Marc Sazer, secretary of the RMA International, gave an address at the ROPA conference in Dayton OH this past week that is a lucid summary of RMA's views on the current war. It's worth reading:
Dear ROPA Delegates, Board, and fellow guests,
I offer warm and collegial greetings on behalf of the Recording Musicians Association. Congratulations on a full, productive and beautifully organized 25th Anniversary Conference. We greatly appreciate the invitation to participate with esteemed fellow musicians.
Many of our members, particularly in Los Angeles and New York, are both employed in the various recording fields and also perform with ROPA orchestras. I see the friendly faces of ROPA Delegates from my home in Los Angeles, representing orchestras that I have played with myself. We share a free-lance life, and that often gives us shared perspectives as we run from job to job, working, teaching and practicing.
The commonalities that bind us together here are based both on our experience together of performing and living a musicians’ life, and working as volunteers and activists within our labor union. Everyone in this room is here not because it enriches us financially, but because we share a dedication to the welfare and well-being of our colleagues. I salute each and every Delegate and Player Conference Officer here for your selflessness, and your willingness to take time out of busy and financially stressed lives in order to make a contribution to others.
In the rest of entertainment industry labor movement, the rank-and-file artists who actually work in the field are the policy makers of their union. The Officers are rank-and-file. In SAG, AFTRA, the Writer’s Guild, the Director’s Guild and Actor's Equity, professional staff answer to elected working actors, singers, writers, and directors. Policy decisions, negotiating priorities, organizing strategies and political interactions are all under the direct oversight of the very artists who will be working under those contracts. Their Presidents, Vice Presidents, boardmembers and other officers are just like you; artists working in the real world, volunteering without salary in order to make a difference for their own communities. And, when it is time to elect new Officers, they have direct democracy; every member gets a vote.
We have a different system in the AFM. As rank-and-file musicians, we depend on Federation Officers to make critical decisions that, to a greater or lesser degree, determine how our union responds to us and our needs. The staffing of our departments, allocation of funding and other resources for services, negotiating priorities and organizing approaches are all in the hands of Officers elected not by you and me as members, but by the Delegates to the AFM Convention.
Looking back historically, the AFM wisely developed institutional processes to accommodate the needs of rank-and-file musicians, as well as to access their collective wisdom. ROPA's proud history bears witness to both the need for access by orchestral musicians, and the success that access brings not only to the affected players, but to our union as a whole. Likewise ICSOM, OCSM, TMA and RMA have played invaluable roles not only for our specific communities, but for the American Federation of Musicians.
Yet we find ourselves at a crossroads.
It has to be said out loud. The processes so wisely created to serve and protect working musicians have broken down.
A new person was just hired to direct operations at the Electronic Media Services Division. This is apparently a whole new job description. I say apparently, because no one I know who works under the affected contracts had any idea that any of this was going on. We had no knowledge that an opening existed or had been created, and we played no role in vetting candidates. RMA has now communicated with our new Director to wish her luck and offer our support in the difficult and complex tasks that face her, but she has some real hurdles ahead. Through no fault of her own, the individual hired is someone who none of us knew, and she appears to have no experience in labor, in entertainment union practice, in contract administration, or in music in any way. How can she possibly have a constituency among or relationship with the members she has been hired to serve?
There was no process.
We are now, as we speak, in the middle of our Motion Picture and Television Film negotiations. This is one of our most important contracts, generating over 100 million dollars a year in wages and residuals, providing immense economic resources to the union, and providing not only a decent living wage, but pension and health care contributions for thousands of AFM musicians. As we are in the middle of these negotiations I am naturally not at liberty to discuss individual issues or negotiating positions. However, I can share with you that the IEB has overruled the rank-and-file on key issues, insisting on proposals that we did not want and denying us the right to make proposals that we sought. I have participated in many Federation negotiations over the years. Each time we struggle to elevate the voice of the rank-and-file, but this crucial negotiation has hit a new low in the treatment of the bargaining unit. Orchestral players would have every reason to be up in arms if a Local dictated to the players of an orchestra that they could not ask for something from management, or that a proposal that the musicians did not want was going to be put across the table anyway. Yet that is precisely what we have faced.
Our processes have been broken.
While the International Musician monthly trumpets the great success of the AFM in videogame scoring, the reality is quite different. I was at the ROPA Conference in West Virginia two years ago, and President Lee discussed videogames with you then. Now, it should be said that all of the annual wages generated in videogames all around the AFM don't add up to more than a week or two of record or jingle work. Remember the film and TV annual wages and residuals that I just mentioned of over 100 million dollars? All of the videogames put together amount to less than 1% of that. Nonetheless, the IEB decided to take dramatic risks - over the heads of and behind the backs of the musicians involved. They have put the basic protections for the use of our music in all of our contracts in harm's way, risking deep damage to not only our livelihoods, but AFM finances.
