(A fascinating look "backstage" at the International Musician)

About Error Messages

For some undoubtedly completely sensible reason, when a visitor attempts to reach a unionmuse page using an incorrect page name or location (the part after "unionmuse.com"), instead of getting a proper error message, like the old '404, not found', the viewer’s computer is hijacked to a completely unrelated page on somebody else’s web site. And not always to the SAME somebody else’s website. So far in our experiments none of these sites has turned out to be "not nice." But since anything that CAN happen probably will happen, understand that should you reach "Lucy Goosey's Lair" or "Sleazy Adventures of a Door to Door International Representative" while trying to get to us, UnionMuse is NOT responsible for what you see there, though we probably could have made a nice piece of change on such referrals.

What to expect in future pages...

Articles
On Topics Such As These

Editorials and News
On and off topic;
nice and not nice.

GuestMuse
Commentary by visiting ladies and gentlemen, and others.

Your Rights
(as a union member)

Links of all Sorts

Illegal Advice Column
We are not attorneys, so we can't give the other kind. It could be useful anyway.

Who Said '...'?
A game the whole family can play

Editor: Lou Barranti
Typing by Miss Blogstein

Updated Contact Information

(February 2005)

On account of all the spam, we have removed the e-mail links and replaced them with spelled out e-mail addresses. No doubt you've seen this sort of thing on other sites before: just replace the red "at" with the symbol "@" (no quotation marks, of course) and the red "dot" with a "." - no spaces, please, - and your missive should be on its way to our new editorial offices.

Contact UnionMuse:

editor at unionmuse dot com

Alternate UnionMuse e-mail address:

unionmuse at earthlink dot net

All content ©2003, UnionMuse

Return to UnionMuse "Home" Page

Editor's Note: Just after the above was posted, a friend called on his way to work to give me some news; we also talked about some reform ideas. One of my (I thought) better plans would involve recruiting about a hundred other musicians for the activity we discussed. Such a plan, my friend said, must fail because first one had to find 100 musicians who would be willing to help. There are too many of them, he said, who "would step over their grandmother on fire to play a $40 gig."

(REVISED)

(December 2002 Issue of the International Musician, Page 9)

What other issues did they consider before settling on diversity?

It Could Have Been Worse

This Is NOT Umstattd Hall, Canton, Ohio
(Home of the Canton Symphony Orchestra)

CORRECTION*****CORRECTION

A recent issue of UnionMuse carried the following photograph with the caption, "Former AFM Executive Officer and President of Local 136, Tom Bailey, is led from the courtroom following his sentencing hearing." Alas, our information was incorrect, as the original New York Times caption (accompanying this printing of the photo) shows. UnionMuse regrets the error.

January 14, 2003

The UnionMuse Contest

"Who Said...?"

Who said, "I don't need another cockamamie committee telling me what to do"?

(The following persons are ineligible to enter: Former AFM President Steve Young, his immediate family and friends or anyone who heard Steve Young make that statement at the 1998 Unity Conference.)

Second prize, of course, is two weeks in Philadelphia.

In the event of a tie, no prizes at all will be awarded.

December 25, 2002

The AFM and the Automaton

(Previously titled: 'New Horizons in Information Technology')

Readers of the American Federation of Musicians' Official Journal, the International Musician, are aware that the AFM has leased a device known as the Popyk, which it has been using for several years to produce a regular column called "Focus."

Programmed with algorithms, corny business cliches, a predictable vocabulary and automated scripts that incorporate motivational browbeating techniques, the Popyk has done an impressive job of making the monthly deadline, mainly by recycling material from old articles written for other publications or even some written relatively recently for the International Musician.

In the latter recycling category are the two articles dealing with competing for business with Disk Jockeys. The first appeared in January of 2001, the second in January, 2002. They are in essence the same article, not quite word for word, but nearly so. Insiders say the Popyk will have to be more carefully programmed in the future so that the similarities between pieces it "writes" are more subtly hidden. They note, however, that the AFM does save a considerable amount of money, not having to pay a living writer twice for the same work.

In the former category is an article from February 2002's "Focus" column, 'Creating an Endless Stream of Bookings,' which bears an uncanny resemblance to a piece the Popyk generated for the May 2001 edition of Kitchen and Bath Design News [the latter article can be viewed HERE.].

