AFM Convention: Moving the needle for musicians and the future

May 1, 2026

Ken Shirk  -  AFM International 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.

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