A Holiday Message of Unity as We Prepare for 2025

It is with warm wishes that I address you this holiday season, and I hope everyone enjoys this time with family and friends.  As 2024 winds down I can report that Local 72-147 is ending the year with its business in order. We have successfully renegotiated a large number of our collective bargaining agreements this year and are in the process of finalizing the last of these now. Financially, we project to end our fiscal year in the black. And we have built relationships with our CBA employers, fellow unions and the community to a stronger level than we have had in a number of years. Recently we stood with the Dallas Black Dance Theatre’s fired dancers in their campaign to stand up against a union busting employer, and they won.

As happy as I am to report this good news, I must acknowledge that even greater challenges lie ahead. While it is perhaps cliché to hear about the importance of UNITY continually repeated, we have reached a time when it is more important than ever.

As we now look ahead, we have a unique eyeglass through which we can see what is to come. This was ominously forecast (and brought close to home) when the Dallas Black Dance Theatre (as I mentioned above) initially responded to the National Labor Relations Board’s complaint against it in November, claiming that the NLRB itself was UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It is not difficult to conclude that the DBDT was referring to a pending legal challenge of the NLRB’s constitutionality by none other than Amazon and Elon Musk’s SpaceX – and riding its coattails.

As Musk has risen in political profile and been named to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency, it is a fair assessment that we will be facing a virulently anti-labor administration, as the basic laws which enforce our rights as employees are already being challenged by those attached to it.

This is why it is more important than ever to develop our UNITY, the basis of our power. The heroic dancers of DBDT prevailed in winning their fight, but not because they outmaneuvered DBDT’s lawyers. They prevailed because they put themselves on the line and called upon our community, and relied on its strength. It was the pressure (and cutting off of funding) from City Hall, protests in front of every performance and the loss of audience and sponsors that brought the company to give in – even after such brazen rhetoric.

So as we move forward, we will be marching into unfriendly territory, and there will be those who try to take advantage. It is through UNITY, as the Dancers of DBDT have so ably demonstrated, that we will face the challenges ahead, whatever they may be. What does this mean? We must grow our membership. An entire community of musicians lives and works here in DFW that we must reach out to. We must ENGAGE and bring them into our movement. We do this by showing them that we are here to empower them to make their lives better. We must organize new agreements with new employers (we need new members to do this). And we must better build infrastructure to support us as we brave the wild world of the freelance marketplace: more and stronger individual contracts, best practices education, and watching out for each other. In short, we must GROW.

I wish to conclude with a statement of hope and optimism befitting of the holiday season. We are a diverse union, and we are citizens in a diverse nation. We often remark about how diversity is our strength, but there are those on every level of power and influence who seek to use our differences to divide us. We as union members – and as citizens – are all part of a larger family. When it seems that our differences split us apart (as employers, politicians, etc. will assert), we must remember that we all (at least most of us) share the same hopes for justice, fairness and happiness. Though cultural lines and the “algorithm” may separate us from each other, we can cross those lines, engage with each, and celebrate our shared humanity. This is the core of our UNITY and the basis of growing our movement.

Please everyone, have a wonderful holiday season.