This coversation started in another thread so I thought it would be fun to reminisce about our Musician Union experiences. My whole band joined when we were all 16/17. What a big deal ,we're in the Musicians union ! Paid our dues even though we were hardly making any money. Heard tjhe stories of them checking bands at gigs and causing trouble so we stayed on. Kept my membersihip and years later I'm playing in another band and we get stiffed with a bad check. Call the Union Sec. (who BTW was good friends with my father) and his answer " You have to go to the local where it happened". Paid my dues a bunch of years and they never did a thing for us and we also never got any work from them.
So again a few years later I'm a teacher and we have a school Assembly. It was a few of these old Union Guys. Accordion ( the guy who wouldn't help us ) President of the Union who was a drummer just banging a tambourine and one or two other guys. Played a bunch of old time stuff, I do remember Hello Dolly, and the kids hated it. I just laughed because they were getting paid out of the members dues money.

I mentioned my feelings toward them under the other thread, but I have to tell this story.
When I first moved to this area I had a one-year contract with a club owner. Business was great and everybody liked me. He told me I had to join the union, and I had dropped my membership in Oklahoma, so I rejoined. I had been living in Arkansas and they didn't know a Union from an outhouse.
My contract called for an increase after three months. At the end of three months the owner told me he was going to replace me. I asked him why, and he said there was a blind guy and his wife he wanted to hire and he could get them both for less than he would have to start paying me, and that he thought people would feel sorry for the blind guy.
I told him we had a contract, and he said, well then take it to the Union. I called them the next day and they told me the owner had filed a grievance saying I was habitually late for work, stayed drunk and used drugs.
I told them my next call was to my attorney unless I got a written apology from him before the day was over. I told them to please advise the owner that his SON was in charge of all the drugs in that area and that the newspaper would have proof of that by the end of the week.
I did get the written apology and admission that the whole thing was made up. Anyway a friend told me that a band needed an organ player for that weekend--a one night thing and I agreed to do it, and did, and made $50.
Next came a hearing before the Union board. The owner went in first and I wasn't allowed to hear what he told them. I could hear them laughing through the door though. Then I was called in and they told me they had ruled in my favor and that I would be paid for the length of time I was off work, which was three days, since I took that job for one night!!!
I asked what about the remaining nine months on my contract and they said they would not be able to enforce that. See the "good old boy" thing at work? It was back at the end of the infamous "Bossier Strip" where there was virtually no laws and no rules except those that could be physically enforced. And they had enforcers back then.
Well I should have quit the Union right then, but they still had a little power. It didn't take me too long to find another sit-down job, and I paid work dues for the next year. Being a one-man band, I had to pay as "band leader", which was a little more.
After that job ended, I was offered another one at a club where the owner played and sang and had a guy backing him on various instruments. They wanted me to make it a three-man deal.
Well the owner was in the Union, but the other guy was not. The union told me I could not play with the other guy because he wasn't a member. I asked them what about the owner? He was playing with him. They said there was an exception and that as club owner he could hire non-union players if he wanted. In other words, he could play with the guy, or he could play with me, but I couldn't play with the other guy!!
O.K. It was time to tell them exactly where to stick their Union, "enforcers" and all.
They told me I would never work in the area again. That was 35 years ago and I've never been without a job more than a week or so.
Now I admit the guys that ran the union then are now dead and gone. I know the new President well and we get along fine, but I STILL AIN'T JOINING NO STINKIN' UNION!

I've had nothing but bad experiences, and that's why I WILL never be part of any union again. My first brush was with the UAW, and that was my last. The jobs I lost to union players wee very few, and in the long run - I know I made the right decision. Maybe back in Norma Ray's day they were a necessity, but they have morphed into a corrupt, mismanaged organization that I want no part of. Do you think the "union" is helping anyone get by thru Covid days? Don't think so. Don't really know., Don't care. Rant over.

https://www.afm.org/covid-19/#get

https://aflcio.org/covid-19

Jerryghr

Good info Jerry. Glad they're active helping artists.
As a teacher I "HAD" to belong to the Union and it was all we had to protect us lowly teachers. The Nepotism and Cronyism in the school system were just as bad as the Political system. They only sold us out on one contract in my 35 years ! But the Teachers Union was more needed than not.
Music is corrupt rip off business all the way to the top so the AFM can be helpful. But not on my (our) level.
All said Unions throughout history are a two edged sword.

