Skip to content Skip to footer

Independent Musicians Build Solidarity Amid Pandemic by Forming Nationwide Union

The Union of Musi­cians and Allied Work­ers (UMAW) is seeking systemic shifts industry-wide regardless of genre.

The Union of Musi­cians and Allied Work­ers (UMAW) is seeking systemic shifts industry-wide regardless of genre.

Los Angeles — Musi­cian Josephine Shet­ty, aka Kohi­noor­gasm, was prepar­ing for her West Coast spring tour in March when the pan­dem­ic-relat­ed can­cel­la­tions start­ed rolling in.

Like many musi­cians, Shetty’s liveli­hood is pieced togeth­er from part-time work. She per­forms at under­ground spaces and small clubs, releas­es her own music and teach­es mid­dle school music class­es. When you’re a per­son who works so many jobs, that’s already a very unsta­ble sit­u­a­tion,” Shet­ty says. With live shows being can­celled, it became clear how dif­fi­cult the road ahead would be. The inde­pen­dent venues that most work­ing musi­cians rely on were some of the first to close (and will sure­ly be some of the last to reopen).

When fel­low musi­cian and orga­niz­er Joey La Neve DeFrancesco reached out to Shet­ty, just a few weeks into the pan­dem­ic, about union­iz­ing musi­cians and relat­ed music work­ers, Shet­ty signed up. On April 22, a group of about 20 musi­cians met vir­tu­al­ly to dis­cuss sol­i­dar­i­ty and how to build a more just indus­try, inau­gu­rat­ing the Union of Musi­cians and Allied Work­ers (UMAW).

Very quick­ly, every­one had all of these dif­fer­ent visions of what a dif­fer­ent music indus­try could look like when it was being built col­lec­tive­ly by the work­ers involved,” says DeFrancesco, who is based in Prov­i­dence, R.I. UMAW already boasts about 25 steer­ing com­mit­tee mem­bers and 80 sub­com­mit­tee mem­bers, with top­ics rang­ing from stream­ing and venue rela­tions to police abo­li­tion. More than 1,000 musi­cians have expressed inter­est through the group’s web­site and peti­tions. Mem­bers are locat­ed in Los Ange­les, Chica­go, New York, Port­land, Ore., Boston and beyond. So far, the orga­niz­ing has hap­pened entire­ly online.

On March 25, hun­dreds of musi­cians cir­cu­lat­ed a let­ter to Con­gress demand­ing the expan­sion of unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits under the CARES Act. The let­ter also demand­ed relief regard­less of immi­gra­tion sta­tus, nation­al rent and mort­gage can­cel­la­tion, Medicare for All and fund­ing for the Postal Ser­vice and the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts.

UMAW grew out of that momen­tum. For UMAW’s first orga­nized day of action, May 14, musi­cians across the coun­try made near­ly 1,000 calls to House Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi (D‑Calif.), Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑N.Y.) and local representatives.

That was how we start­ed — think­ing, How are music work­ers and gig work­ers going to be pro­tect­ed dur­ing this time?’” Shet­ty says.

But the very first seeds were plant­ed years ear­li­er. Some mem­bers were involved in the 2017 effort to force the South by South­west fes­ti­val to remove a depor­ta­tion clause” from its artist con­tract. Oth­ers are asso­ci­at­ed with the No Music for ICE coali­tion, which encour­ages the indus­try to cut ties with Ama­zon unless it can­cels con­tracts with Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment. These cam­paigns cre­at­ed a blue­print for how you could do actions col­lec­tive­ly as musi­cians,” DeFrancesco says, pro­vid­ing a foun­da­tion for UMAW to come togeth­er quickly.

UMAW dif­fer­en­ti­ates itself from sim­i­lar unions through its vast scope, seek­ing sys­temic shifts indus­try-wide, inclu­sive of var­i­ous gen­res and prac­tices. Tra­di­tion­al union orga­niz­ing would be dif­fi­cult for UMAW’s inde­pen­dent musi­cians because they often make a liv­ing through numer­ous con­tracts and employ­ers. In that sense, UMAW’s work is more com­pa­ra­ble to efforts by the Nation­al Writ­ers Union’s Free­lance Sol­i­dar­i­ty Project than, say, the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Musi­cians (AFM).

We’re just try­ing to orga­nize the unor­ga­nized, which is the vast major­i­ty of musi­cians right now,” DeFrancesco says. There [are] so many sim­i­lar­i­ties if you look at [efforts to] orga­nize Uber, free­lance writ­ers, adjuncts. …It’s the same prob­lem, where it’s so hard to orga­nize because you have so many employers.”

Shet­ty agrees. If musi­cians are the orig­i­nal gig work­ers … we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to orga­nize with­in that realm,” she says.

Cody Fitzger­ald, a film score com­pos­er and mem­ber of the Brook­lyn-based band Stolen Jars, says UMAW stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with mem­bers of oth­er unions, such as the AFM. But, Fitzger­ald adds, those orga­ni­za­tions don’t ful­fill the needs of all work­ing musi­cians because they cater to ses­sion and orches­tra play­ers, not independents.

UMAW rep­re­sents the musi­cians that the AFM just doesn’t care about,” says bas­soon­ist Patrick John­son-Whit­ty, a mem­ber of the AFM and of a UMAW clas­si­cal music sub­com­mit­tee focused on con­fronting the lega­cy of white suprema­cy in the genre. Vio­list Clara Takarabe, anoth­er AFM mem­ber, is par­tic­i­pat­ing in UMAW’s polit­i­cal edu­ca­tion com­mit­tee. It aims to help musi­cians devel­op a polit­i­cal con­text around the labor of music. I want to be involved in those types of cen­tral­ly impor­tant ques­tions,” Takarabe says.

UMAW is cur­rent­ly plan­ning a cam­paign to pres­sure stream­ing giant Spo­ti­fy to treat artists more fair­ly. The pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny is val­ued at more than $40 bil­lion, but infa­mous­ly pays artists about half-a-cent per stream. UMAW mem­bers also hope to help democ­ra­tize infor­ma­tion relat­ed to music contracts.

I’m excit­ed about the idea of a world where peo­ple come to this union to look for infor­ma­tion about how to not be exploit­ed as an artist,” Fitzger­ald says. For many, just hav­ing UMAW as a space for sol­i­dar­i­ty is a ben­e­fit. As Shet­ty puts it, The exis­tence of our cam­paigns, and our union, feels like a huge win.”

We’re not going to stand for it. Are you?

You don’t bury your head in the sand. You know as well as we do what we’re facing as a country, as a people, and as a global community. Here at Truthout, we’re gearing up to meet these threats head on, but we need your support to do it: We must raise $50,000 to ensure we can keep publishing independent journalism that doesn’t shy away from difficult — and often dangerous — topics.

We can do this vital work because unlike most media, our journalism is free from government or corporate influence and censorship. But this is only sustainable if we have your support. If you like what you’re reading or just value what we do, will you take a few seconds to contribute to our work?