Yet after two years of working feverishly against the stated wishes of the players who actually do this work, the AFM strategy has been a spectacular failure. 2008 saw record videogame company profits, soaring beyond all expectation even by the standards of a gold-rush industry. Yet AFM employment nosedived by half! While industry skyrocketed, the AFM fell by 50%. Employment continues to sink, even as the voice of rank-and-file musicians is further marginalized.
This bears closer analysis.
The presentation from the Federation is that they are organizing new employment. This is a goal we all share; organizing new employment is what we in the recording community do day in and day out. We leverage knowledge and relationships with players, contractors, composers, agents and others in the sound recording, jingles, tv and film worlds to bring recording projects onto AFM contracts. Our leadership in Nashville, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere are responsible for millions of dollars of wages brought into the AFM fold.
On an ongoing basis, we organize employment. The AFM is now de-organizing our thin foothold in this industry.
In 2002, we helped the AFM create a videogames agreement that quickly saw a 200% increase over two years...and then the contract administrator for videogames left the AFM. Since the IEB mandated that every contract had to go through the EMSD individually, processing contracts became virtually impossible, and employment fell dramatically. Nonetheless, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Microsoft and other huge videogame giants signed AFM contracts, good contracts that provided real musician protections.
Now, it is all falling apart.
The AFM has been playing politics with videogames, not organizing. AFM-sanctioned piracy, that gives our music away for free, has cannibalized employment, and the precipitous drop in wages shows that clearly. Giving our recorded work away for nothing harms all of us; it provides composers and companies with IEB-rubber-stamped high-quality, completely professionally recorded music that will replace live scoring, whether for the next jingle, the next soundtrack, or the next TV show. Worse, it teaches them that the AFM will not protect it's members next time around.
The Videogames adventure is a sinking ship of demonstrably toxic politics, real-life harm, and rapidly diminishing returns.
So, why should ROPA Delegates care about any of this?
Rather than discussing strategies for dealing with recording areas with the players who actually do the work, AFM leaders have insisted on politicizing Federation contracts. From that perspective, this really shouldn't be on your plate at all.
But there are deeper stakes here.
The companies and employers who commercially exploit music for profit are part of a finite world, and their attorneys and exectives are interwoven with each other. The same corporations that distribute and produce electronic media control the radio stations that classical music shows depend upon, distribute live opera broadcasts in theaters, own theaters on Broadway and around the country, own record labels, share legal departments with advertisers, and control the news coverage that determines access to the public for arts organizations. We delude ourselves if we think that we can firewall one contract from another, and not establish damaging precedents that affect all of us. Neither can we firewall one community of working musicians off from another. The tides that buffet orchestras affect recording musicians, and theater musicians, and casual musicians.
We are interconnected, both in the outside real world, and within our AFM.
As the Federation approach of weakening our contracts works its way through, all of you will suffer economically along with recording musicians. After all, as work dues from recording contracts shrink as a result of the anti-player strategy the AFM is embarked upon, where do you think future AFM Conventions will look for financial support? As relationships with recording musicians are further damaged, where will the AFM look for the next "financial package"?
There has been no process, only bad politics.
So what is to be done? How can we ensure the access and input of rank-and-file musicians to the inner workings and decision-making of their own union? How do we achieve the basic competence that can only flow from the knowledge and experience of the musicians who know their own workplace?
We have all heard about some of the personality conflicts that have bedevilled the relationship between AFM leadership and rank-and-file players over the recent years. Yet good process is precisely the solution to personalities; after all, we have all had the experience of playing in orchestras with people we disliked, whether on the podium, or around us - sometimes even as stand partners! Every professional musician comes to understand instinctively that playing appropriate roles, and abiding by appropriate process is our best, and most productive protection in the face of whatever personality issues may arise.
Personality conflicts are a natural result of undermined process. Frustration, conflict and lack of unity are inevitable if stakeholders feel excluded, and decisions are reached without the consensus of the actual players.
There are processes available to our union. I'm not talking about yet one more between-convention committee that will end up on the cutting room floor. No, we have mechanisms that can work right now. Hiring staff for our Divisions should be done in concert with the Electronic Media Services Oversight Committee, or an equivalent Symphonic Services Oversight Committee. The Roehl Report, which was voted on by the IEB and adopted as AFM Policy, mandates these committees, and they can and should be implemented now. Players who work in an orchestra, a theater pit, a recording studio or a bandstand should be the first phone call when issues arise, not the last. And the Player Conferences, of which ROPA is a strong and proud leader, with a long history of working assiduously and selflessly on behalf of musicians, should be front and center in every discussion that affects their members.