+1

I don't have too much "good" to say about the unions either. First got involved in my late teens when I was told "join or you will not get a paying gig anywhere within 200 miles of this town". So I joined. Then I learned how it worked.... union "good old boys" got paid from our dues to play their home organs once or twice a week in their backyards. And every year, the same 3 "leaders" put their cars and families on the autotrain for an all expenses paid trip for a week in FL. Oh the good old days... hmmmm.

When I first started to play in bands, I joined the Trenton, NJ Musician's Union, and also because I worked in sales and teaching at an established Hammond dealer.(politics) It was useless ..I could see it as a benefit for horn players or string players, but not for a keyboard player (work was plentiful and you did not have to be union).

The best story I have to tell...In my early construction business, I sub contracted from a local contractor (friend)..He was a no nonsense Italian fella

Frank was doing a hot roof in Philly, and I was doing some aluminum work for him..
A union guy climbed up a 40 foot ladder to confront Frank. This guy was a typical enforcer.. When the guy neared close to the top of the ladder, Frank pushed the ladder out with the guy in panic. He gave him the choice to climb down the ladder and don't come back, or he was going to dump his butt

The irony of the story, 20 years later, Frank fell from a ladder, and it led to his death..

Bill's statement above sums up the whole musician/union situation PERFECTLY. The union will serve the members of the Philadelphia orchestra as well as the members of The Tonight Show's band but for the average weekend warrior or even the full-time restaurant/bar/hotel lobby player, it is nothing more than a (barely legal) tax authority. During my playing time in the Philly area, the union rep was the closest thing I ever knew to a real-life mobster. And yes, there are some 'good' unions (Teachers union, Nurses union, etc.) so just as Bill said, it can be a two-edged sword.

chas

Well, once again, I have to say my experiences have been pretty positive overall.
First let me say that working as a musician in Staten Island NY was probably not the same as working in some other places ... We were pretty isolated - the bridge from Brooklyn to SI had not been built yet - and access to SI was through 3 bridges to New Jersey and the SI and Brooklyn ferries ...
We had our own union delegate - who happened to know my father pretty well ... As a band we never gave him any trouble - except for a couple of occasions when we didn't have the right minimum number of musicians on the gig, and he really liked our band ... he even hired us for his daughter's wedding ... He also would hire us to open for an annual festival he helped run, and on occasion gave us a union paid gig ... He used to run concerts in the park during the summer and had a sound truck fully wired with mixers, mics, amps, and speaker systems, which he let us use a few times that we had big outdoor gigs ...
One year we were hired by a catering hall for a NYE gig ... we were the 'second' band and so we did not have to have the minimum number of guys for the room as long as the 'first' band did ... we played the gig and at the end of the four hours the owner of the hall sent the other band home and told us to continue playing ... we explained that we didn't have the right minimum, and the owner says "don't worry, everything's legit" , so we played for another 2 hours ... next day I get a call at 8AM, from the delegate asking "Tony, what happened last night?" ... I told him, and he said he would get back to me ... I never heard anything else ... I guess the owner was higher up the mob chain than the delegate ...
I believe it was the mid to late 70's when a band leader named Bob Chevy - who was the 'house band' for many NY catering halls, brought a suit against the union regarding the minimum number of musicians in a room ... he won the case and the court also said the union could not prevent non-union musicians from working ... that started the loss of union power relative to those of us who played primarily 'one-nighters' ...

The poster is from the festival circa 1978

My experiences with unions were usually not music related, though they told me that I would have more jobs if I joined the union. I declined and had all the jobs I could handle.

Once, while trying to unload a demo booth in New York's Jacob Javits Center, when I backed up my van to the loading dock and began to unload, a burly guy came up to me and said that no one but a union loader could place the gear on the loading dock and it would cost me $50 bucks to have him do it. I shelled out the money, he gave me a receipt and allowed me to wheel the cartload of gear into the center and then had to pay another $50 to have the booth set up. I looked around for an electrical outlet, to run the equipment, and the closest one was about 100 feet away. Though I had an extension cord long enough to reach it, I was told that only a union electrician was allowed to plug it in and the fee was, you guessed it, another $50. Then, when I went back to park the van, well, that was $50 a day and no guarantees that you would even see it again - no security on the parking lot. I didn't care, it was a rental van that the company rented just for this job. I took the Amtrak back to Baltimore that night and was glad to be out of NYC, and away from the damned unions.

