Secretary-Treasurer’s Message

January 1, 2025

Ken Shirk  -  AFM International Secretary-Treasurer

Just the facts, ma’am

Just as there is a season for the cold, dry Arctic air to sweep across the Canadian tundra, so is there a season for a Secretary-Treasurer to dust the reader’s eyes with cold, dry financial information. As a rank-and-file member, I often found this kind of information to be singularly uninteresting, and I have labored these past few months to avoid showing readers of this column what it feels like to watch paint dry. The Muses, however, sometimes just bolt off into the darkness, cackling in a conspiratorial manner, leaving me high and dry with nothing to offer a reader but the literary equivalent of evaporating paint. This month’s column shall accordingly suffer as a consequence of the Muses’ unauthorized time off.

The previous administration, piloted by former President Ray Hair and former Secretary-Treasurer Jay Blumenthal, left this Federation in very commendable financial shape. This was achieved, in part, by aggressive bargaining with employers in the electronic media sector and securing new revenue streams from sources adjunctive to Federation operations. But the good financial health was also achieved by a parallel tightening down of expenses, and doubly so during the height of the pandemic when the future resisted offering any semblance of predictability. They kept a firm lid on salaries, and staff vacancies were not filled. Annual budgets were always balanced, and the year-end bottom line fell into the black for each of the past 10 years. With their stewardship, the Federation got “cashed up real good.”

The problem arises, however, that having cash is not of much use if it can’t be put to work. For many, many years, the Federation, by long-standing Convention directive and bylaws requirement, has been restricted from any type of deficit budgeting, which is to say that the IEB could not intentionally use cash reserves to fund new initiatives; everything had to be planned and paid for with current revenue.

A few areas of the Federation’s operation have suffered as a consequence. By the start of this administration, the Theatre/Touring/Booking (TTB) Department was reduced to a staff of one; the Electronic Media Services Division (EMSD) was pushed to the edge of overwork, the salaries in the understaffed Federation’s Canadian Office were not at par with their US counterparts, and the Organizing Department was entirely devoid of personnel.

Unions don’t function without people, and, more particularly, a union with no active Organizing Department is guaranteed not to grow. The delegates to the 2023 Convention took note of this situation and formally opened a portal to permit the IEB to use cash reserves to support organizing.

With the ability to earmark cash reserves for organizing, current revenue could be committed to support other departments and divisions. President Tino Gagliardi and the IEB have, over the past year, slowly undertaken the process of rebuilding these areas of operation, adding vibrant and competent staff to EMSD, deploying a TTB field negotiator to assist locals with bargaining local theatrical agreements, injecting new resources into the Freelance Services Department, funding additional personnel in the Canadian Office and addressing the salary inequities there, and punching up the Federation’s Government Affairs office in Washington, DC.

Near and dear to my heart, however, is the restaffing of the Federation’s Organizing Department. With an Organizing Director, two energetic field organizers, and a whip smart researcher now on staff in the Organizing Department, the Federation is for the first time in many years well-positioned, in partnership with local unions and the members, to actively engage in the real work of a labor union, namely, to foster development of rank and file power in the workplace—be that a symphony, studio, theater, festival, club, or coffee house—so that musicians can obtain the standard of living that their—our—work deserves.

The new coat of paint in 2025 will look good, I think.

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