Thank you for the time that you give on behalf of your colleagues. Thank you for your commitment and dedication to the welfare of musicians. And, on behalf of the Recording Musicians Association, I thank you for the time you have generously given me here today. Good luck with the rest of your Conference, and with all of your activities over the next year.
I hate to disappoint both of you, but we live in a republic, not a democracy. India is a democracy. The USA is not.
Posted by: Ken Shirk | August 27, 2009 at 08:37 PM
And not so incredibly, Dave Pomeroy sounds like a broken record. Sharp as a marble that Pomeroy. Needless to say my ideas about what is relevant diverge from Dave's. But Dave wants to explain that we live in a democracy. Thanks, Dave.
Dave knows little about me or my history but would like to presume he does know. Dave says the address I gave when joining 257 doesn't exist. This is factually, verifiably false. I can provide directions if anyone wants to drive over there. And who gives a crap anyway? Some of these Nashville guys (Dave, Bruce) seem obsessed with my address.
Dave apparently has nothing better to do than go after me. The more he writes the more he exposes his own mental limitations.
Posted by: Rick Blanc | August 27, 2009 at 04:14 PM
Incredibly, Rick Blanc continues to spout his pseudo political theories about the AFM and RMA involving Marxism and other irrelevant concepts while hurling wordy personal insults at anyone who questions his opinions. He consistently avoids all the basic realities of this particular dynamic, maybe because he is not actually involved on any meaningful level. The AFM is a democracy, as is our country. As the saying goes, those who don't bother to register to vote in US elections shouldn't complain about the results. Rick is not an AFM member, and was a member only sporadically in various locations over the years. He never gave Nashville a chance, and may have not even lived here at all, as the address he gave when he joined Local 257 for 60 days last year doesn't seem to exist. He has apparently nothing better to do than toss around pretentiously verbose insults to anyone who disagrees with him, while not offering any constructive solutions to solve the problems we are obviously having. Believe it or not, some of us are working within the structure to improve things for all AFM musicians. That is my goal, and I am backing up my words up with my actions. Are you, Rick?
Dave Pomeroy - President, Nashville Musicians Association, AFM Local 257
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" Thomas Jefferson
Posted by: Dave Pomeroy | August 26, 2009 at 03:56 PM
RL: "Never said you hadn't done "a lot" of recording, whatever that is; just said that your activity in the field was relevant."
You brought it up -- you and bruce -- not me. As to whether I'm "entitled" or relevant in speaking about union matters you can form your own opinions about that; I don't care.
Based on your comments you manifestly don't understand Marxism. Marxism is, among other things, a way of understanding political, economic and cultural phenomena. It is not necessarily prescriptive. And it's about process. But if you want to believe you understand it you can file that in with your other beliefs.
RL: "Do you think it increases the credibility of your argument to call me intellectually dishonest and defensive?"
I don't know if it does or not, and establishing credibility is not my primary objective. People believe in things that are incredible while disbelieving things that are credible all the time. "Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage; minds innocent and quiet take that for an hermitage." (Richard Lovelace)
But to your intellectual dishonesty, let's be honest. It doesn't matter what the criticism of the RMA is, you are going to step in and deflect. You often do not deal with (reasoned) arguments, you spin, you circumlocute, you turn the topic around, you do verbal gymnastics. This is a form of intellectual dishonesty.
Why do you do that? You are the RMA waterboy, their crony, their partisan, their "useful idiot." Maybe you share their self-serving radical beliefs -- even though you are apparently not a recording musician yourself. Maybe you're motivated by a common radicalism. Great.
I know you can't be persuaded, but you and the RMA can be defeated.
Posted by: Rick Blanc | August 09, 2009 at 07:05 PM
For your edification Robert, I've done a LOT of recording. And I paid union dues for how many years? How many times do I have to repeat myself? As often as you and bruce insist on digging it back up I suppose. Maybe you can find a new way to discredit me? The old way is getting boring.
Never said you hadn't done "a lot" of recording, whatever that is; just said that your activity in the field was relevant. So is your membership status; whether or not someone chooses to be a member of an organization should be a consideration in evaluating the criticisms of that person of the organization and those within it.
...By the way Robert you really don't seem to understand Marxism.
One of us certainly doesn't.
I am shocked -- SHOCKED -- that Robert disagrees with me and continues to run interference for the RMA. ..But that's the way you are. It's a mix of intellectual dishonesty and defensiveness which is fine, and predictable.
