Last Month at the Local

Thank you to all who have taken our membership survey. It seems many of you are concerned about the same things...job security, fair pay, getting paid on time, finding work, good working conditions, and so on.

You also made some great suggestions for things we could improve: presence in Miami-Dade, attention to club date musicians and the competition from DJs, educating members about the AFM, recruiting students, solidarity among musicians, and more. If you would like to help us follow through on these concerns, please consider serving on a committee. We need members to help us more thoroughly discuss these concerns and help us brainstorm solutions. Serving on a committee does not have to be a huge commitment...many committee activities can be done by email, and any time and input you can give will be helpful to the Local. If you are interested in serving on a committee, please let us know at office[at]afm655[dot]org. We look forward to hearing from you!

If you played for the Il Volo tour in April, or have performed for any of the other major tours that have come to town (Celtic Thunder, Harry Potter, Legend of Zelda, etc) you should get in touch with us. All of these tours generally provide more than sufficient funding to pay musicians union scale, including pension benefits, but often a contractor will try to increase their commission rate by paying musicians less. In the case of Il Volo, a contract was filed, but many of the musicians did not receive a pension contribution. The Pension Fund collections department is currently trying to recover the unpaid pension, and has informed us that they will give pension credit to all that performed for Il Volo in April, even if they were not originally listed on the report form. If you played, please let us know, because there may be pension money waiting for you! And if you have played for any of the other major engagements that came to town, or are scheduled to play for any in the near future, please contact us to make sure that you are being paid what you are owed. The shows are paying good money to field an orchestra, and that money should go to the musicians, and not to pad the contractor's fee.

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