Annual Summary Wrap-up

May 1, 2025

Ken Shirk  -  AFM International Secretary-Treasurer

Stories abound about the future health of the labor movement. The US presidential election and the complete domination of the US Congress and Supreme Court by the MAGA elements have taken organized labor’s inconvenient-but-familiar laws and norms in America and stood them on their heads. What was true and dependable at 11:59 a.m. on January 20 was replaced at 12:01 p.m. by vamps and C-flat head charts from the Project 2025 fakebook. The Canadian national elections will soon tell us whether this was only a US-specific development or portends a new North American societal phenomenon where everyone who depends on an hourly wage will be officially marginalized by their governments. I hope and trust that the former is the case.

With that introductory opening paragraph now taken care of, I’d like to offer a little bit on how things shaped up for musicians in 2024, using Federation statistics as the standard of measure. The Federation’s financial and structural health is dependent upon and derived from local unions’ financial and structural health, which is dependent upon and derived from members’ financial health.

AFM membership in 2024 was up a few thousand from 2023. Musicians join locals, not the Federation, so we can conclude that in a post-pandemic world, more musicians in 2024 perceived value in joining with their colleagues under the umbrella of their local unions. We predicted an uptick in membership at the beginning of 2024, and that is, in fact, what manifested. There is work to be had out there, and members are getting the gigs.

Symphonic employment has continued on a generally steady recovery path since the depths of the pandemic, again resulting in meeting symphonic work dues revenue predictions. The Symphonic Service Division’s intrepid band of roving negotiators are as busy as they’ve ever been, working with orchestra committees and local union officers in their continuing quest for ever-better pay by bargaining with symphonic employers. Where there’s bargaining, there must be work, and work is a good thing.

The actors’ and writers’ 2023 strike against the movie producers, however, sent delayed shock waves into the musicians’ world in 2024. Underscoring for movies gets recorded only after the main production, i.e., filming, has been completed. With very few movies made in 2023 due to the strike, the diminished number of scoring sessions in 2024 accordingly hit AFM members in their pocketbooks. Members and locals representing them in major production centers particularly felt the effects of the 2023 strike, and the resulting decrease of 2024 movie work dues in their areas rippled through their books to the Federation’s bottom line.

The Federation’s visa and immigration department, which produces advisory letters for the USCIS in connection with overseas musicians seeking visas to perform in the US, experienced a surge in advisory letter requests in mid-2024 (probably a reaction to the then-rumored understanding that the USCIS was about to impose a significant visa fee increase). The advisory letter fees, together with a miscellaneous insurance claim payout from an old lawsuit, contributed to an expected approximate $1 million surplus for the Federation at year’s end.

Surpluses like that, combined with the surpluses accumulated by the Federation’s previous administration, are good. They mean that the Federation is in a better-than-ever position to support local unions in aggregating the power and influence that we musicians can all make together to foment change, for ourselves, our families and our communities.

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