Is the AFM really serious about addressing sexual harassment, assault, discrimination, and bullying?

July 1, 2025

Ken Shirk  -  AFM International Secretary-Treasurer

Yes it is, but sometimes this hallowed institution gets it wrong even with the best of intentions. The most recent occasion was on my watch as the AFM’s administrative officer overseeing the content of each month’s International Musician.

Over the past few months, IM has published information about the AFM’s newly expanded Code of Conduct, which addresses all forms of workplace harassment, including sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation, intimidation, whether perpetrated by coworkers or by employers. As an adjunct to the expanded code, the Federation subscribed to the NotMe app, which offers a user-friendly process for a member to report a complaint. Reports received through the app are then confidentially triaged by one of the AFM’s legal staff members to assess the appropriate way to bring the concern or complaint to a good resolution.

Expanding the code and subscribing to the reporting app were two of six recommendations brought to the IEB last year by a group of local officers and musician representatives that had organized themselves under the banner of the Change the Culture Committee. The members of this committee invested a considerable amount of their personal time, drawing upon their own experiences and those of their colleagues. They offered suggestions for their union to develop meaningful policies, reporting structures, and preventative education in the realm of discrimination, harassment, and sexual assault to benefit all members, everywhere they work.

It took a few months to finalize the expanded Code of Conduct and vet the reporting app, both of which were introduced in the April issue of IM. However, in the months since that rollout, I have come to understand that the stage would have been better set with more introductory preparation and education for local officers and the membership. What followed over the next two issues of IM might therefore have had a very different trajectory.

Shortly after the April issue hit the streets, we received a Feedback letter critical of the fact that the committee members consisted of only women, that the Federation was unwittingly encouraging people to “inform” upon each other, and that it was fostering a culture of arbitrary enforcement. President Gagliardi authored a response to the Feedback letter in the May issue addressing the writer’s assertions and misassumptions.

After the May issue hit the streets, three more Feedback letters arrived criticizing Gagliardi’s reply, attacking the viability of the app—in particular, its anonymous reporting option—and implying that the union was sliding backward into communism. Guided by Feedback editorial policy, we dutifully printed those letters in the June issue.

That was my first mistake. Printing those letters, essentially variations on the same points made in the May issue, added little of substance to the discourse. Having made that first mistake, my second was in not producing a direct response to those three letters as had been done for the May issue. I relied on an erroneous assumption that the memory of Gagliardi’s reply in the May issue would carry over to the June issue. To counterbalance, we instead printed underneath those Feedback letters a simplified how-to-use the NotMe app to show members how to register with the app, see how it works, and understand its straightforward nature.

On a number of levels, that approach was inadequate. I like to think that I’m fairly adept at predicting how a thing will be received or perceived by another person. In this case, however, I completely blew it.

I failed to consider how printing the three letters with no direct response from the leadership would impact someone who had already been subjected to traumatic sexual harassment or retaliation, or how a new union member, upon receiving the June issue of IM as their first union publication, might see these three seemingly unchallenged letters as institutional disregard for the trauma, fear, and injury experienced by anyone subjected to sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. For those failures, I am truly sorry.

There’s a reason the women of the Change the Culture Committee came together to address the IEB about this darker side of our industry’s culture: No one was visibly leading the way for change. For their determination and willingness to do so, they have the thanks and gratitude of every member of the IEB and its genuine commitment to tackle sexual harassment, assault, discrimination, and bullying throughout our industry.

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