On finding my words misused

I started this blog almost four years ago as a way to think out loud about the issues facing the AFM and how the AFM copes with those issues. I had no idea if there would be an audience for such a blog, and that wasn’t the primary point of the exercise anyway (although every writer loves to have readers). What audience there was I assumed would be fellow union geeks; the kind of people that could read the minutes of other locals’ executive meetings without instantly falling asleep. It literally never occurred to me that what I wrote would ever be used against a union organizing campaign.

Of course we don’t have many organizing campaigns in the symphonic world; our industry is as thoroughly unionized as any in the country. Even the bare handful of orchestras that have left the AFM (the Seattle Symphony, the Tucson Symphony, and one or two other smaller orchestras in the Pacific northwest) immediately formed their own union. And one of those orchestras has recently re-joined the AFM.

No American orchestra has ever voted to decertify a union and go without one. The benefits of unionization – real and formal unionization, with the force and protection of Federal labor law, and not just management policies “negotiated” with a musician committee – are so obvious to orchestra musicians that, once experienced, they have never chosen to give them up.

So imagine my surprise when I checked my email this morning and discovered that a member of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, just 80 miles west of here, had used some of my blogging as part of his argument against voting to join the AFM in a representation meeting this coming Monday:

As we approach a decision on whether to affiliate with the AFM, I recommend that you take a few minutes to read the following blog entries, written by Robert Levine, principal violist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. They are not anti-union screeds; far from it! … From his writings, on his blog and elsewhere, I sense that he is committed to the proposition that labor unions can be a positive force in the workplace. He is also deeply concerned about the sustainability of the AFM's business model.

Particularly interesting to me is a three-part post dated January 18. …

The tensions between recording musicians and Local and Federation leadership have been around, more or less, for generations. Currently, however, they are at a high level. A lawsuit between a group of recording musicians and the Federation is presently winding its way through the legal system. Some $10,000 per month in work dues are being withheld from the Federation per court order while the suit is resolved. ..

In his January 28th posting, noted below, Mr. Levine has more to say about the "Recording Wars." There are also some notes regarding the AFM's financial situation and a vacancy in the Symphonic Services Division, the Federation office that is most relevant to us…

One may ask, what do the "recording wars" have to do with us regional orchestra musicians? Musicians working in the recording industry, primarily in Los Angeles, but also in Nashville and elsewhere, are small in number, but their contribution to the AFM, in the form of work dues, is substantial. If recording musicians were to split from the Federation, as they did for a while some 50 years ago, that would seriously affect the AFM's financial health. Would the rest of the Federation, the orchestra musicians and freelancers, be up for an increase in per capita and/or work dues?…

The AFM serves diverse constituencies whose interests may not always be aligned. One of the challenges the AFM has is to maintain services for each constituency without pissing off the others. …I am not convinced that a union with a history of and a structure that allows playing one constituency against another would necessarily look out for our best interests.

Rather that parse all of that in detail, I’ll simply answer the implied question: should the musicians of the Madison Symphony vote to join the AFM?

I'd sure vote to do so if I played in the Madison Symphony. The reasons for doing so are compelling, and the downside risks a lot smaller than the MSO member quoted above wants his colleagues to believe.

Give me one compelling reason, you ask? How about this quote from the Isthmus, a local Madison paper:

… The orchestra, [Richard Mackie, the orchestra’s executive director] notes, has had a bargaining relationship with a local players’ committee for decades. “We’ve done very well in the family, and we just don’t think we need a third-party intrusion into the conversation,” Mackie says. “I don’t think the players will get any more out of this, other than paying dues to an organization in New York, than they already have.”

Here's a reliable rule of thumb: whenever a management, of any kind of enterprise, says that their employees don’t need a union – their employees need a union. And whenever they use rhetoric straight from the right-to-work playbook ("family," "third party intrusion," "New York")  to say their employees don’t need a union – their employees really need a union.

If Mr. Mackie doesn’t think “the players will get any more out of” joining the AFM, then why does he care? I hope I’m not insulting anyone’s intelligence to point out that the only reason it would matter to him is if that he fears that the musicians will indeed get “more out of ” being in the AFM; in particular, better wages and working conditions.

Reading between the lines, the musicians’ desire to belong to the AFM seems to be driven by their desire for the expertise that a real union can bring to bargaining and contract administration. That is absolutely the best reason for an orchestra like Madison to want to join the AFM.

We have four collective bargaining units here in Milwaukee. Three of them have had every contract they’ve ever had negotiated by AFM staff, at no expense to the musicians (aside from their annual dues of $175 and their work dues of 1%) and very little expense to the Local. (The fourth is my orchestra, which, like most full-time ICSOM orchestras, engages a freelance negotiator for negotiations on behalf of its musicians and the Local).

I’ve been at the table for many of those negotiations. I regard myself as an experienced activist and negotiator, but I would never try to duplicate what AFM staff has done here. They’re really, really good, and have achieved contracts for our members much better than what those members, even with the Local’s help, would have achieved on their own – and without a single service ever being lost due to a labor dispute. Mike Hennessy, a member of the Madison orchestra, put it well when he told the Isthmus:

Relying on local volunteers to represent members’ interests has “become more and more time-consuming,” Hennessy adds. “Musicians feel it makes sense to have the resources of the union when you’re negotiating.”

