Continue reading »]]> Friends,

This year May 1 will echo throughout the canyons of Lower Manhattan as musicians take to the streets – fighting against rampant inequality.  May Day 2012 will make history, as people come together nationwide in this movement for economic justice.

With your presence, the Associated Musicians of Greater NY, Local 802 will play a significant role here in New York City as people meet in Union Square and march towards the Battery through the financial district and then afterwards participate in a Justice for Jazz Artists! action in the West Village.

Below please find our upcoming schedule.

In Solidarity,

Local 802 Officers & Staff

**WHAT:           May Day Sign-Painting Party

**WHEN:           Wednesday, April 25, at 4pm – 8pm

**WHERE:         322 W. 48th Street, 5th Floor Trial Board Room

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**WHAT:           May Day Rally & March

**WHEN:           Tuesday, May 1, from 4pm – 7pm

**WHERE:         Union Square, northwest corner of park (meeting point)

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**WHAT:           May Day Justice for Jazz Artist! Rally & March

**WHEN:           Tuesday, May 1, from 8pm – 10pm

**WHERE:         Washington Square Park, underneath memorial arch (meeting point)

Continue reading »]]> Attention New Yorkers:

Master Jazz Bassist Bob Cranshaw (currently with Sonny Rollins) will be interviewed live today, April 18, 2012 at 2PM by Michael G. Haskins on radio station 99.5 FM WBAI. Bob will be joined by Local 802 AFM, Jazz Rep Todd Bryant Weeks. They will discuss the Justice for Jazz Artists campaign and their efforts to secure collective bargaining rights in NYC live music venues.

Tune in if you can!

Continue reading »]]> Many thanks to all for an incredibly successful Day and Night of Action! The new J4JA website is getting great traffic, our hard-hitting ads are running, and jazz fans are “Liking” Justice for Jazz Artists on Facebook, Tweeting on Twitter and Google +-ing away! Last night, Justice for Jazz Artists supporters and jazz luminaries like Bob Cranshaw, Bernard Purdie, Bertha Hope and Keisha St. Joan gathered outside New York’s City’s top jazz clubs to explain the mission of Justice for Jazz Artists to club patrons—the great majority of whom pledged support for the men and women who sacrifice so much to keep this great American art form alive.

Going forward, we will be ramping up the energy and continuing the J4JA presence outside jazz venues. If you are able to volunteer, please get in touch! And of course, keep “trumpeting” the good word!

Continue reading »]]> Tonight, March 1, Justice for Jazz Artists (J4JA) expands its growing campaign to make sure that older musicians are not forced into poverty. Join us in asking the owners of New York City’s six top Jazz Clubs—

Birdland, the Blue Note, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, the Iridium, the Jazz Standard and the Village Vanguard—to contribute a small amount into a pension fund that would allow jazz musicians to retire with dignity.

These clubs all enjoy a special tax break passed into law by the NY State Legislature expressly to help club owners contribute to musician pensions—but not one of these wealthy owners has contributed a dime to help the players they profit from every night!

Tell club owners that hardworking musicians deserve better.  Send an email! Volunteer! Sign the petition!

And look for the Justice for Jazz Artists ads in major jazz publications.

Continue reading »]]> On Monday, December 26th, jazz vocalist Keisha St. Joan and Local 802 Recording Vice President John O’Connor appeared on the NYC radio program Building Bridges Radio: Your Community & Labor Report, produced and Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash over WBAI,99.5FM.

In the segment, St. Joan, as always, is particulalry eloquent regarding the injustices suffered by musicians at the hands of club owners, and O’Connor fully explains the current J4JA! campaign in detail. The segment runs about 25 minutes–and features a rare instance of a jazz artist (St. Joan) and a folk performer (O’Connor) performing a vocal duet!

You can also hear the voices of Jimmy Owens, Randy Weston, Bernard Purdie, Dr. Billy Taylor (RIP), Junior Mance, Andy Schwartz, Reggie Workman, Bennie Powell (RIP) and Bob Cranshaw speaking out on this vital subject.

