The Choice

Next week I’m going to have to vote for someone for AFM president. For what it’s worth, here’s my thinking on the subject.

Tom Lee

Tom seems to be one of those folks that people either really like or flat-out loath. I have friends whose opinions I respect and trust on both sides.

As ICSOM chair, I heard no complaints about Tom’s performance as a local officer, and in fact several ICSOM musicians in DC whose opinions I trusted thought very highly of him. And I knew that he had an important role in bringing the AFM to accept military musicians as members, which went a long way towards ending the fruitless war the AFM had been waging for decades on military bands.

My own experiences with Tom were almost exclusively while I was ICSOM chair (which says something abou the AFM, considering that I’ve been president of Local 8 for the entire time of his presidency). There were two that stood out.

The first was in early 2001, while Tom was still Secretary/Treasurer. I had emailed my colleagues on the Player Conference Council that I was disappointed that the AFM’s annual report (which was the first for which he was responsible) no longer included departmental breakdowns. That information was, of course, of great interest to the player conferences, as it told us how much of our dues money the AFM spent on our departments. I suggested to my colleagues that we ought to write Tom a letter expressing our unhappiness with the omission.

Somehow Tom got wind of my complaint. He tried to call me a couple of times, but unfortunately I was not being very vigilant about my voice mail that week. So he sent me a letter that, at best, could be described as intemperate. I remember being shocked at the personal tone of the letter and the evident anger behind it, especially as my discussions with the PCC were solely about policy and not at all about personalities or politics.

It was suggested to me later that Tom had thought that Steve Young (with whom he was already in the fight that resulted in him beating Steve at the convention that summer) had put me up to the complaint, which went a way towards explaining Tom’s anger, if not the intemperate tone of the letter. In any case, I saw no point in responding in kind, and my interactions with Tom on other ICSOM business after that were cordial and correct.

My last significant business with Tom as ICSOM chair was immediately following his election as President in 2001. As Florence had won the S/T job in the same election, we needed to find a new SSD Director. Ann Drinan, then-president of ROPA, Rob McCosh, then-president of OCSM, and I had talked at length with Florence and had agreed on a candidate to present to Steve Young after the election. Much to our surprise (and that of many others, of course), we weren’t dealing with Steve Young after the election. So we presented the same candidate to Tom Lee. There were a couple of other applicants, as I recall, and Tom interviewed them all. Tom and I had a very pleasant dinner after a negotiation at B&K’s offices in DC in late July or early August, and discussed the matter further. At the ICSOM conference in August, Tom informed me that he had decided not to go with our candidate, and told me why. While I didn’t agree with his reasoning, the position he took was not unreasonable in the circumstances, and I was pleased that he had made a genuine effort to do what we had asked him to do.

Tom also had to rule on an election challenge in my local. I thought that the challenge was handled very professionally (Keith Marugg was the hearing officer) and that the outcome was the correct one. (His ruling was not appealed to the Department of Labor, by the way.)

My expectations of any AFM president are pretty low. The union is much weaker than it was 50 years ago, and the position of president has far less authority than it did in the Petrillo days. Neither my local nor my orchestra has had any significant business with the AFM recently, apart from sending them large checks and the occasional B reporting form and them sending us the occasional negotiator for our per-service CBAs.

Having said that, I think Tom has done some good things. While I remain mystified by the Slaughter of the Innocent Reps, I think the other personnel decisions he’s made have been good ones, especially the hirings of Paul Sharpe, Linda Patterson, and Laura Brownell. And, except for Tina Hafmeister, everyone he’s hired has stayed hired. That’s certainly a contrast with the other side of 1501.

I think the implementation of the LS-1 is a good thing as well, although I can’t tell how much credit Tom really deserves for that. I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen of Hal Ponder’s work, but I haven’t seen very much (and I was very sorry to see Pollard go). And I like the fact that Tom has taken the initiative in moving towards some degree of consensus around symphonic recording – an issue whose difficulty and potential for division far outweighs its actual importance in the economic lives of symphonic musicians.

So, in many ways, I think Tom has been a decent president. It’s really too bad that his war with the RMA threatens to blow up the AFM. I doubt he’s the only guilty party. I don’t know of all the interactions between the RMA’s leadership and Tom, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the RMA could have handled the relationship better. Sometimes responding in kind, while tempting, is not the best or most productive course of action – but that is doubly true for the AFM president.

I also have to wonder about the role of the IEB. Were they trying to calm things down? Were they protesting about the inflamatory letters that Tom was sending to members? If they thought the letters were inappropriate (as some of them would now have us believe), why not say so publicly at the time? I see five current IEB members now attacking Tom for his conduct towards the RMA. But they were silent as church mice when it was all happening. They’re not elected to be lumps on a log, or even team players. If we wanted the IEB to be team players, we’d turn them into staff and let the president hire them.