It sure does.

So what about those downside risks? Haven't I written on this very blog that the AFM was a mess? Aren’t I now urging the Madison Symphony musicians to join a dysfunctional union?

The AFM faces serious problems, many of its own making. The finances of the national office appear shaky, and the policies of the current AFM administration towards recording musicians seem likely to make matters worse. But does that mean that dues increases are inevitable? Is the MSO member quoted about right to worry that “a union with a history of and a structure that allows playing one constituency against another would [not] necessarily look out for our best interests?”

Ask yourself a question. If he's right, then why are no orchestras leaving the AFM? Why did the Tucson Symphony just return to the AFM after leaving a few years ago? Why aren’t I leading a movement to take my own orchestra out of the AFM? (Hint: it’s not because of the $1,200 I made last year as local president.)

The AFM's problems are real and serious. But even the most radical solution to those problems will have very little effect on symphonic musicians, unless perhaps to make things better for them. Symphonic musicians are simply too influential within the AFM to permit decreases in core services or significant dues increases.

I don’t know what the future holds for the AFM as a national union. I suspect that it will either get its act together or be replaced by another national musicians’ union formed by those AFM locals most active in collective bargaining and truly representing musicians as workers, one of which appears to be the Madison local. (I’d be happy with either outcome, by the way.)

But I do know that, whatever happens, it will happen democratically and with great attention paid to the concerns of symphonic musicians. The history of union democracy within the AFM is long and deep, and the importance of symphonic musicians to the union uncontested by anyone. The musicians of the Madison Symphony can join the AFM with no fear that they will not receive what they expect, and need, from their local and national union. And they don’t have to worry about becoming the AFM’s next milch cow.

The AFM, like every other human enterprise – families, churches, orchestras, businesses, governments –  is imperfect. These days its imperfections are very much on display. But there’s no other union I’d rather belong to than this one. For all its weirdnesses, it's done a good job providing services to its symphonic musicians in a way that gives a great deal of control to those musicians. I am very confident that it will continue to do so.

Comments

[PitBull]

Troll

Its a metaphor. A pitbull is a dog. Union workers saving lives is obviously not a thread about your issue. Pounce somewhere else fiddler!!

[802fiddler]

PitBull, a previous poster, has labelled recording musicians both as "trolls" - a description born of Norse mythology - and "dogs." He has also invoked the heroics of the USAir Captain who put his Airbus down on the Hudson River as being more important to this blog than discussions of AFM problems. Nowhere in my previous post did I denigrate the advantages of symphonic, opera and ballet orchestras from belonging to the AFM.

He needs to be reminded that the title of this blog is "The AFM Observer," not a blog of the Airline Pilots' Assn. Further, he needs some lessons in the ethics of reasonable discussion.

[MSNStecher]

Sorry to have disrupted your Saturday. I have faith that my colleagues, if they bother to read the postings, will not misconstrue your words.

There's been a healthy debate over here, especially when the talk moves away from management and union organizing boilerplate. It will be good to lay this issue to rest and move on.

Tuesday morning, I might still be an outsider saying, "Don't go in!" Or I may be on the inside, doing what I can to make the AFM the best for our situation. My colleagues get to decide. (Oh, yes, I get a vote, too.)

[downbeat]

Sadly, the film/TV producers, symphonic musicians, and others have watched as the recording musicians formed their own competing guild (the PMG) and took the AFM to court. We are now seeing only the first of the results of these actions - symphonic musicians concerned that if the elite recording musicians strap on their PMG golden parachutes and desert the AFM, the financial health of the AFM would be at issue. If the amount of money the recording musicians contribute to the AFM is anywhere close to the amount the recording musicians CLAIM they contribute to the AFM, the AFM and every member has very good reason to be concerned about the threat that the PMG poses by its very existence.

One thing we must never forget: the PMG is still there for a reason. It is a guild that was set up to directly compete with the AFM. That's a harsh reality that many here seem to want to ignore. And until the recording musicians see the light and disband the PMG, it will serve as a shining reminder to the rest of the community and our employers of how severely divided the AFM currently is.

[PitBull]

This is not exclusively the AFM vs the RMA blog.
- A post about 155 lives saved by mostly union workers-the recording trolls pounce

-A post designed to repair damage done to the AFM's ability to organize symphonic musicians-the recording trolls pounce.

Show a little restraint dogs. Even the mutts in my kennel do not mark (piss) on EVERY corner.

-PitBull

[802fiddler]

Symphonic musicians indeed have much control over their destiny because they are the "product," their contracts are local, and they have a player conference - ICSOM (ROPA, also) - that provides a forum for trading information as well as contract bargaining training and support. The locals to which they belong mostly stay out of their way. Further, if they don't like their local administrations, they can ostensibly vote for change. For them, belonging to the AFM is a no-brainer, though some don't necessarily think so.

Would it were so for recording musicians where the AFM is their "local" and where they have no control over who gets elected to the AFM IEB. I would hope that symphonic musicians might see the advantage of joining with recording and other full-time musicians in the common fight for a better and more responsive AFM.