Author: Aaron Pino

Our Union Sticking Together in the Pandemic: The Local Needs Your Support. Pay Dues if you Can — Call us

I want to write to you today about one of the benefits of your membership in our Local – the $2000 Death Benefit. We are one of the last of the AFM Locals that are still maintaining this type of benefit for our members. If you are still a member in good standing at the time of your death, all your beneficiary needs to do is provide us with an original of the death certificate, and we will take care of the rest. We have a Death Benefit Fund set up in our own Musicians Federal Credit Union to which we contribute periodically from the General Fund, so it is a self-funded benefit, not connected with any insurance company.

I wanted to write a quick note about membership dues. Recently the International Executive Board of the AFM released some Emergency Pandemic Policy Recommendations, a few of which your Executive Board adopted on April 9th.

As of that date, we will be waiving all late fees for currently unpaid 2020 dues.

Every year we have several requests from members who work freelance for help concerning a problem with a job. Usually, they either haven’t been paid at all, or were paid too little. Sometimes it involves working conditions. Unfortunately, usually the person(s) requesting assistance did not use a union contract on the gig. Sometimes we are able to help them get a satisfactory outcome anyway, but if you are working without a signed contract, you are at risk of losing your pay, as there is little the local or the AFM can do legally without an agreement.

One of the most under-publicized things a union does is to help people in need. Examples from the recent past include the plumbers union donating their time to install pipes and filters for people with poisoned water in Flint, Michigan; and here in Texas, many unions donated food, labor, and financial assistance to Hurricane Harvey victims, including the AFM. As President Williams has written, musicians can be the most vulnerable people in the world when health crises occur – even a short illness can result in critical lost income beyond the cost of health care. I wanted to bring to your attention to four different resources where you can get help for yourself or a fellow member in need of financial assistance due to illness, injury, or disability.

First, our local has its own fund in our Musicians Federal Credit Union called the Bill Collins Benefit Fund, which was established by Bill Collins III in honor of his father, Bill Collins Jr. Its purpose is to help members who are temporarily unable to work as a musician, or are in need of financial assistance, for medical reasons.