February 26th, 2010 The Committee
FEATURED COMMENTS EDITION
Colleagues,
As you know, we sometimes have featured comments. This past week
has seen so many worthy comments that we decided to feature six
of them in one mailing.
I. FEATURED COMMENT ONE: THE MENTALITY WE’RE UP AGAINST
II. FEATURED COMMENT TWO: MR. FINCK SPEAKS
III. FEATURED COMMENT THREE: STAN LEE PRODUCTIONS
IV. FEATURED COMMENT FOUR - CALLING OUT ANOTHER MEMBER
V. FEATURED COMMENT FIVE: SEATTLE RECORDING
VI. FEATURED COMMENT SIX: CONCERNING PETE ANTHONY
VII. COMMENTS
VIII. EVENTS
===========================
I. FEATURED COMMENT ONE: THE MENTALITY WE’RE UP AGAINST
We received a comment that perfectly encapsulates the elitist
attitudes of those sympathetic to the RMA ideology.
“As is obvious to all full-time working musicians, the 50-vote cap
places an inordinate amount of power in the hands of the “hobbyist
locals”, allowing the election of officers more politically beholden
to them rather than to the minority of AFM members who actually make
their livings in the music profession. This is a perversion of
democracy. Had we a one-member-one-vote structure, the AFM would be
a far different organization than it is now.”
[HOBBYIST LOCALS?] There it is folks. Regardless of the tens of thousands
of professional musicians who make there living in orchestras throughout
the country from those “Hobbyist Locals”; Regardless of the tens of thousands
of professional musicians who make their living playing in operas and
live theater throughout the country from those “Hobbyist Locals”; Regardless
of the tens of thousands of professional musicians who use a combination
of the jobs above PLUS freelancing; you are nothing but hobbyists to
these elitists who see only themselves as “real” musicians.
It is these folks and their attitudes that will be working to take over our
Federation at the next AFM Convention. Bullies only succeed if they’re not
stood up to.
Gather your troops, work out your stratagies and be prepared to fight for the
survival of our Federation against these folks. You know they’re preparing.
You, our true AFM Backbone, have to be ready to fight for all of our rights,
all of our futures and the future of the AFM against this destructive,
divisive block of musicians.
NON-UNION YO-CATS
One final note here: It has just been confirmed to us that many of the YO-CATS,
the very ones who call everyone else hobbyists, have recently done a NON-UNION
recording session or sessions here in Los Angeles. Was this one busted? Of course
not. If we found out about it certainly the Local did. They dare to look down on
and condemn everyone else when even they are doing non-union jobs?.
That’s cajones.
THE COMMITTEE
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February 19th, 2010 The Committee
I. HEY RMA, YOUR PRESIDENT WAS WORKING NON-AFM IN LONDON, AGAIN
II. PUDDING AND PROOF
III. RMA COMPLAINS AGAIN
IV. COMMENTS
V. EVENTS
Colleagues, We usually have a pretty good idea of what we’re going to
address in each mailing, but sometimes current events seem to take
over the process. This week is such an event. There was so much
important information we received over the last few days that it
completely changed the makeup this week’s offering. We say this
just in case a few of our readers find this week’s offering a bit
heavy in certain areas.
===========================
I. HEY RMA, YOUR PRESIDENT WAS WORKING NON-AFM IN LONDON
WITHIN THE LAST FEW MONTHS
We have sources in Los Angeles and London who are telling us that
the sequel to the movie “Nanny McPhee” was recorded last month in London
for an August, 2010 release.
COMPOSER - James Newton Howard
Among the Orchestrators - CURRENT RMA PRESIDENT Pete Anthony.
We understand that he got a quite generous high three-figure BUYOUT
page rate.
We also understand that the RMA President PETE ANTHONY conducted the
sessions there as well…. IN LONDON.
Some time ago we reported that Pete Anthony, before being the RMA President,
but while he was a very high profile RMA member, was filmed recording the
score for “The Water Horse” at Abby Road Studios in London. Naturally,
our Local Officers stayed dutifully silent on the non-union conducting
work.
That’s your Recording Musicians Association president, folks. You know, the
“NO BUYOUT, NO WAY” people?
Hey RMAers and RMA Leaders,.. where is your outrage?… are you going to
stay silent or hold your president accountable? Considering your recent
hemorrhaging about NON-UNION orchestrating and copying in a recent
mailing of yours, you should be really angry, or are your “values”
conditional on WHO does the rule breaking?