Once again; why all the name-calling and pejoratives? Do you think it increases the credibility of your argument to call me intellectually dishonest and defensive? I would have thought that those who read what I write, and what you write, could make up their own minds about who's being honest and "defensive."
I continue to be surprised that someone as evidently bright as you are doesn't see that name-calling is not the same as reasoned argument.
Posted by: Robert Levine | August 09, 2009 at 05:03 PM
For your edification Robert, I've done a LOT of recording. And I paid union dues for how many years? How many times do I have to repeat myself? As often as you and bruce insist on digging it back up I suppose. Maybe you can find a new way to discredit me? The old way is getting boring.
Posted by: Rick Blanc | August 09, 2009 at 03:16 PM
I am shocked -- SHOCKED -- that Robert disagrees with me and continues to run interference for the RMA. By the way Robert you really don't seem to understand Marxism. And the lawsuits didn't pass judicial muster. "Too bad" I guess. And as for my qualifications to speak: I know I'll be attacked because my opinions are unpopular -- at least on this blog. That's the only reason. If I were one of your cheerleaders nobody would question my qualifications. But that's the way you are. It's a mix of intellectual dishonesty and defensiveness which is fine, and predictable.
Posted by: Rick Blanc | August 09, 2009 at 03:09 PM
Levine Say's " Orchestra contracts started getting better only after symphony musicians took the negotiating process away from elected local officials who didn’t know anything about orchestras. Now the AFM seems to be moving from rank-and-file control of media negotiations to elected officers negotiating contracts covering workplaces they don’t understand. It didn’t work 50 years ago for orchestras, and it’s not working now for videogames."
Truer words have never been spoken. After spending four months crafting a video agreement that everyone seemed to agree with, the RMA was informed that the agreement had" disappeared into the abyss." This was said by an IEB member in front of a joint meeting with the RMA and the IEB.
Instead the IEB adapted their own agreement written by God knows who, which basically gave away the store.
ICSOM and Ropa members are lucky. They get some control of their business.
Posted by: bruce | August 09, 2009 at 01:59 PM
And once again Bruce has attempted to discredit me. I might point out that he is using the same irrelevant quasi-facts that he has repeated ad nauseum already, presumably because he has run out of fresh material. All very well and good Bruce but your little factoids have nothing to do with the substance, the topic.
Seems to me that your membership status, and whether or not you’ve been an active recording musician, are definitely relevant in terms of evaluating what you have to say about the AFM’s approach to recording musicians. How could they not be?
"The companies and employers who commercially exploit music for profit are part of a finite world." This is nothing more than warmed over Marxist zero-sum game thinking and is patently false. The marketplace is neither zero-sum nor is it static.
Nor did he say so. And I doubt that Marx would agree with your extremely flexible definition of Marxism, which seems to be anything you don’t agree with.
Marc was not talking about state ownership of the means of production. He’s not talking about state ownership, or even control, of his employers. He’s talking about what kinds of legally binding contracts the AFM should pursue with employers, and the internal process for making those decisions. That sounds very free-market oriented to me, unless of course you believe that collective bargaining has no place in a free market.
In other words, anyone anywhere can beat RMA pricing and demands.
Which is why there is no union film scoring work in the US anymore.
"As the Federation approach of weakening our contracts works its way through, all of you will suffer economically along with recording musicians." Even if one accepts the premise -- which I don't -- where is the evidence of this? It is a baseless pathetic assertion.
Why the pejoratives, Rick? It doesn’t make your argument any stronger. But I certainly see his point. Orchestra contracts started getting better only after symphony musicians took the negotiating process away from elected local officials who didn’t know anything about orchestras. Now the AFM seems to be moving from rank-and-file control of media negotiations to elected officers negotiating contracts covering workplaces they don’t understand. It didn’t work 50 years ago for orchestras, and it’s not working now for videogames.
First, he alleges the AFM is following an anti-player strategy. Obviously many, if not most musicians would take exception to that statement and reject the premise.
“Obviously”? You have poll numbers on the subject?
Then he throws out a red herring, a scare -- that the AFM will come after their money once the RMA funds dry up. This is demagoguery.
No; it’s history. The AFM has always funded itself by taxing a small minority of members without voting power. Before recording musicians, it was traveling musicians. If 1501 screws up the recording contracts and achieves the same “growth” that has taken place under 1501-promulgated videogame agreements, where do you think the next revenue source is going to be? It’s not going to be per capita dues. That doesn’t leave much else.
It's too bad none of the ROPA musicians asked Marc Sazar how much ROPA member's hard-earned work dues had gone down the drain fighting off the "non-RMA" lawsuits.