And what advice was Tom getting from Geoge Cohen about his dealings with RMA? Was George actively discouraging Tom from what, at the outset, was clearly a destructive course of action? Or was George acting as an enabler? I don’t know the answers – but I’ll bet that the IEB does.

In the context of a campaign between Tom and Ed, we need to ask about Ed’s role in all of this as well. Ed was widely regarded as Tom’s closest ally amongst the five at-large IEB members. Was Ed egging Tom on? Was Tom trying to discourage him? All I really know is that Ed wasn’t saying anything publicly about what Tom was doing – or at least not until it served his own purposes.

I suspect the answers to these questions wouldn’t put any of the participants in a flattering light. But, at the end of the day, they don’t matter as much as the plain fact that Tom’s actions have gone a long way towards blowing up the AFM, or at least causing it major damage. (Tom’s actions have also been bad for a number of members, but one could argue that his primary responsibility is towards the institution.) It seems to me that, if we had a Hippocratic oath in our union, it would begin with “I will not blow up the AFM.” Tom has violated that implicit obligation of office. All by itself, that makes casting a vote for him very hard.

Ed Ward

My mental image of Ed is quite a bit fuzzier. No doubt this is in part due to having few substantive dealings with him. But I think that Ed is, at least on the surface, a blander character than is Tom – or at least harder to read. Certainly he seems not to inspire the extremes of emotion that Tom does.

As with Tom, I heard no complaints as ICSOM chair from Chicago musicians about the Local or his performance as a local officer. As my local is right up the street from Chicago, we  would get 10-208’s newsletter and other material, all of which looked very professional (I was particularly impressed by their referral book.)

Local 10-208 has a very interesting history, having been the political birthplace and base of the most important president in AFM history, James Caesar Petrillo. Ed is a once-removed beneficiary of the movement  that got rid of Petrillo, having run for office several times on Charlie Guse’s slate. I am told (although I don’t know if it’s true) that 10-208 hasn’t had a quorum at a membership meeting for years. It seems to be a perfect example of the so-called “service model” of unionism – professional officers and staff servicing a passive membership. There appears to have been very little organizing in Chicago in the past few decades, but Ed (and perhaps Charlie) inherited a number of CBAs. (Their recent organizing success with the Elgin Symphony was done with the assistance of the AFM, as Chicago, unlike Local 802,  doesn’t have organizers on staff.)

In addition, Local 10-208 seems to be top-heavy financially. Looking at the LM-2s for 2003 for Nashville, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles (the four US “mega-locals”), the highest salary for president was in Chicago ($92,000 vs $87,000 for NY, $82,000 for LA and $59,900 for Nashville). Given the relative sizes of the four locals, the figure appears out of whack: in Chicago, the president’s salary per member was $27.59, as opposed to $19.36 in Nashville, $9.62 in NY, and $8.92 in LA. It’s likely that this is a Chicago tradition dating back to Petrillo; whoever at afmahead described Chicago as the perfect example of “pinky-ring unionism”was dead-on. There’s nothing wrong with union presidents being paid a fair wage (it’s worth noting that Ed, as president, made less than a number of rank-and-file union members in Chicago). But Local 10-208 is clearly a very different beast than is 1501 Broadway.

Is Ed capable of successfully managing a union where the staff does most of the work (and gets most of the compensation budget)? Does he understand that there’s no point in having staff unless they have resources (aka "money to get things done with")? Or is “spending smarter” a hint that he thinks the AFM spends too much on staff and their activities? He certainly has given no indication he had any problem with the Slaughter of the Innocent Reps. Is he going to be able to delegate to the capable staff that Tom would leave behind?

When Ed retired, the Chicago Tribune ran a very positive article about his tenure (April 13, 2005). Some relevant quotes:

"Ed is a genuine businessman and genuine politician," said Walton, 79, now in his fourth term on the board. "I watch how he operates. It's a lesson."

…Ward worked his way through DePaul playing in bands and theater shows here and on tour. He graduated in 1962 -- the same year reformers in Local 10 shocked the labor world by ousting Petrillo as their president.

Ward later taught music at Catholic schools, led a globetrotting CYO band of high school and college all-stars, and started a Brookfield company, Bandstand Inc., that rented instruments to schools. All the while, he played professionally. But by 1986, when he was approached to run for union office, he couldn't ignore how much the scene had changed.

"I was playing in theaters, weddings and parties, but I could see the music business was very fickle," he said. "You might work 30 days one month and five days the next."

Ward ran as treasurer on a slate led by Charles Guse that won election to a three-year term in fall 1986… Ward served under Guse for three terms, as treasurer, secretary-treasurer and vice president. Ward said Guse led him to believe he would retire after two terms and then let Ward run for president. But Guse stayed for a third term and, though in poor health, declared for a fourth.

