Internal Organizing for Power

August 1, 2024

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by Todd Jelen, AFM Symphonic Service Division Negotiator/Organizer/Educator

We often see the external show of power and solidarity from our AFM members and other union members during contract campaigns and new organizing drives. While these are important instances in our collective histories, they are not the only times we are able to internally organize our workplaces.

Always being prepared for the worst can often lead to positive results that are rarely seen by the public. Similar to practicing and maintaining our craft as musicians, we need to exercise our organizing “muscles” to be prepared to perform when it’s crucial. As musicians, we all know that it’s not so much the public events like concerts, but the day-to-day work we put into ourselves through practice, that yields results. We will yield similar results when we choose to exercise our “muscles” by organizing.

We may think we are organized internally, but we often don’t realize that we are not as organized as we could be until we reach a crisis point. There are many external, as well as internal, signs that you may not be as organized as you think. Is your management currently doing any of the following?

• Not following the contract
• Discussing workplace issues directly with workers
• Bargaining workplace issues with artistic advisory or other committees of the contract, rather than your orchestra committee or your local
• Promulgating rules and regulations without bargaining
• Stonewalling you during grievance meetings and/or trying to skip directly to arbitration, instead of attempting to come up with a resolution

If so, they probably don’t think they’ll be challenged and most likely do not perceive that you have any power to change their behavior and the power dynamic. In addition to the external signs, there are also internal signs that we may need to rebuild our power:

• Workers seeking out management directly, rather than their orchestra committee to solve issues
• Workers coming to their representatives only when they need to fix a problem
• Low attendance at meetings
• Few or no meetings of workers during a season
• Low participation in surveys or votes
• Low membership density

The good news is that we can build our power at any time, even without a contract campaign or the threat of a substantial pay cut from management. We can determine our path through direct conversations with our colleagues. When we use the organizing conversation to determine our collective interests and issues that are widely and deeply felt by colleagues, we start building the power we need for effective change.

Once you’ve determined the issues you’re going to organize over, you will need to get everyone involved. After the initial organizing conversations, we can start to build a culture of meeting with each other, where we encourage open dialogue about our workplace issues, not just the dissemination of information from the committee to the membership. This also works on the local level by holding special meetings based on topics of interest to the membership. It’s a slow process, but I’ve seen it work in many groups.

As people become empowered, they naturally want to participate in the process. Fostering this communal dialogue in your workplace and getting everyone involved in the organizing process is crucial to being able to exercise your power in more visual ways and in tougher circumstances.

The most visual way to show that we are unified is through collective action. We can show our power during the contract term in how we enforce and maintain our contracts, by using grievances, and through informational campaigns. Your management might be more inclined to listen to you if you brought a whole bunch of concerned colleagues with you to ask about a recurring issue or to a grievance meeting.

Several groups have had success with informational campaigns on issues that concern them in the workplace such as bullying, overuse, scheduling, and others. You can also get involved in other campaigns of collective interest to get ideas from other groups as well as foster solidarity throughout workplaces and other social justice organizations.

I urge all of you to look at your workplace, and if you see any of the signs I mentioned above, talk to your orchestra committee about taking steps in advance of next season to become better organized. Organizing is almost always perceived best through the rearview mirror, meaning that it takes a while to see the change you are trying to create in your culture. In that way, it’s like planting a tree … the best time to do so was 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now!

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