What’s “too bad” is that recording musicians were treated in such a way by the AFM that they felt the need to pay voluntary contributions to FarePlay in order to file lawsuits against their union to enforce the bylaws.
Posted by: Robert Levine | August 09, 2009 at 01:18 PM
And once again Bruce has attempted to discredit me. I might point out that he is using the same irrelevant quasi-facts that he has repeated ad nauseum already, presumably because he has run out of fresh material. All very well and good Bruce but your little factoids have nothing to do with the substance, the topic.
But people like Bruce choose to try and discredit the person rather than the ideas. It reflects on the intellectual poverty of people like Bruce.
Posted by: Rick Blanc | August 09, 2009 at 11:06 AM
Once again , Ric Blanc, who set up an address in Nashville ,joined our local then quit the Federation right after Dave Pomeroy was elected has attempted to highjack and discredit yet another post.
I truly think that he has repeated himself so many times that most don't take him seriously. Newcomers to the blog should know that he's not an AFM member and does not seem to be an active member of the recording community.
Marc Sazer, on the other hand is a very well respected, active recording violinist from Los Angeles who is an AFM member . In spite of the fact that he is frustrated with the blatant politics that threaten to destroy this Federation, he continues to try and find a solution bring the Federation back together.
His speech to ROPA puts the current situation in black and white. I repeat Black and White there is no gray here.
I've been knee deep in this mess for six years and I can say with no uncertainty that Marc tells it like it is.
The guys that do the majority of the work and pay the majority of the work dues are shut out of the process.
The RMA has bent over backwards to try and resolve this senseless war between the recording musicians and the IEB.
The other player conferences need to know the truth.
Bravo to Marc Sazer for having the courage to point out the elephant in the room.
Posted by: bruce | August 09, 2009 at 10:44 AM
One of the arguments Marc Sazar offers to his audience about why they should care about RMA gripes is, "The companies and employers who commercially exploit music for profit are part of a finite world." This is nothing more than warmed over Marxist zero-sum game thinking and is patently false. The marketplace is neither zero-sum nor is it static.
He continues, "...and their attorneys and executives are interwoven with each other." Does that mean they communicate -- from Bratislava to London to Sydney to Seattle to San Francisco to Prague? Let's assume they are all in contact; what do you suppose they are ALL saying about the RMA? That the RMA offers the benchmark against which all international production can be competitive. In other words, anyone anywhere can beat RMA pricing and demands.
Sazar continues, "As the Federation approach of weakening our contracts works its way through, all of you will suffer economically along with recording musicians." Even if one accepts the premise -- which I don't -- where is the evidence of this? It is a baseless pathetic assertion.
Sazar: "After all, as work dues from recording contracts shrink as a result of the anti-player strategy the AFM is embarked upon, where do you think future AFM Conventions will look for financial support? As relationships with recording musicians are further damaged, where will the AFM look for the next "financial package"?
First, he alleges the AFM is following an anti-player strategy. Obviously many, if not most musicians would take exception to that statement and reject the premise. That mud won't stick.
Then he throws out a red herring, a scare -- that the AFM will come after their money once the RMA funds dry up. This is demagoguery. The reason the recording business is making money for the AFM is because the recording is taking place UNDER AFM CONTRACTS. The AFM is endeavoring to bring more work, especially videogame work, under AFM contract. And unlike the RMA, the AFM is endeavoring to achieve those goals while dealing realistically with today's marketplace, not on the basis of RMA cronyism.
In today's marketplace effective AFM strategy cannot myopically limit itself to management vs. labor. International competition cannot be ignored. Sazar seems to completely fail to grasp the fact that we are in an interconnected world wherein orchestras are ready to work from anywhere -- live or using Source Connect technology. Globally recording is expanding rapidly; geographical limitations are increasingly meaningless. Meanwhile the RMA is stuck in a kind of elitist provincialism, as it fights with the American Federation.
It's too bad none of the ROPA musicians asked Marc Sazar how much ROPA member's hard-earned work dues had gone down the drain fighting off the "non-RMA" lawsuits.
It's too bad none of the ROPA musicians asked Sazar to explain the goals and intentions of Fareplay, the RMA's legal warchest.
The RMA would have you believe it speaks for all recording musicians. It doesn't. And the longer it remains intransigent the fewer musicians it will represent. If the RMA doesn't like the "politics," that doesn't mean the process is breaking down, it just means the RMA is not getting its way. The good news is that the RMA doesn't run the AFM.
Posted by: Rick Blanc | August 08, 2009 at 10:38 PM