TO OUR LOCAL 47 OFFICERS
What are you going to do about it President Trombetta?
What are you going to do about it Vice-President Acosta?
It happened in the last couple of months, you have a year to take action.
You’ve been coming down really hard on players you catch playing
non-union sessions and gigs trying to pay their mortgages, but not
fat cats further stuffing their wallets who can certainly afford to bypass
such jobs. (Everyone here knows that most A listers are playing non-
union sessions, including some of our board members.)
This is no different. Are you going to apply the rules equally, or give
your RMA overlords a pass?
Are you going to do your job Vince?….. John?….
If our sources are incorrect in any way, we’ll be more than happy to set
the record straight and apologize if need be, but having two sources
from two different countries, the story seems to check out.
We suspect the Local Officers will say nothing. Or if one of them has
the guts, they will file charges knowing Pete Anthony will get a free
pass from the administration’s rubber stamp trial board.
Colleagues, contact the board members and demand equal enforcement
of the rules. If they’re going to bust LOCAL 47 members for non union
work here, or anywhere else, they need to make sure it’s not SELECTIVE
enforcement.
Is it the RMA or the Bylaws that govern your actions, Local 47.
Let’s find out.
THE COMMITTEE
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February 11th, 2010 The Committee
I. FEATURED COMMENT
II. ANOTHER MONTH, TWO COMPETITIVE WORK ATTEMPTS
III. TRIPE THIS - COMMENT
IV. ASMAC HONORS JERRY SHARELL
V. COMMENTS
VI. EVENTS
===========================
I. FEATURED COMMENT
SELA is never coming back. Mark my words. They will string the
membership along with a particle of hope every now and then with
no intention of ever bringing it back. A year from now - after the
next election - our lawyer, who really runs Local 47, will find
another reason to study it further, in fact he’ll probably decide
that the contract has to be completely rewritten. After all, even he
doesn’t want to see it totally go away. The membership might notice.
Or put another way - they are working on bringing back SELA just
as hard as they are working on the referral service website. It’s beyond
being a joke. It’s been years and years and years since the referral
service has been running effectively or at all. The membership even
passed a motion that the referral service MUST be restored to its former
effectiveness. The membership should be incensed. Most of them don’t
know that they are losing jobs from the referral service because most of
them have never gotten a job from the referral service at this point.
Too much time has passed.
A referral service committee was set up (elected or appointed, I’ve forgotten)
to work with the administration, but, sad to say, it has been a failure. The
administration has played the committee and the rank & file membership
like a Stradivarius.
So what do we do about SELA? Forget about it. It’s time to stop putting time
and energy into something that the administration will never let return.
What’s next? I have two suggestions. One’s a no brainer. The other is
radical, but it’s time.
First - switch the freeelance musicians to the AFM LS-1 contract. It covers
pension but not health insurance. It’s a simple 2-page form. A band leader met
with two officials at the Local who told the leader to go ahead and use it.
But the leader got a call the next day. They had talked with Levy the lawyer
about the LS-1. The leader was told that the contract might not work in Local
47. The LS-1 is a NATIONAL contract! The leader was told they could tentatively
let him use it, but each contract had to be PRE-approved on a case by case basis!
What a joke.
They really don’t want the membership to know about this contract. Let’s
change that.
And they really don’t want the membership to use the LS-1 because no
money would come into the H&W fund from the club date freelancers. It would hurt
but not cripple the fund. The most steady income the fund has is probably
from the symphonic and pit orchestra freelancers who perform with the 50+
symphonies and theatres that have CBAs with Local 47. That’s a sizable group
of musicians. Put the club date freelancers with that, all contributing 10% of
each gig to the Health & Welfare Fund, year after year, and you get significant
amounts of money into the fund.
All that money, all those musicians, contracts, paperwork, year in year out -
LESS THAN 100 MEMBERS GET HEALTH INSURANCE FROM THE FUND.
Out of 8000 Local 47 members, less than 100 members. That is the figure that
people in the know whisper. And why do we have to listen to whispers? Because
the fund trustees, most conspicuously Local 47 President Vince Trombetta, will
not tell us how many members qualify!
This system is broken beyond repair. The studio musicians have their own
separate “Cadillac” health plan that has nothing to do with the Local 47 H&W.
Most members don’t know that. Some members grumble that their contributions
are going to pay for the fat cats’ insurance. No it isn’t. So where does the money
go? An excellent question, and good luck finding an answer. But I can tell you where
it doesn’t go. It doesn’t go back to the membership in the form of health insurance.
