ROPA in Texas: Musicians and the Labor Community

April 1, 2026

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by Steve Wade, Regional Orchestra Players Association President

The Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA) will come to the Lone Star State for its annual conference in 2026. The general session begins in Dallas on Tuesday, July 28, and ends on Thursday, July 30. In addition, the AFM Symphonic Services Division (SSD) Negotiation Workshop will take place Monday, July 27. Everything happens at the Hilton Garden Inn at 1600 Pacific Avenue in downtown Dallas. We are hosted this year by the Dallas Opera Orchestra and AFM Local 72-147 (Dallas-Fort Worth, TX). The ROPA Executive Board extends a big thank you to Local 72-147 President Stewart Williams; Local 72-147 ROPA Delegates Grace Wollett, Katrina Smith, and Dwight Anderson; and all their team.

We are in the process of finalizing the schedule and presentations, but we can say that the conference will cover several timely and important topics. Lorraine Montemayor, secretary-treasurer of the Texas AFL-CIO, will be our keynote speaker. ROPA Treasurer Rick Basehore, of Locals 40-543 (Baltimore, MD), 45 (Allentown, PA), 135-211 (Reading, PA), and 161-710 (Washington, DC), will give us a look at the process of financial analysis of orchestras, including how to request them, how they are done, and how you can use them across the table.

ROPA Legal Counsel Naomi Bensdorf Frisch of Local 10-208 (Chicago, IL), a newly named partner at Asher, Gittler & D’Alba Ltd., will give an update on the current legal landscape of labor cases and harassment/bias issues. In addition, Local 17 (Erie, PA) and 24 (Akron, OH) member Jessica Schmidt of Orchestrate Inclusion will present on workplace relationships and psychological safety. Local 72-147 President Williams, Leonard Aguilar, and a surprise guest will hold a Connections That Count panel identifying key stakeholders in our arts, labor, and political communities, and how to help each other.

Indeed, politics in Texas has become interesting lately. Consider the surprising win in Tarrant County by Taylor Rehmet. In February, New York Times columnist Michelle Cottle wrote, “… a Democratic political newbie named Taylor Rehmet, a 33-year-old machinist, won a special election to the Texas State Senate. He beat his Republican opponent by 14 points, flipping a Fort Worth-area district that the GOP had held since the early 1990s and that [Donald] Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.” Rehmet was a union president and is a veteran. He ran for State Senate to fight for public schools and affordable housing. His platform was about raising wages and protecting jobs through strong unions and worker power. He wants to repeal anti-union laws and expand collective bargaining. He supports reclassifying gig workers to help guarantee benefits. His startling win shows how much these things matter to people.

You may ask what this has to do with ROPA. Well, ROPA has 35 member orchestras in “right to work” states like Texas, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. It’s worth taking a moment to explain what right to work means. In the US, right to work laws say that employees cannot be required to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment. As a brand, so to speak, the concept is misunderstood and often used in a deliberately misleading way. Right to work laws are not a guarantee of employment. Rather, these laws weaken unions financially and politically, and lead to lower wages and fewer benefits on average for employees. Employers in these states have a built-in advantage across the table, since bargaining units are divided between those employees who pay union dues and those who don’t.

It’s important that we see the lessons learned in overcoming obstacles to organizing in these places. Organizing, community empowerment, and quality of life improvement for all take a lot of hard work. Such dedicated, determined effort is not glamorous, but it pays off. Organizing is about building relationships, or as SSD Director Rochelle Skolnick recently put it in a panel discussion at the New World Symphony in Miami, it’s about listening to each other. It is a testament to the power of the AFM and its locals that we have so many unionized workplaces in right to work states. In ROPA, we are proud of the relationships we have built and the respect we hold for each other. We look forward to a great conference this summer in Dallas. Any member of a ROPA orchestra is welcome to attend, and we hope you will join us!

Addendum: The ongoing war in the Middle East has created instability in world oil markets that will no doubt affect fuel prices and airfares. We urge all delegates and attendees to create price alerts on Google Flights, Skyscanner, Hotwire, or Kayak for travel in July. As of this writing, March 18, it’s difficult to guess what will happen, but more information is usually better than less.

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