[Dixielandjazz] LOCAL 802 A F OF M PENSION FUND

[TCASHWIGG at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/3/05 6:21:44 AM Pacific Standard Time, barbon
estreet at earthlink.net writes:

> When I checked my status, I also checked his and informed him that he had a
> few bucks in the 802 coffers. He then received his.
> 
> As to the rest of that money, I suspect it will, in large measure, go
> unclaimed and Guido will eventually get it. ;-) VBG
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> 
> 
> 

Folks I was not intending to demean the Pension Fund, merely to point out how 
difficult they made it for most working musicians to keep up with it and to 
actually go negotiate with employers to make the contribution to it anyway.  
Most club owners that I knew back in the old days would simply look at the part 
about giving you the money to contribute in their name to the AFof M as a bad 
joke, and just reduce your pay by that much and tell the bandleader that if 
the union wanted the money to tell them to come and get it.  The same club 
owners usually said the same thing to the ASCAP boys and BMI collection boys.

I paid a considerable amount of money into the coffers back in the 60, s 70, 
s for myself and a lot of sidemen, but most of them and I dropped out of the 
union in the late 70.s so I am quite sure we forfeited all the contributions to 
Guido and the boys.

In Local 6 territory (San Francisco) they had some cockamamie rules about 
playing with any members of other locals, and we had at least four locals within 
a 50 mile radius of San Francisco.  If you had a member of a different local 
in your band you had to charge a premium of at least 10% more in fees and 
collect the 4% pension contributions and pay them directly to each sideman, not 
turn them in to the union although you had to pay the 4% work dues to them.  This 
would have been fine had all bands been working steady gigs at the same place 
that had a bookkeeper keeping track of all such things and disbursing them to 
the appropriate places.  However most of the clubs paid in cash because the 
musicians got tired of taking their bad checks, so the bands just divided up 
the cash nightly, some even paid their bar tabs and drove off into the night.  
Most did not bother to claim any of the income on their tax returns either.

The only legitimate situations in those days existed in the major Hotels that 
were union controlled and actually did payroll on their acts, they too 
however balked and eventually told the union to get lost, and made each bandleader 
responsible as an independent contractor for musical services and just passed 
on the accounting problem.  Club owners used to write a check to the band 
leader and then have him sign it and cash it at the bar after the gig to avoid the 
bookkeeping hassles as well.

The union may have started with noble ideas of protecting the musicians, but 
it turned into a beauracracy and accounting nightmare for most.  This is also 
how working musicians lost health and welfare benefit contributions, and 
unemployment benefits.

They used to show up for a casual (one night gig) and then run down to the 
unemployment office on Monday and file for unemployment on the last bandleader 
that hired them and try and stick him with paying for him to not work, and most 
of the time he was playing every night for other band leaders for cash as 
well.

Trying to legitimize musicians and regulate their behavior socially was and 
for the most part still is impossible at least on the street level in the pubs 
and clubs.


"So much for the Brotherhood of Musicians"
Cheers,

Tom  ( No Pension)  Wiggins
Unless I can befriend Guido, :))