Justice are weighted in favor of commerce and, by obvious extension, in favor of business. That the US has any labor laws at all is not from a sense of social justice, but because historically unions had been very effective in disrupting commerce in pursuit of worker gains, and business needed something to slow down, if not reverse, that union progress. So Americans now have the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), among others, purportedly protecting workers’ rights, but in fact, operating to suppress workers’ rights.

And what has this to do with American musicians? American labor law is designed specifically to operate on the Employer-Employee relationship, i.e., employees of an employer have the right to form a union to bargain with their employer. But an indie musician in the US likely has no legally-defined employer. A freelance musician, jumping from gig to gig, likely also has no employer within the definition of law. Transactions between those musicians and those who pay for their services fall into the bucket of commerce, not the protections of labor law. Labor law and the legal right to bargain collectively is out of their reach. The harm that this unfairness has brought upon the music profession is both insidious and profound.

Several independent musician organizations have sprung up over the years in reaction to the manifesting inequities. United Musicians and Allied Workers are working to secure mandated compensation for music streaming and fair pay at music festivals. The Music Workers Alliance seeks to regulate the use of AI by independent record labels and protect musicians’ intellectual property. The Indie Musicians’ Caucus of the AFM is pushing for the Federation to broaden and step up its representation of indie artists in all their market areas.

What these independent groups seek is very much in alignment with our union’s goals. The irony is that the very nature of their “employment” (for lack of a more defining term) prevents them from accessing the few rights otherwise available under the NLRA, and without a union umbrella to operate under, they must tread a narrow path to avoid antitrust allegations from industry. The quest for equity and fairness is frustrating and crazy.

Canadian musicians just don’t have to think about these things with the same intensity.

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, as a candidate for US President in 2000, proposed repealing the Taft-Hartley Act (the act that made the NLRA untenable for workers). That would be a start. But for decades, the entertainment unions have struggled to push their square peg through the round hole of the NLRA. For many of those decades, the AFM attempted to persuade Congress to amend the NLRA to make union representation easier for entertainment workers, but without success. Several states have adopted legislation intended to address the performer’s employment environment, but ended up replacing old problems with new ones.

Perhaps it’s time for Congress to recognize that all of us performers in the entertainment trades are not like other workers and that we should have our own Performers’ Labor Rights Act.