Tag Archives: news

Recent News

Symphony Education Program Measures Success

California Symphony has measured impressive results from its instrumental education program, Sound Minds. Children enrolled in the El Sistema inspired program have quadrupled proficiency rates in math, doubled proficiency rates in reading, and outscore their peers in standardized testing by as much as 67%.

Of course, an important but immeasurable benefit is developing a love and appreciation for music. Sound Minds offers instruction in violin and cello, as well as fundamentals such as music theory. The program is made up of students from a mostly Spanish-speaking population; 120 children in grades two through six are currently enrolled. Sound Minds was awarded a $15,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts this year.

California Symphony also announced that it achieved a balanced budget for its 2017 fiscal year, thanks in part to quadrupling its donor base in recent seasons. California Symphony musicians are members of Local 6 (San Francisco, CA).

Orchestra News

LA Philharmonic Reaches Five-Year Agreement

In mid-August, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s musicians and management announced that an agreement was reached for a new five-year labor contract, which goes into effect September 18. Highlights of the contract include annual increases to the musicians’ minimum weekly scale wages, reaching $3,168 in the final year of the contract; and new health care plan offerings that will help to manage costs.

“One of the core functions of the AFM is to negotiate contracts that deliver improvements in the lives of working musicians,” says Local 47 (Los Angeles, CA) President John Acosta. “We are pleased to announce that our negotiating committee, made up of elected members of the orchestra and working with union staff and legal counsel, has reached an agreement with the Los Angeles Philharmonic that delivers on that promise. This new agreement builds upon the tradition of LA Phil contracts that set the bar for pay, benefits, and respect for musicians in the United States.”

Recent News

Unions Oppose Trump’s Pick to Head Government Personnel Office

A broad coalition of labor organizations, including the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers and AFL-CIO, have launched strong opposition to President Donald Trump’s pick to head the government’s personnel office. The 16 unions stated in a letter to the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee that George Nesterczuk has a failing record in fostering a federal workplace “free of discrimination, nepotism, and political influence.” A former Republican Office of Personnel Management official, Nesterczuk helped develop the Defense Department’s National Security Personnel System (NSPS), which was a discriminatory system with disdain for due process worker protections and merit system principals—hallmarks of modern civil service. NSPS was repealed in 2009.

 

Recent News

Justice Department Denies LGBT Protections Under Title VII

The US Justice Department urged the federal appeals court in Manhattan to reject a lawsuit from a former skydiving instructor who claimed he was fired for being gay. Rights groups argue that LGBT workers should be protected under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination on basis of sex, race, color, national origin, or religion. Essentially, the Justice Department contends that laws against workplace gender bias do not apply to the LGBT community because of companies that fire workers over sexual orientation will do so whether they are male or female.

This stance goes against a June brief filed by a group of 50 large, multinational companies and organizations arguing that discrimination based on sexual orientation should be illegal, even if that would lead to more employee lawsuits. The Justice Department’s decision came at the heels of President Donald Trump’s announcement that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the military.

Recent News

OSHA Regulations Withdraw and Delayed

The Trump Administration has delayed or withdrawn 860 regulatory rules during its first five months, according to an article on manufacturing.net. Among suspended Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules were provisions regarding combustible dust exposure, construction noise, vehicles driving in reverse at factories and construction sites, and chemical exposure standards. According to Bloomberg, other industry-supported workplace safety rules, including those regulating communications towers and industrial trucks, have remained on track.

 

Peg Samenario of the AFL-CIO slammed the dust and told Bloomberg that the White House “is abandoning protecting workers from health and safety hazards.”

Recent News

Unions Important to News Organizations

On July 15, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and National Public Radio reached a tentative, three-year agreement, preventing 400 NPR employees from striking. Despite soaring public radio ratings following the election of President Donald Trump, NPR sought to institute a two-tier salary system where one group of workers would receive lower pay, which would have dealt a major blow to solidarity. Management considered gutting overtime pay and taking health care coverage away from temporary workers.