We will bring you portions of the above articles in a side by side analysis in another installment.

(UnionMuse hopes to schedule an interview with the inventor of the Popyk in the near future.)

December 25, 2002

Bailey Binked

On September 11, 2002, a Federal jury convicted Tom Bailey, former AFM Executive Officer and ex-president of Local 136 (Charleston, West Virginia) on two criminal counts: embezzling union funds and filing false Labor Department reports. Bailey and his wife Deborah, who, as office manager, operated the union on a day to day basis, were indicted on those charges in December of last year. Mrs. Bailey pled guilty to the charges five days earlier.

The Baileys were sentenced on December 9:

(From the Charleston Gazette December 10, 2002)

Charleston couple sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court must pay back more than $15,000 they took from the city's local musicians union.

Tom Bailey, the union's former president, also received a 15-month prison sentence from Judge Charles H. Haden II, though attorneys asked that he spend that time in a federal halfway house, court officials said.

Tom Bailey was fined an additional $4,000 for his role in the theft.

Deborah Bailey...pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges after she admitted taking cash from union funds for her personal use.

Deborah Bailey was placed on probation for five years, but was not fined.As president of American Federation of Musicians Local 136, [Tom Bailey] said that he did not audit his wife's work and did not know the money was missing.

A cute line, also from the Charleston Gazette, by way of Union Corruption Update, December 23, 2002 -- Vol. 5, Issue 2 [our emphasis]:

Mr. Bailey must also spend 15 mos. in prison, and pay a $4,000 fine for the theft he attempted to blame entirely on his wife, the union's former office manager.

Nice guy.

Here, for sake of authenticating these libelous statements, are entries from the United States Department of Labor's web site:

On September 11, 2002, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Thomas C. Bailey, former president and business manager of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 136, was found guilty by a federal jury of both counts in a two count indictment of embezzling $15,601.80 of union funds and filing a false annual financial report, following an investigation by the OLMS Pittsburgh District Office.

On September 6, 2002, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Deborah S. Bailey, former office manager of the American Federation of Musicians Local 136, pled guilty to embezzling $15,601.80 in union funds, following an investigation by the OLMS Pittsburgh District Office.

On December 9, 2002, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Thomas C. Bailey, former president and business manager of American Federation of Musicians Local 136, was sentenced to 15-months imprisonment for embezzlement and 12-months imprisonment for falsifying the union's annual financial report (the sentences to run concurrently) and three-years supervised release for embezzlement to run concurrently with one-year supervised release for falsifying the union's annual financial report. Thomas Bailey was ordered to pay full restitution of $15,601.80 (jointly with Deborah S. Bailey), a $4,000 fine, and a $125 special assessment. Bailey was found guilty by a jury on September 11, 2002, following an investigation by the OLMS Pittsburgh District Office.

On December 9, 2002, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Deborah S. Bailey, former office manager of American Federation of Musicians Local 136, was sentenced to five-years probation, ordered to pay a special assessment of $100, and ordered to pay full restitution in the amount of $15,601.80 (jointly with former Local 136 President and Business Manager Thomas C. Bailey). Deborah Bailey pled guilty to embezzlement on September 6, 2002, following an investigation by the OLMS Pittsburgh District Office.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/olms/enforc_actions.htm

Bailey was not only President and work dues shake-down artist for the local, but also served on the AFM's International Executive Board for a number of years until the 2001 Convention. As such he had much input into how the AFM is run and sat in judgment of all members charged with bylaw violations.

(As the alert reader will note, there are a few more instances of malfeasance by other musicians union officers to be found on the above linked Labor Department page.)

'Cleveland Pops Records Under Contract' (November IM headline)
No kidding. Isn't that what "union" orchestras do? It almost didn't happen, though. And that would have been largely the fault of the Local, not the management. Contrary to statements in the IM's absurdly self-congratulatory article, the musicians who played the gig were completely aware that the session had been set up as an under scale dark date. They only found out when they got to the "studio" that the recording would be legitimate. And that happy outcome was achieved through no fault of the "alert" Local 4 President. (We will provide more detail when we parse the International Musician article in the very near future.)

