The AFM in the Garden of Good and Evil

An anonymous commenter wrote, in response to my last post:

Is the AFM going to exist to primarily serve the RMA Elite, or is it going to exist to serve all members fairly and without prejudice towards those whose incomes are higher than the rest?

Is the AFM going to continue to tolerate a rival union created by current AFM members and elected officials, the PMG? What message does that send when Local 47 management openly tolerates this anti-AFM organization whose officers include a Local 47 hearing board member (and Local 47's webmaster)

How are the smaller locals going to get involved in the civil war between Espinosa/RMA/Local 47 and the AFM that is currently threatening to blow apart the AFM? And to what extent does this very public battle in fact drive prospective members away from the AFM?

Brother Anonymous seems to believe that the problem facing the AFM is a battle between Good People and Bad People. No doubt there are such people in the AFM. I doubt they’re all on one side of any issue, however.

A better analysis begins with the observation that symphonic musicians seem to be generally happier with their union than are their recording colleagues. Perhaps symphonic musicians are just Better People than those who work on scoring stages. But that’s not been my experience.

The key difference in the two relationships is that symphonic musicians have far more control over their CBAs than do recording musicians. The reason is simple: symphonic CBAs (with the very minor exception of media CBAs) are negotiated locally. If symphonic musicians don’t like what’s going on with their locals, or how their locals are administering their CBAs, they can vote out the local officers. And, of course, local officers don’t dare negotiate symphonic CBAs without rank-and-file at the table. Local officers generally don’t take the lead role in negotiating symphonic CBAs at all, in fact.

Contrast this with what recording musicians face. Their national contracts are negotiated and administered by the AFM. The most recent one-off videogame agreements were negotiated entirely by… well, it’s not really clear who negotiated them. We know from the AFM’s website that:

In a bold move to capture a greater share of the Video Game Scoring market, the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada's International Executive Board has authorized its Officers to enter into a series of "one-off" agreements with terms that are consistent with current industry practice.

Past practice has always been to have RMA at the table for national media negotiations. It doesn’t appear that RMA has been there recently, however.

So what if the recording musicians don’t like the agreements, or even if there’s no consensus within that community? Either way it doesn’t really matter to the IEB. They’re not in any danger of being thrown out of office by angry recording musicians, because they’re elected by local officers, very few of whom deal with any recording musicians at all. (In fact, there are far too many local officers who seem to agree with Brother Anonymous that recording musicians are Bad Greedy People whose antagonism is a demonstration that the AFM President is standing up for the little guy.)

The democratic disconnect between the people who are negotiating new national media agreements and the people who will work under them – or whose current work will be affected by what’s in new agreements – is why there’s a PMG. The solution to the current civil war is structural: either direct elections for AFM officers or a non-geographic local to deal with media agreements with officers elected by those musicians who are affected by those agreements.

It's sad that, in 2007, one has to make the argument that the player conferences actually represent the musicians they represent and need to be part of any national negotiating process.

Comments

Glad you enjoyed my post, but it really isn't about good and bad, good and evil, etc.

It's about inclusion vs. exclusion.

It's about a union serving its membership, vs. a union serving the elite among the membership.

It's about doing what's best for the most vs. doing what's best for a select few.

It's about the already-fat wallets of the top AFM recording musicians vs. the shrinking wallets of the average AFM recording musician.

It's about true unionism vs. protecting the elite in the "name" of unionism.