Ward said by then he was handling most of the local's business and "champing at the bit to be president." He broke with Guse and headed an opposing slate that swamped Guse's in fall 1996. Guse died the following summer at age 67.

I found it interesting that, in running for AFM president against someone with whom he had been closely allied, Ed appears to be repeating a pattern of past conduct. And the emphasis on his business skills also seems to be a constant – one repeated in Ken’s  endorsement of Ed.

Perhaps Ed really ought to be running for S/T on someone else’s slate. It would be nice to have someone who’s run a business in that job (although that’s one of Folio’s talking points as well). But the bottom-line mentality can be as dangerous in a union president as it is in an orchestra manager. Both enterprises have to run efficiently, and both have to break even. But, for a union just as for an orchestra, the bottom line isn’t really the bottom line. Ed’s business in Chicago existed to make money. Orchestras exist to perform great music. The AFM exists to help musicians.

As I said, the symphonic musicians in Chicago seemed content with Ed’s performance over the years. (Of course, the symphonic musicians in DC seemed equally content with Tom’s performance as a local officer– which proved a lousy predictor of his future relationship with the player conferences.) But, for those who think that Ed’s Chicago relationship presage better times ahead for the relationship between the PCs and the AFM, I offer this cautionary tale.

In February 2001 (while I was still ICSOM chair), I was contacted by Ed. He told me that some CSO musicians had heard that I was “having private meetings” with their then-manager, Henry Fogel, about the A/V agreement, which was then being negotiated between the major managers and the AFM. Ed asked me to explain myself.

I didn’t make the only correct response, which would have been “and what the f*ck business is that of yours?” I wish I had; I suspect I was trying to avoid getting into yet another pissing contest with anyone from the AFM. Instead I explained to him that Henry was also chair of the ASOL board and that of course I wasn’t discussing the A/V agreement with his (he wasn’t even at the table, and it wasn’t an agreement that the CSO used much anyway.) And that was all the absolute truth; I usually got together with Henry once or twice a year for lunch to discuss things more important and more interesting than media agreements.

But what the f*ck business was it of his? As ICSOM chair, I wasn’t accountable to Local 10-208 or the IEB. I was certainly accountable to the musicians of the CSO, but none of them contacted me about this. Why did Ed feel it was his place to volunteer to insert himself between the chairman of ICSOM and his constituents? If the Milwaukee Ballet orchestra has a problem with the president of ROPA, I guarantee you that the president of Local 8 won’t pick up the phone and call her. As ICSOM chair I didn’t call up local officers and chew them out for how they were representing their musicians – especially if their musicians were too chickensh*t to at least try to resolve the issue themselves. Part of understanding union democracy is respecting the relationship between elected officers and the rank-and-file.

It’s ironic that Tom is being criticized (and rightly so) for having inserted himself into the internal disputes over the film agreement negotiations by someone who has shown no reluctance to do exactly the same thing himself. If I were still running a player conference, this episode would give me considerable food for thought. Ed might be smoother in how he interferes, but I see no evidence that Ed really respects the role of the player conferences within the AFM any more than Tom does.

I initially ended this post by complaining that the delegates were being forced to choose between an unguided missile and a Machiavellian apparatchik to be the next AFM president. But that’s grossly unfair. Both candidates are better unionists, and more complex individuals, than that.

I like both Ed and Tom; I’ve spent time with them both and learned from them. But I think both are problematic candidates for president; Tom because of how badly he’s handled the relationship between the AFM and recording musicians, and Ed because, while serving on the IEB, he had no apparent problem with what Tom was doing until Tom looked vulnerable because of it. Neither Tom nor Ed are on my top-ten list of people I’d like to see running the AFM. But one of them will be, come next Wednesday. Unless I want to vote for Michael Moore as a protest, I’ll have to vote for either Ed or Tom.

Perhaps once I get to Vegas I’ll be able to decide what to do.

Comments

[Pete Vriesenga]

A dialogue such as this, in the open for all to see and for all to participate, assures us all that we're on the right track. Robert continues to prove that the AFM will be shaped by those who are willing to stand up and express their views - Ken also for many years.

Thank you!
Pete Vriesenga

[Ken Shirk]

One of the untold tales in the saga of Tom Lee vs. the recording musicians unfolded at the end of 2003. The LA RMA newsletter had been distributed that contained scathing criticisms of Tom Lee and AFM behavior. Tom Lee called the IEB together seeking its advice on how to respond to the newsletter. In general, we counseled him to respond moderately. Tom Lee replied that since he had been personally attacked, he had to respond on the same level. We counseled him that a union leader had to rise above that kind of behavior with its members. After an hour's discussion, the entire IEB had come to the conclusion that Tom should not respond at all, because it would touch off an internal battle that would be bad for the union, and which would likely show no prospect of ending. However, Tom ignored all our advice, and fired off a very unfortunate counter-attack, which was deep down dirty and personal. It pretty much set the tone for the last 18 months.

