As of January 1, I’ve worked with seven different administrations during my tenure at Local 802, and I’ve seen a great deal. Much of that time has been spent in the company of you — the greatest musicians in the world — and that has been a privilege and a joy. My hope is that we continue to reflect and remember what has sustained this community through every previous chapter.

Happily, at the recent Feb. 4 membership meeting, I mostly saw examples of this ideal of mutual respect. To recap the evening: we started with seven bylaw proposals on the floor, the most I’ve ever seen at once. The membership ended up passing four of them. One bylaw was non-controversial and more about “housekeeping”; the other three were more substantial.

MEMBERS LEGAL SERVICES FUND

Months ago, I was concerned about the different and conflicting proposals to raise the Members Legal Services Fund cap. This issue deserved careful attention — not only because of its impact on all our major bargaining units, but because of what it could mean for Local 802 as a whole.

Local 802 is responsible for administering 114 separate contracts, and every musician who works under a Local 802 agreement is entitled to fair and equal representation.

Fiscal responsibility is at issue here. Full-time orchestras and freelance orchestras operate under very different realities, and it is not productive to compare them directly. This should never be zero sum, rich vs. poor, Met vs. Broadway, or anything of the sort. That is not what we stand for. We are a collective, and when we win in one area, we all win. We are siblings, not adversaries.

In the end, I was heartened by the collaborative efforts between the large bargaining units and Local 802. We came to an agreement among ourselves and presented a united front at the membership meeting.

The Executive Board recognizes that Metropolitan Opera orchestra wages must keep pace or go beyond those of their peers among the top orchestras in the world. We also recognize that the Met musicians are the second largest Local 802 bargaining unit (behind Broadway) and contribute a significant amount of work dues to the local.

We were in agreement with the Met orchestra committee that the cap of $50,000 was an outdated number that did not account for inflation or increases in legal costs over years, and needed to be raised. For this reason, I voted along with the board to report favorably the proposal submitted by Dan Point. While it raises the limit on the amount of money that the full time ensembles may receive, the increased amount is manageable and should remain sufficient for many years.

Dan’s bylaw ultimately passed with a friendly amendment by David Krauss that will benefit all musicians and that the union can financially live with.

CHARGES AGAINST OFFICERS

After the chaos and confusion we experienced in the February 2024 membership meeting, it became clear that changes needed to be made to Article 5 of our bylaws: “Charges, Trials, Appeals.” I was pleased that John O’Connor’s amendment passed (with a friendly amendment from Colin Williams), since it solves the biggest problem that Article 5 presented. Sending charges against officers to the Trial Board instead of to a general membership meeting immediately alleviates the need to spend an entire membership meeting dealing with charges instead of advancing the business of the union.

PROCUREMENT

Our bylaws are intended to govern members’ rights, elections, meeting structures, and regulations for engagement. While office procedures are important, they do not belong in the bylaws.

Members ultimately passed Andy Bove’s bylaw amendment, which the Executive Board had reported unfavorably. Unfortunately, it will add additional steps and rules for purchasing items necessary to conduct business. Not only do we already follow the practice outlined in the proposal, but the relevant language had already been added to our finance policy, where it properly belongs.

Incorporating this language into the bylaws is going to unnecessarily restrict our operations and risk bringing our fast-paced office to a screeching halt at precisely the moments when flexibility and responsiveness are most critical. It will also most likely require that we hire a full-time procurement officer to handle the level of detail the bylaw requires. The resources that we are preparing to allocate to a new and badly needed Off Broadway rep and organizer will instead have to be allocated to hiring staff people to manage the new vendor selection process. This could not be further from helping our membership and advancing the ideals we have always held dear.

As always, send me your feedback at kfisher@local802afm.org. I’m glad we saw so many of you on Feb. 4 (over 300 people showed up!) and I hope that future meetings are as well attended.