Secretary-Treasurer

The article on page 6 of the July IM issue describes the many executive actions taken by US President Biden that have leveled the playing field between working people and their employers and that will operate to bring new good jobs as a reinvestment in the economy. These are actions that any US president may take without legislative permission from the federal legislature. In the US, with a Congress apparently unable or unwilling to pass any legislation useful to the country, executive action becomes the only avenue through which any change at the federal level, good or bad, can be initiated.

The paragraph concluding at the top of the center column on page 6, however, briefly reports on House Republican efforts to block an increase to the federal minimum wage and to introduce legislation to reverse Biden’s executive order to further protect prevailing wage for federal construction projects under the Davis-Bacon Act.

Page 8 of this issue also reports on Biden’s veto of a Congressional Review Act that would overturn a Labor Board rule prohibiting an employer corporation from hiding behind a subcontractor in order to evade the duty to bargain with its employees’ union.

The point of this little discussion is not about President Biden’s value to working Americans. It is, rather, about just how ephemeral are the rights we believe we enjoy. Whatever blessings or benefits that we as citizens receive from friendly Prime Ministers, Presidents, Parliaments or Congresses, someone will rise up to try to snatch them away at the first opportunity.

The question that surfaces is, “Shall we allow that to happen?”

The quadrennially-produced year-long media circus of US Presidential elections is under way, which will determine not only whether American musicians have a friend or felon in the White House, but also whether Congress will be controlled by Democrats or held hostage by the crazies, which will affect federal funding for the arts.

Similarly, Canadian musicians will be deciding in the next several months which political party will control Parliament and who they will accordingly inherit as Prime Minister. Word on the street is that the average voter has tired of Justin Trudeau, which bodes ill for the Liberal Party and raises the specter of the Conservative Party back in power. A Conservative Party triumph portends budget cutbacks to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which many musicians across Canada rely upon for a portion of their earnings.

The emerging gloom around an event that hasn’t even happened yet is palpable.

Knowing that mainstream Canadians and Americans are generally OK with funding a federal government that will advance laws and programs designed to enhance the economic security of the citizenry, it’s a fascination of mine that this same citizenry will consider buying into the politics of personality and elect governments that absolutely will not have their best interests at heart.

An informed citizenry will not vote against their best interests, but a citizenry held in thrall by social media tripe, piped through their smartphones on a 24/7 basis, certainly can do so, and indeed has done so. But it need not be that way this time.

My challenge to each one of us in our upcoming elections is to seriously investigate and affirmatively and objectively determine which candidates or parties will best serve our economic interests. Seriously investigating means reading actual news written by actual reporters, not social media feeds driven by AI algorithms, seeing memes as fun not fact; listening to candidates with a critical, not romantic, ear; reading the manifestos of the political parties (not the manifestos crafted for ordinary folks, but the ones crafted for the captains of industry); and depositing your votes in favor of those to whom our wallets say, “Yes!”

I recently watched the documentary, Power, which describes the evolution of policing on our continent. Being American-centric in nature, it maps out policing in the US over the decades and centuries—from its original purpose of re-capturing escaped enslaved people, to Reconstruction where police violently enforced laws suppressing social and economic advancement of the formerly enslaved, through the industrialization era where public and private police forces violently crushed strikes, on to the 1960s and 70s where the police and national guard were called out to subdue marches for civil rights and against the Vietnam war, often with deadly force, and finally to the present day’s violent suppression of demonstrations for First Nations treaty rights, and protests following the murders of George Floyd and Michael Brown at the hands of the police.

In each instance, this kind of policing was wrapped in the cloak of “public safety,” but by and large—by my observation, anyway—it was actually the public whose safety was threatened at the hands of law enforcement. Indeed, today’s American police forces are draped with surplus military killing equipment, left over from the US’s various ill-considered forays into world policing. It’s not just the US, virtually every country’s modern police agency is now sufficiently equipped to kill its citizens many times over. It doesn’t make sense, and yet, as a society, we seem to accept those circumstances as normal. It’s part of the frog-in-the-slowly-heating-pot syndrome. 

What’s behind it all? Possession of property and retention of power. The more the people demand their rights to a decent life—whether it be economic, social, environmental or cultural—the more the aggregators of property and power will work to ensure that they don’t get it (usually under the cover of “new laws”), because each demand constitutes a direct threat to the aggregators’ accumulation of property and power. Even tree huggers are considered felons these days! The rights embedded in our national constitutions—such as they are—are as fragile as the next session of Congress or Parliament. Yet our collective awareness of that fragility seems very dim, indeed. Sufficiently numbed and isolated by the pernicious algorithms of the internet worming their way into our brains, we often look away with a somewhat resigned that “It’s just the way things are” attitude. 

