By | 4 min
John F Smith - General Secretary, Musicians’ Union writes for Unions 21 on the history of his union and how other unions can learn from their work with a fragmented, peripatetic workforce
The MU Executive Committee has decided to subscribe to Unions 21, a decision that I am delighted with . I am looking forward to getting involved in the activities of Unions 21 and my union playing a full part. And I believe that we bring with us some unique skills and experience.
The present day MU is the result of a merger between two organisations both formed in 1893 – The Amalgamated Musicians’ Union based in Manchester and the London Orchestral Association. The merger took place in 1921. The AMU had a rather romantic, cloak and dagger beginning. After a series of pay cuts and changes to conditions (e.g. no pay for rehearsals, only for performances) an anonymous circular was sent to the theatre and music hall bands in Manchester. It began – “We need a Union”, and went on to give three reasons why musicians needed a union – to protect us from unscrupulous employers was the first and a fairly obvious one, the second was to protect us from amateurs and military musicians (army bandsmen were on full-time MOD contracts but a number of military musicians were playing part-time in pit bands and undercutting the regular players), the third reason still resonates today – “to protect us from ourselves”.
The Union grew quickly and continually evolved from just taking care of orchestral and theatre musicians to looking after dance bands, jazz, folk, broadcasting, recording and eventually rock and pop and other contemporary genres. The history of the MU is the history of music related performance in the UK and a major part of this has been coming to terms with new technologies; we were there at the demise of the silent film industry which cost thousands of musicians their livelihoods and more than halved the membership of the MU. As this door closed, the BBC ‘door’ opened as it started to broadcast music to mass audiences. And here we are today coping with internet piracy and Peer-to-Peer file-sharing, a modern threat to our members’ earning capacity.
Throughout our history we have always had to deal with a fragmented, peripatetic workforce so the concept of a portfolio career is nothing new to us. To do this successfully we have to ensure that we offer the services that are relevant to the working lives of our members. We accomplish this in numerous ways: we have a range of legal services and are quite litigious on our members’ behalf, much of our full-time regional officials efforts are devoted to assisting members with claims for non payment of fees through the small claims court. We have a free contracts advisory service which allows members to have their contracts vetted by a music industry lawyer, free of charge. We hold seminars around the country on subjects such as copyright, issuing your own recordings, publishing music, marketing yourself, merchandising, agents/managers. We provide free public liability insurance, an essential if you are playing live gigs these days, we don’t cover the band but the individual member (to the tune of £10 million), if the band includes a non MU member it is not covered, so this is also a potent recruiting tool. We give each member £2000 worth of free musical instrument and equipment insurance. We also issue an annual Handbook for Members which we regard as the musicians bible, it contains all of the advice that they need for their day-to day activities as professional musicians.
It’s a bit of a cliché but given the cuts already announced in the budget and this autumn’s comprehensive review, there has never been a more important time for working people to belong to a union. The MU looks forward to bringing our experiences to Unions 21, to learning from others, and to working on a common agenda for the benefit of all.