At the following meeting of the IEB, two LA RMA members had filed a protest with the IEB, asserting that Tom Lee had exceeded his authority, misspending union funds in responding to the RMA newsletter in the manner that he had. They demanded that the IEB investigate whether Tom's letter had violated federal labor law.

General Counsel had done advance work on the issues and advised the IEB that Tom Lee's letter violated no statutes, and fell within his authority. While the IEB had not supported sending the letter, it also recognized the truth of General Counsel's advice. Quite surprisingly, however, General Counsel had prepared a draft response that went beyond the pale, containing, in addition to the legal reponses, very disparaging and condescending jabs at the two LA members. The Board interposed itself, directing that the response be toned down to the bare essentials.

Since then, the IEB has met or teleconferenced an extraordinary number of times to deal with the latest episode of this developing drama. All along, our desire was to do what could be done to bring the conflict down and find a way to collect the SPF fees, to protect the interests and image of the AFM, and support the president as best we could.

We called ourselves and RMA to a June '04 meeting to find a formula for peace. Five very basic points were agreed to, and everyone left with a cautiously good feeling. Unfortunately, by the end of the summer, Tom Lee was back to squabbling with RMA, and the tentative good feeling was washed away.

With this crisis growing, the SPF fees remaining essentially uncollected, the sparring between Tom Lee and RMA continuing unabated, the IEB met a number of times between Dec. 04 and mid-February. We concluded that if we approached the convention with the SPF fees uncollected, there would be an unacceptable level of conflict between convention delegates and recording musicians, and that such a conflict needed to be avoided if at all possible. We recognized that time was running out, and that if there was not a solution in play by the end of March, we would be in deep trouble. We had been patient with Tom's behavior long enough, and informed him that the Board would have to find a solution even if it embarrassed him or made him look like he was at fault (which I always thought he was). We tried to set up one more meeting with the RMA musicians in February, in conjunction with the meeting of the Western Conference. Unfortunately, that meeting fell apart for purely avoidable reasons.

Ray Hair picked up the ball, however, stating that even if the IEB wasn't going to meet officially with the RMA, he, as a union officer, wasn't going to stand by while the last chance to work things out sailed by. I, Mark Jones, and Hal Espinosa agreed, and we set up an informal, unofficial meeting with RMA reps from LA, Nashville, Miami and elsewhere.

That meeting resulted in the following basic points:

(1) We promised that we would carry forward to the full IEB policy proposals to give recording musicians the same kind of participation in their bargaining and contract administration that any symphony member has in their local (like the right to select their own negotiating committee representatives, the right to be consulted before any contract waivers are agreed to by the union, to name a couple),
(2) to give them input into the structure and function of their "business rep" (EMSD).
(3) We would look for an alternative to the SPF fees.

This was the roadmap to finding peace and harmony.

We previewed the points with the board members who were present at the Western Conference, with Tom being quite noticeable in his opposition thereto.

When we took up the policy proposals formally at the March Board meeting, Tom had apparently organized opposition to the proposals from amongst various locals, Canadian and US, including Local 802, who came to that meeting with a total misunderstanding of what we were thinking.

It was then that we realized that Tom was committed to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. He would not accept peace if it was not on his terms. With a way out of the mess with the recording musicians at hand, Tom Lee was not going to go there.

The rest is known. The major portion of the SPF fees have been paid. The film negotiations have been concluded without a revolution.

Ed Ward stayed at Tom's side as long as he could. When Ed's advice ran counter to what Tom wanted to do, Tom stopped asking him for advice. When Ed, as with the rest of us, saw the potential for ending the SPF wars, he did as best he could to bring Tom along, but Tom would have none of it.

We all tried as hard as we could to give Tom Lee good advice, to back him up as best we could, to salvage the situation and everyone's reputation and honor. In the final analysis, however, he chose to follow his personal urges and satisfy his ego instead of follow the wiser and saner advice of his fellow officers.

[Robert Levine]

Paul Harwood wrote:

You'd lock yourself in a room with Bill and both realising that the AFM is really in need of competent leadership, and one final last chance, you'd emerge from the room with THE slate I dream of: Bill 'More Reality' for Pres. and Robert Levine for ST."

I'm truly flattered, and it would be an honor to serve with Bill in any capacity. But I wouldn't make a good S/T, for some of the same reasons that Florence doesn't.

The logical slate would have had Bill for president and Ed for S/T. I think the decision to include Florence was both a substantive and strategic error.

[Paul Harwood]

Hi Robert,

You'd lock yourself in a room with Bill and both realising that the AFM is really in need of competent leadership, and one final last chance, you'd emerge from the room with THE slate I dream of: Bill 'More Reality' for Pres. and Robert Levine for ST.

Cheers.

PH