“They are trying to lower salary minimums, and they are really trying to weaken the power of the union,” says NPR producer Becky Sullivan, asserting that they were trying to create a situation that allowed outside people to do union work and take away the union’s ability to file a grievance. The new deal includes salary increases and repels efforts to erode union protections and institute the two-tiered salary system.

During negotiations, some of NPR’s most popular staff, including All Things Considered host Robert Siegel, sent a letter to CEO Jarl Mohn detailing the importance of a union contract. “NPR has become great partly because of our labor-management contract,” the letter read in part. “The contract has ensured proper working conditions, collaboration, and collegiality, and an atmosphere of mutual respect.”

“Despite the often-referenced decline in organized labor, news unions have been a major story over the last two years as media outlets like Salon, Vice, MTV News, The Guardian US, Jacobin, Thrillist, Slate, and others have obtained union representation,” wrote Journalist Gary Weiss at the Columbia Journalism Review. “They never really went away, of course, but for the first time in memory they are proactive rather than on the defensive.

 

Recent News

Canadian Anti-Union Bills Repealed

Canadian unions are celebrating the adoption of Bill C-4, which repeals the Conservative, anti-union Bills C-377 and C-525. Bill C-377 created red tape that would have forced unions and the businesses they work with to spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours producing and processing expense reports to be reviewed and filed. Bill C-525 would have made it more difficult for federally-regulated workplaces to join a union. Prime Minster Justin Trudea had pledged to repeal the bills if elected.

“Our affiliates and labour activists across the country have organized and campaigned against these bills from the beginning, and this is their victory to celebrate,” says Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) President Hassan Yussuff. “By passing Bill C-4, the federal government has demonstrated it understands the importance of fair labour relations, and the critical role unions play advancing rights for all Canadian workers.”

 

Recent News

Workers Walk Off the Job at Canada’s Busiest Airport

On July 27, 700 workers employed by Swissport at Pearson Airport in Toronto, Ontario, walked off the job. The workers are baggage and cargo handlers, maintenance personnel, and cleaners for more than 30 airlines. They cited the company’s uncompromising attitude and disrespect for workers as the cause of the labor dispute.

The last collective agreement expired July 23. Swissport is attempting to impose a three-year wage freeze and would like “flexibility” to change schedules with 96 hours advance notice, leaving workers without stable, predictable schedules.

Swissport has brought in hundreds of untrained, inexperienced temporary workers to act as strikebreakers. “We’re shocked at how Swissport is willing to sacrifice airport safety and jeopardize travel plans to gain an upper hand at the bargaining table,” says Harjinder Badial, vice president of Teamsters Local Union 419, which represents the workers.

To safely work in sensitive areas of the airport, baggage handlers normally require three to four weeks of training, rather than the three or four days of training for the temporary workers. It is also unclear how the workers were able to quickly pass airport staff background checks that normally take three to six months.

Recent News

AFM Announces New Agreement with American Public Media and Minnesota Public Radio

AFM President Ray Hair announced a the AFM has reached an agreement with American Public Media and Minnesota Public Radio that extends the current contract by three years. Musicians working on more than 20 public radio programs, including Performance Today and Prairie Home Companion are covered under this contract.

Important to this agreement are groundbreaking new media provisions that establish use fees and residual payments for musicians whose public radio performances are licensed to interactive digital service providers such as YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix. In addition to a new use fee payable to each musician whose performance is embodied in any clip or program exhibited via new media, 5% of producers’ gross receipts derived from the license for exhibition of any clip or program will be distributed half (2.5%) to the AFM and Employers Pension Fund, unallocated to any particular individual, and half (2.5%) to musicians.

 

Musicians working under the new contract will receive 2.5% wage increases in each year of the contract. Health, welfare, and pension benefits are also maintained and protected in the contract.

Recent News

List Generates New Conversation About Women and Music

In July NPR released “The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women,” a comprehensive list of women-generated albums from 1964 to the present. Compiled by nearly 50 women from across NPR and the public radio system, produced in partnership with the Lincoln Center, the list is “an intervention, a remedy, a correction of the historical record and hopefully the start of a new conversation” to put women at the center of popular music. Read through the list at: http://www.npr.org/2017/07/24/538387823/turning-the-tables-150-greatest-albums-made-by-women