My dad was a Teamster Union member for more than 40 years, paid a lot in dues, and they only helped him when a trucking company denied him employment due to his age, which at the time was 60. He had lost his previous truck driving job after 35 years when the company moved to another state. A union leader went to the place that denied him employment and told the company that if they didn't hire him that day, they would have a picket line around the entire building by tomorrow morning. My dad was hired that night, and worked there for the next 10 years as a yard jockey. For those that don't know what a yard jockey is, it is the person that backs the big rig trailers to the loading dock of a warehouse, often just 6 inches apart. There are very few drivers that can actually do this.

All the best,

Gary

Tony,
All my dealing with the local have been positive also. I met many great musicians and entertainers during my association with the union.

As a keyboard player I had plenty of jobs from the local musicians. If you needed a musician you just looked in the local's directory which was listed by intrument and phone number. Had I not made these contacts my musical career would have ended 50 years ago.

I was paid well. got cartage and mileage for the gigs thanks to local.

I made many lifelong friends that I still keep in contact with.

Some of the naysayers probably never went to a meeting, made contacts and or even knew where the local office was. You're not going to get gigs if people don't know you.

Every business has it's people with underhanded ways, but don't paint every local with the same brush.

My 2 cents

Jerryghr

I'm only talking about the local in Shreveport. It was not good for me. If you were a symphony musician or a buddy of the "board", it was different. I was new in town and really not welcome.
I went to every meeting while I was a member and knew many of the members. The president was a trumpet player with the symphony, and he thought I was putting other members out of work because I worked as a single.
Shouldn't quit a year sooner.

I was a delegate to the AF of M convention in Shreveport late 70's early 80's. If I would have known you then I could have put in a good word for you.😁

Jerryghr

Thanks. I got here in 1978 and was a member for about a year. They were always nice and friendly and smiley, but not there when I needed them, and they never found any work for me. I can even remember them telling me they were not a booking agency. But they sure got jobs for their buddies!

. I guess the owner was higher up the mob chain than the delegate

Love it ! Statan Island, 70's it all fits. Wonder if its changed much?
Now its "Do you have Liability Insurance like out House bands do "??

Gary
Good story. I had the same thing in AC. A phone call saying I had to have a Union guy bring my equipment into the Casino. I explained I had done it myself numerous times before so help is not needed. Later found out my employer, NJ Relators Assoc. had paid it for years without meknowing PLUS a fee for electricity. Gotta love robbery without a gun.

My last experience with a Union is when I played a night with the Louisiana Hayride Band at the famed Municipal Auditorium. It wasn't the musicians union though. When I pulled up and started unloading a guy came up and said "I have to take that in for you". I said fine. Then when he got it inside I started to plug it in and another guy said "I have to plug it in for you." I said fine. No charge that I know of. At the end of the night, they were all gone--had to unplug that baby and carry it out myself.
It was for the Teen-age Miss American pageant so I'm sure SOMEBODY paid.

Meetings, directory ??? We were never told about those things. We were young and stupid and it could of been a positive experience but I think the small community of in the know boys wanted to keep it close to the vest.
A friend of mine who played drums with me from time to time did get calls to work at the Garden State Arts Center in NJ for shows that came in. He was a Percussionist and could read so he was in demand. He told me he couldn't commit to me full time because once you said no to the agent you were on the bottom of the list.

Every year I had to go to the union president's office to get my card renewed when I had an out of town job. I had sent the check in months prior. Out of town, you had to have a card for big events (National Hardware Show, etc.).

One year,I wrote all board members that if I didn't get a card within 10 days of sending in my check, I would NEVER be a member again. I joined the Nashville union that day. The board members were too busy fighting over the "green sheet" jobs...jobs paid for with dues; usually going to the board members; probably the only jobs they ever played.

I went to the National Hardware Show that year and got stopped during my first tune at the McCormick center Lakeshore Suite. A union bartender turned me in. Turns out I needed to pay a fee and get a "Visiting artist" certification.

Back at home, a little jerk named Ed shows up and tells me that if I don't join up and have my two side players join, the hotel will "never get a damn loaf of bread or anything else delivered by a Teamster".

T threw the little jerk off the steps of the hotel, then suede the local for illegal practices. Cost $2500.00....best money I ever spent.


Russ (I always make many times the minimum anyway) Lay