That sounds a bit like how we view our work in the music industry. In the symphonic world, a musician can win a hard-fought audition, and yet the union contract says they can be dismissed at any time during their probationary period, essentially without recourse. Is that right? “Waddaya mean? It’s just the way things are.” A band is lined up to play a gig in a venue, but only if the band has liability insurance to protect the club from patrons’ lawsuits. Is that right? “Waddaya mean? It’s just the way things are.” Or that same venue “agrees” to “let” the band play there, but the band has to sell its own tickets—no risk to the venue. Is that right? “Waddaya mean? It’s just the way things are.” A musician making a living playing a bunch of gigs here and there and on the road has no access to employer-paid health care or a guaranteed retirement income. “Waddaya mean? It’s just the way things are.”

Nothing is “just the way things are” without our tacit agreement to let it be so. “It’s just the way things are” are code words to convince us that this power imbalance between us and the aggregators of property and power is good for us. I, for one, can’t accept that status quo. “I, for one” doesn’t count for much, however. But “we, for all” counts for a whole lot!

Whether it be on a local or national level, changes in industry practices—or in a union that represents the employees in that industry—generally come slowly. An institution with many constituent parts will rarely move far from the status quo, lest that institution get too far away from its perceived existential center and thereby alienate the constituency. Any rapid and significant change usually only arises from a crisis or constituent revolt.

Such a revolt occurred in the 1950s when the Hollywood recording musicians decertified the AFM as their film and phono union rep after then-President Petrillo, against their wishes, diverted their wage increases to the Music Performance Trust Fund. It took several years to repair that internal damage, but the event itself, and the solutions arrived at, rewired the AFM’s DNA so that recording musicians’ rights today are firmly embedded in the bylaws, practices and culture of AFM national contract bargaining.

Another such revolt occurred in the early 1960s in the symphonic world. Back in the day, the Almighty Music Director was the sole decider of who to hire and fire in “his” orchestra; contracts between the union and management were settled out of sight of the musicians; player committees were unheard of; and the phrase “ratification vote” was absent from the glossaries of the day.

Then the musicians of the major orchestras organized themselves into an action-oriented conference, positioned themselves to assert control of their contract negotiations, and gained job security through bargained audition, tenure, and fair dismissal procedures. Those achievements became a plateau of stability and security upon which many have counted on now for several decades.

The sexual assault and tenure issues recently reported involving the New York Philharmonic, however, have shaken that comfortable underpinning. The reporting and social commentary has exploded into full public view systemic harms that often plague the music world—namely, sexual harassment, peer pressure, bullying and intimidation, discrimination and retaliation, gender and race-based workplace toxicity, management indifference, and contract administration that makes the aggrieved musician the problem, instead of the actual problem itself. These issues are often widely known about but suppressed out of fear of retaliation and the need for “proof.” As an industry, as musicians, and as a union, we have been called out.

This is a crisis that requires all the interconnected parties—union, employer, and musicians—to do some rigorous self-examination and undertake serious (and probably multi-layered) actions for change. Union leaders and rank-and-file musicians—with management firmly in tow—must collaborate to make meaningful changes in our contracts, labor-management practices, values, and assumptions. And for that change to have real meaning, the silent musicians who have borne the brunt of those harms—the harassment, pressure, discrimination, toxicity, and indifference—must be consulted and heard.

Every musician deserves a safe working environment. After all, what’s a union for, if not for at least that one basic thing?

Alan Willaert and Victor Fuentealba

This issue is partly devoted to the lives of AFM Vice President from Canada Alan Willaert and President Emeritus Vic Fuentealba, whose deaths last month saddened us all. I add my own thoughts here.

I’ve known Alan Willaert since the day he was hired as an international representative for Canada over 30 years ago. Through thick and thin, hot and cold, up and down, Willaert was a rock. Always calm, cool, and collected. Always steady. Always funny (for which he often ended up in Facebook “jail”). His intelligence and experience operated to the benefit of all his bosses—from J. Alan Wood to Ray Petch to Dave Jandrisch to Bobby Herriot to Bill Skolnik—and prepared him beautifully for when he became the boss himself in 2012. I will miss him greatly.

Vic Fuentealba was AFM president when I got involved in local union administration. His tenure became the standard against which I measured all his successors. The 1980s was a tough decade in which to run this union—the challenges were immense, and he was not without his enemies, but his personal courage and feistiness powered him through it all. The most important pieces of advice he gave me as a union officer were: 1) don’t do something unless you have a very good reason to do it, and 2) take action only when you’ve done all the preparation.

Musical Equipment Insurance Program Update

In February, I gave an update on the search for a replacement carrier for the AFM’s instrument insurance program. AIG/New Hampshire, the previous carrier, pulled out of the business at the end of 2023, offering one-year renewals only to those participants whose policy dates fell earlier than December 31, 2023. Those with renewal dates later than December 31 would not be renewed. This only applied to US participants. Instrument insurance for Canadian members is offered through a different broker, HUB International, and that coverage continues undisturbed by the developments with the US program’s carrier.

