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Tom Marcello – XRIJF 2012Tags: AFM
American Orchestras: Yes, it's a crisis
“I am convinced that if the rate of change within an organization is less than the rate of change outside, the end is near.” – Jack Welch In the last twelve months the Honolulu, Syracuse, and New Mexico Symphonies have … Continue reading →
The Musician's Union: A Contrarian Point of View–Sort of
Here’s a blog posted on March 15, 2011 by Columbus Symphony bassoonist, Betsy Sturdevant on her blog. In it she makes some interesting observations about unions in general, and the Musician’s Union in particular. Good food for thought. What do you think? Musician labor unions: the pros and the cons Labor unions formed in the
Read More →AFM wins in court; won't matter much
The AFM (or at least its lawyers) had a good win in labor law land the other day: The AFM has won a significant victory affecting orchestra media negotiations. The AFM has consistently taken the position that orchestra managements who are signatory to AFM media agreements (such as the Symphony, Opera or Ballet Audio Visual
Read More →Wassup in Detroit?
The Detroit Symphony went on strike a little over four weeks ago, although negotiations broke down several weeks before that. That puts the strike clock at around 11:45PM, by normal standards – negotiations seem to begin to get serious, during an orchestra strike, after about six weeks. Why is that? Why not sooner? I think
Read More →Musician Performance Rights–Pending Legislation to Benefit Musicians
Yesterday I received another email from AFM President Lee. Unlike the video the previous day, which had a “please join the union message,” this one was all business. It tells of the legislation before Congress right now that would benefit musician’s works that are played on terrestrial radio. Here’s part of the email. One of
Read More →Reinforcing The Image of the AFM– Old, Dated and Out of Touch
Today I received an email from Thomas F. Lee the President of the American Federation of Musicians. I suppose that it went to all AFM members for whom they have email addresses. It begins: Dear Member RICKER: I am pleased to announce that the Federation is developing a series of videos to educate musicians and
Read More →Seattle and the Union
Negotiations in Seattle seemed to have reached a rolling boil, judging by this article. Equally interesting is a recent post by Zachary Carstensen, a Seattle arts reporter, on the situation: However, just before the start of the 2009-2010 season, my own opinion of the orchestra’s health began to shift. The SSO had only just begun
Read More →An important election you didn't know about
Most orchestra musicians don’t pay much attention to union politics. That’s OK: most politics in the AFM is not worth paying much attention to. But there was an election the other day that’s worth noting. The two largest locals in the AFM are Local 47 (Los Angeles) and Local 802 (New York). Both are dominated
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