Yesterday’s post about the American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund (AFM-EPF) $1.75 million pension obligation settlement with the Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) generated some intriguing feedback. In particular, one comment stands out in that it brings up some relevant issues regarding how all of this may impact other orchestras that are part of [...]
Tag Archives | American Federation of Musicians

Debt Is Only The Beginning
The 4/25/2012 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article by Peter Dobrin that reports the dispute between the Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) and the American Federation of Musicians and Employers’ Pension Fund (AFM-EPF) has officially come to a close. For those unaware, the AFM-EPF had been screaming bloody murder that the POA owed as much as [...]

The Ridge Address: A Warning-Response Opportunity
Although I plan to post my observations about the entire 2012 American Orchestra Summit later this week, I wanted to focus on what was perhaps the most engaging component of the entire event: a keynote address from International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM) chair Bruce Ridge and the subsequent rebuttal session with League [...]

Louisville Musicians Reject Arbitration Then Miss An Opportunity
On Thursday, 2/16/2012 the Louisville Orchestra (LO) Musicians formally rejected an offer from management to enter binding arbitration. This comes as no real surprise in that the offer had a number of provisos tailored to ensure that any decision would conform to financial and operational parameters contained in their previous proposals, all of which have [...]

Call To Action: Stop SOPA
For the last several weeks, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has become a hot topic of debate within the House Judiciary Committee. In a nutshell, SOPA is a proposed law lobbied for and supported by a large conglomerate of media organizations and sponsored by Representative Lamar Smith (R TX). On one hand, the law [...]

The Domino Theory, Orchestra Pension Style
The 12/1/2011 edition of the New York Times published an article by Dan Wakin and Mary Williams Walsh that examined the impact of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s (POA) withdrawal from the American Federation of Musicians and Employers Pension Fund (AFM-EPF). In case you’re coming into the situation without much knowledge, here are the highlights you need [...]

Just In Case You Thought They Were Bluffing
(UPDATE 3:18pm CT – agreement has been ratified) Details from the proposed, and confidential, master agreement between the Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) and their musicians are starting to leak to the surface. One of the items with the greatest impact for fallout is whether or not the POA remains in the American Federation of Musicians [...]

Harassment? Really?
It was easy to miss and if you did, you should take a moment to check out the 10/4/2011 blog post from Peter Dobrin which reports on the ongoing court battle between the Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) and the American Federation of Musicians’ (AFM) national pension fund. If you haven’t been following that dispute, here’s [...]