For US members participating in the program, the wait for a new carrier has been long, and, for those with policy renewal dates in January, February, or March, perhaps a bit harrowing. I was informed in late February by our US group benefits broker, AMBA, that they had located a new carrier, and that coverage would be available in April. Subject to final confirmation, I’m informed that the premium rate multiplier will be a little cheaper, although the minimum premium will be a bit higher. We’ve been promised that notice will be sent to all participants shortly, and those whose policies have already expired will be offered coverage “retroactive” to their renewal date.

I trust that this will prove to be good news for all, but the uncertainty of the past few months has served as a wake-up call not to get caught in this kind of a bind ever again. Musical equipment insurance is a core component of any professional musician’s economic life and cannot be taken for granted.

Freelance Musicians Player Conference

My office recently received a request signed by about 40 local union officers asking that the International Executive Board to approve the creation of a player conference for freelance musicians. Article 22, Section 15, of the AFM Bylaws sets forth the underpinning for the request:

“Conferences … composed of representatives from Symphonic Orchestras or of member- musicians in other specialized fields (“Player Conferences”), may be organized and granted official status in the AFM by the [International Executive Board] IEB.”

Current player conferences of the AFM include International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM), Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA), Organization of Canadian Symphony Musicians (OCSM), Recording Musicians Association (RMA), and Theater Musicians Association (TMA). Each of these player conferences has special and unique characteristics that bind their respective constituencies together. ICSOM generally includes higher-budget orchestras, where the musicians are working more or less full-time throughout their performance season. OCSM includes all the Canadian orchestras. ROPA includes medium-budget orchestras, where the musicians may or may not be working full-time throughout their season. RMA includes several local chapters and musicians who are intent on making their living under AFM-negotiated electronic media agreements.

Through their delegates, AFM-recognized player conferences have enhanced access to the workings of the Federation: an official voice (but not vote) at AFM Conventions, an expectation for their leaders to meet annually with the IEB and to serve in an advisory role when the IEB is considering business that directly impacts the workplaces represented by the conferences, and to meet annually in nonconvention years under the auspices of the joint meeting of the Local Conferences Council-Player Conferences Council (LCC-PCC).

The request to authorize the creation of a freelance musicians conference is unique. Unlike other player conferences, this request does not come from rank-and-file members, but from local officers. Further, unlike the other player conference members, freelance musicians can’t be generally categorized as working for one particular type of employer. In our industry, the word “freelance” is a very big tent. Identifying the workplace commonalities that would bind a conference of freelance musicians together to express their common interests to the Federation will be no small task.

Freelance musicians—however defined—represent the largest population of musicians in North America. Deciding whether and how to silo them into this particular aspect of Federation structure will be one of the most interesting and challenging intellectual and organizing exercises of this decade.

Every major city in North America has an arts council—some type of public service organization whose mission is to disburse dollars, usually public funds, in support of visual or performing arts. These fund granting councils are staffed by professionals but depend on volunteers from the community to assist in allocating those funds and deciding which are the meritorious projects that fit the community’s needs.

Serving as a volunteer board member on one of these councils is both a privilege and a serious responsibility. A good arts council member would be a person of selfless integrity, with an awareness of the locale’s arts scene, and perhaps endowed with a particular knowledge about a specific aspect of the arts.

Not so many decades ago, local union officers or prominent members of a local music community were fixtures on these arts council boards. It made sense, of course. An arts council would need a specialist’s eye and mind to vet grant applications, and where a musical performance project was being proposed, who better than someone tied to the instrumental community to help with that task.

In the years that have since passed, however, union representative participation on these arts councils has dwindled. In the 1980s, “union” was considered an unseemly term by the local culture vultures. As union representatives’ terms of service on these councils ended, they tended to be replaced by lawyers, financiers, municipal “influencers,” and societal ladder climbers. The union’s influence and expertise were gradually airbrushed out of the local arts scenes.

As an adjunct to my recent participation with the AFL-CIO’s Department for Professional Employees work on prevailing wages for projects funded through the National Endowment for the Arts, I did a quick survey of the membership of arts councils across the Canadian provinces and US states. The survey revealed that today the working musician has virtually no representation on these councils.

True, the performing arts are represented, but often by an entrepreneurial personality, or a lawyer who represents a bunch of musical organizations, or a banker or other business exec, each of whom may be simultaneously serving on parallel councils at the state, provincial, or national levels. I was struck by the similarities between the populating of arts council boards and corporate boards—an emphasis on networking and connections, with only a tip of the hat to specialized expertise.

It’s time to put our expertise back into the deciders’ arena. Take a look at your municipal, county, and state or provincial arts councils. Is your local represented on the council? Or is a respected and fair-minded rank-and-file member of your local union on the council?

If the answer is “no,” bring it up with your local officers, or at a union board or membership meeting. Help start the process of learning what it takes to get your union voices back on those councils to regain the influence over how those public dollars get spent and, when it’s for music performance, that the musicians get paid appropriately.

We’ll be expounding on this topic in subsequent issues. Stay tuned.