For all we know it vanishes. The fund trustees are obviously not responsible to the
membership.
Radical solution - Someone at a membership meeting: “I move that Local 47 make
available a pay as you go health insurance plan to the membership; and further that
Local 47 immediately cease making contributions to the Health & Welfare Fund, and
cease all business with the Fund, and terminate the positions of all Local 47 Trustees
to the Fund.”
…and whoever would make a motion like that had best have health insurance beforehand…
[EDITOR'S COMMENT: We hope you're wrong, but fear you are.]
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February 5th, 2010 The Committee
I. LETTER FROM THE SMALL LOCALS COMMITTEE
II. A RECENT QOUTE FROM THE LATEST RMA TRIPE
III. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? - TEACHING BENEFITS
IV. COMMENTS
V. EVENTS
===========================
I. LETTER FROM THE SMALL LOCALS COMMITTEE
We just received this publication from the Small Locals Committee.
They are waking up to the threat of the RMA and their ilk to our
federation and are starting to fight back, as we all should!
We’re with you 100%! Let us know how we can help.
I WENT TO THE LIBRARY FOR SLC
John Leite, SLC Chairman, AFM
“1. Small Children should be seen, not heard
2. A Chinese man walking down to the ocean with a basket on
his back was stopped by his friend, who asked, “Where are you
going with the basket?” “To the ocean to dump it out.” “What’s
in the basket?” He replied, “My Grandmother, she is old an useless.”
His friend said, “Save the Basket”"
In Paul Gunther’s article, ICSOM December 2009: “Voting rights are
held not by individual union members like you and me, but rather
by a small number of elected delegates from locals. The number of
voting delegates, along with the number of votes assigned to each,
is determined by the size of the local. Each local — no matter how
small — is allocated at least one delegate with at least one vote.”
I guess that is not fair!! Or at least to the author of the December ‘09
issue of Senza Sordino.
He continues on:
“Although structured with an eye toward fair representation, this can cause
a lopsided voting system. Every small local - no matter how few members,
and perhaps with no symphonic members at all - has a delegate with one
or more votes. Yet larger locals may have only two or three delegates casting
all their vote.
For example, the Twin Cities Musicians Union (Local 30-73, Minneapolis
and Saint Paul) with two ICSOM orchestras and one ROPA orchestra,
and nearly 1,400 members, elects only three voting delegates. Therefore
a dozen small locals, each with 50-100 members, probably few to none
of them symphonic, would aggregate four times as many voting delegates
controlling all their votes.”
Members of Symphony Orchestras are not the only “Working Musicians”
in the AFM.
The RMA has “Working Musicians”,
The TMA has “Working Musicians”,
Small Local’s have “Working Musicians”,
Freelance players are “Working Musicians”.
In fact, all AFM locals contain what are called “Working Musicians”.
That simply means that we ALL contribute to the AFM coffers. Whether
paying Work Dues or Per Capita, which by the way is the same for ALL
Regular members throughout the AFM. There must be mutual respect
amongst all AFM members for us all to survive.
All Delegates deserve to vote on all candidates, laws, resolutions or other
changes in the bylaws. When the Delegates have made their decisions and
the Convention is over, we must all abide by the voting members. If a group
or an individual wants the bylaws to change, the ONLY place to do that is at
the Convention not in the Courts, Newsletters, Emails, Letters or elsewhere.
We all deserve to be represented regardless of the size of the local.
One thing that seems to be misunderstood by many AFM members is that the
number of Local delegates and the number of Local votes are two different
numbers.
For instance, a large local can have 5 delegates and 11 votes BUT not all Delegates
necessarily will vote the same way. Paul seems to be confused on this.
A representative democracy is especially important to the small Locals because the
system insures a voice for all, and the number of votes a Local has based on its
membership is the balance to the number of delegates a Local has.
Finally, the writer picked out three of the favorable, for his purposes, statements
from the AFM Mission Statement.
* We will have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect us.
* Our collective voice and power will be realized in a democratic and progressive
union.
* We must commit to actively participating in the democratic institutions of our
union.
Space prohibits the insertion of ALL of Article 2 Sec. 1 - Mission Statement
but these three do NOT reflect the total meaning of the AFM Mission Statement.
Please take the time and read the entire Mission Statement in the AFM Bylaws (Pg.2).
to understand the full meaning. ALL musicians are equal regardless
of their local’s size.
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