In Palm Beach County, Musicians' Votes Don't Count Either
Palm Beach Opera negotiates mid-term changes to contract. Union submits changes to members for ratification only after campaign by concerned orchestra member (abetted by UnionMuse Illegal Department). Confronted with the improperness of their failure to follow proper procedure, Local's President and Orchestra Committee insist that side letters to Collective Bargaining Agreements are a "grey area" as far as the AFM's bylaws on ratification are concerned. Claim that the AFM and Mr. Leibowitz told them so (unlikely). Following their logic, the terms of an entire CBA could be overturned by a secretly negotiated side letter. And IF side letters constitute a "grey area," why would the union not err on the side of caution and have the vote? In the end, however, they did have a ratification meeting. Unfortunately it was pointless. Local 655 President Peter Graves and PBO Management had already signed the side letter---over a month in advance of the vote.

and this just in, combining the best features of the last two entries...

Youngstown Symphony Records First CD
Local President was asked for copy of recording agreement day after session. He didn't have one. Sent all copies to the YSO. Asked whether the Union signed it, he said 'not yet.' Orchestra Committee ignorant of all contract details. No vote to approve recording. Funny business over breaks and length of session. Money to be less than promised. Same Local Pres once told a theater management they did not have to bother signing the contract that had recently been negotiated with the union. How do you spell Failure to Represent? (More heartwarming stories like this to come.)

December 10, 2002

UPDATE

It's even worse than that

Local 86-242 President Del Sinchak did not even use the appropriate contract form. Sinchak claims to have called "New York" and reports that he got the old AFM runaround, then left messages and received no return call. He says he then called Local 1 (Gene Frey) and Local 4 for advice and received (from Local 4 Secretary-Treasurer, Leonard DiCosimo) a copy of the OTHER Limited Pressing Agreement, the one for NON-symphonic work. Nor did he use that ENTIRE contract, which, at very least, would have offered the musicians more protection than they ultimately received.

The President discarded those paragraphs that he thought would not apply to the situation, and compiled a one page, seven point document, which he then presented to management. Contrary to the President's December 9 assertion, see above report, that he had not yet signed the contract, his signature is dated November 15 (same as that of the Executive Director), but there is no way of knowing whether he signed it after the recording and simply ante-dated it.

Click here for the entire text of the signed agreement. Anyone familiar with the Limited Pressing Agreements will notice some serious omissions. For example, there is no provision that requires the employer to account for sales of the CD every six months. In fact, there is no provision requiring ANY accounting to the union. Although there is an item (#6) that specifies a pension contribution percentage, there is nothing that binds the employer to the Trust Indenture/AFM and Employers Pension Fund; nor does the agreement even specify to which pension fund the employer is contributing.

December 10, 2002

UPDATE to the UPDATE

It gets even weirder:

According to a Youngstown Symphony musician who early last week inquired about the matter, Deborah Newmark, AFM's Director of Symphonic Electronic Media, said that there is no plan to do anything to remedy the Local President's screw up. She knew he had used the wrong contract, but defended him. She told the musician that President Sinchak is inexperienced, and that he made an honest mistake. She also reported that he did not speak to the New York office in advance concerning the recording. The YSO musician notes that President Sinchak has at least twenty years of inexperience behind him.

(week of December 16, 2002)

Ex-DJ Champion Popyk Gets Religion (and all the AFM's Publishing Business)
Bob, I'll sell you my copy of your Mobile DJ book for $5,000. For another $10,000 I won't quote the opening couple of paragraphs in these pages.

MPTF
Does your Local Officer know that the "P" doesn't stand for Patronage?

The AFM's Baby, the (Live) Performing Arts Labor Relations Amendments
It's not even close to being the law; but it might not even be a good idea.

Carry On Gaggage
B.S. and alarmism over airline/FAA "policies" and legislation (The AFM succeeds in getting a near totally meaningless provision added to the airline bill.)

When is a "local" broadcast anything but local?
You know: those public radio broadcasts of your orchestra's regular concerts...the free tapings you gave away years ago on the condition that they be kept local? The ones that were only intended to be played one time? The ones you imagined might be great audience building tools? Dream on.

page revised April 20, 2003