Musician's Union

[tyler_johnson]

I just moved here to San Francisco, thinking of joining the musician's union, i've heard mixed things about it.  Does anyone have expirience with it that would care to share?

[moi_not_toi]

I've heard that you can't play with someone in it unless your in it too.
I've also heard that by not joining it, you run the risk of not being paid as much, even though most of the profit from the union goes to the union itself.

But don't take my word for it.

[tyler_johnson]

That's pretty much what i've heard.  And i've also heard that the pay is pretty well, but like you said, you can only play with union members, and a lot of the funds goes to the union.

Any idea how many gigs i'd be looking at here?

[arensky]

I was in the AFM for about five years, membership was nessacary to do certain lucrative gigs like playing in professional musical theatre pit orchestras, touring jazz big bands and playing on TV commercial soundtracks.

Any music work that involves multimedia, such as film,theatre and dance generally requires union membership. These events happen through a collaboration of the various performing arts unions, the AFM (American Federation of Musicians) EQUITY (the stage actors union) AFTRA (American Federation of Television and Radio Actors) and SAG (Screen Actors Guild). These unions are affiliates of the Teamster's Union, and to present or produce any "big time" project their cooperation is mandatory. Add into the mix the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), the industry association who forced the original Napster out of business and are wanting to regulate exchange of music on the Internet, for obvious reasons) and you have quite a complex bureaucratic machine managing classical music performance and recording. The AFM's influence in the music business has declined over the past 30 years or so, for a variety or reasons, one being the high price of hiring union musicians, which theatre producers and presenters began to find excessive, and they began to find ways around the union.

At any rate the union sets MINIMUM pay rates for different gigs, such as orchestral, small group and solo gigs (the last group usually in hotels or at conventions, or at any location where the workforce is part of the Teamster's Union) . Of course producers and employers can and will pay more  to get the best musicians, although in recent yeras Broadway producers have been circumventing union rules hire fewer musicians. Paying a 30-40 piece orchestra 8-10 times a week is expensive, and we have seen the rise of the synthsizer and decreasing numbers of players in pit orchestras as a result. There was a musician's strike on Broadway about 5 or 6 years ago. The other stage unions struck (sp?/usage?) in support of the musicians; I'm not sure exactly how it turned out, I believe a compromise was reached that favored the producers. The actors' and stagehands' enthusiasm for supporting the musicians cooled considerably after several dark nights on Broadway. After all why should they lose their jobs when the musicians can be replaced by machines? Not supporting the actor and stagehands position, just pointing out a cold practical reality.

In terms of being a solo pianist in hotels and restaurants, to the best of my knowledge union membership is not nessacary at this point in time, as long as you are BEING PAID THE UNION MINIMUM WAGE for that sort of gig. They may try to sign you up, but they can't keep you from working. Don't know the SF music scene, they still might have that power there. But a hotelier who values you as an assest to his/her establishment will usually pay more than union scale to keep you there. Union membership is most useful to orchestral/ensemble players in general. 

In the USA the expense of hiring union musicians has hurt more than helped the cause of professional live music. In Europe and the old USSR the arts were funded by the state for decades, and when the funding started to disappear in the 90's so did many arts venues and programs, similar to what's happened in the USA, although in the USA the primary funding was private or corporate.

I still have my union pension, but cannot control the interest rate on it, which is rather low... 

[ada]

A musician's union sounds like a great idea. Where I'm from I'm pretty sure musicians are in the media arts and entertainment alliance which puts them in the same basket as journalists, clowns and strippers