BTW, the fantastic music at the end of the segment was composed by trumpeter/educator and NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Owens and features Owens, trombonist Benny Powell, bassist Kenny Davis , drummer Bernard Purdie and pianist Danny Mixon.

Here’s the web address of the WBAI broadcast:

http://buildingbridgesradio.blogspot.com/2012/01/justice-for-jazz-artists-what-no.html

Enjoy!
Yours in Solidarity,
Todd Bryant Weeks
J4JA!

Continue reading »]]> Season’s Greetings!

Jimmy Owens. Photo: Enid Farber

For any and all of you that are interested in the issue of fairness, and would like to see a more level playing field in the NYC jazz club scene, the following article in last week’s NY Times may be of interest to you.  

The leafleting phase of our long term campaign has begun.  The goals of this campaign are far reaching: we seek a national network of clubs where musicians can expect fair wages, a regular pension contribution (and this is for AFM members and non members alike) and some ability to negotiate their working conditions—not to mention more ownership of their own music as recorded in the club, especially in regard to new and future use. 

For those of you who see the actions of J4JA! or the goals of this campaign as too little too late, you have a right to be skeptical; the union has been grappling with the pension issue for years.  But the musicians’ union, and a small group of determined jazz artists from within its ranks, have not given up. 

For those of you who support what we are trying to do with J4JA!, we encourage you to spread the word, sign the petition (currently at 3,000 + signatures), and get involved. 

At most of NYC’s major jazz venues, a pension contribution for one musician is equivalent to the price of two drinks (about $25.00).  At a club like the Blue Note, the cost for pension contributions for a trio for one night can be covered, in many cases, by the price of one individual audience member’s cover charge. 

J4JA! supporters will continue their informational leafleting in front of the  Blue Note this week, Wednesday and Thursday, December 21st and 22nd from aprox. 7-10PM.

If you would like to volunteer, send an email to jazzjustice@local802afm.org

Finally: take a look at the article below and if you agree with what’s happening, pass it on to your friends and colleagues. And if you have yet to do so, please take a moment to sign our petition. 

All the Best, 

Todd Weeks 

Justice for Jazz Artists! 

J4JA!

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Jazz Musicians Start a Pension Push

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: December 12, 2011

The campaign began quietly last Thursday night, when four members of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians stood in the cold outside the Blue Note in Greenwich Village and handed out leaflets with the headline “Justice for Jazz Artists!” Musicians continued passing out information outside the Blue Note over the weekend and said they would do so again starting on Thursday.

“It’s just a sin that we have no pension,” said Keisha St. Joan, 72, a jazz vocalist who was distributing leaflets. “I will not have a pension before I die.”

For five years club owners have resisted the union’s efforts and remain divided about the idea. Some accuse the 8,000-member union of trolling for new revenue to prop up the pension fund, whose main beneficiaries are mostly retired Broadway musicians, studio session players and classical musicians who are covered by union contracts. Though some jazz artists belong to the union, they generally work in nonunion clubs. Consequently they have for decades received less pay and fewer benefits than union musicians.

Some club owners also contend that most of the top-tier jazz players they book would rather receive extra pay than union benefits. Others, among them Ron Sturm at the Iridium, say that they favor the idea in principle, but that it might be difficult to implement. Mr. Sturm, who has met three times with union leaders to talk over the proposal, said he thought the union should try to reach similar agreements with all music clubs, regardless of genre.

“I think it’s a great idea philosophically, but the devil’s in the details,” he said. “How do you do it?”

The owners of the Blue Note, Steve and Danny Bensusan, did not respond to several messages seeking comment.

The disagreement between the union and club owners dates back to 2005, when union leaders joined the night clubs to lobby the State Legislature for a reduction in the sales tax on tickets because the extra revenue would be used to pay for pension and health benefits. In letters supporting the legislation, union officials maintained they had an informal agreement with several club owners to that effect. (A similar trade-off had been made in the 1960s to get pension benefits for Broadway musicians.)

The tax break was passed in 2006, but the union never hammered out a formal pact with the club owners. Five years later none of the clubs have entered negotiations with the union to sign collective bargaining agreements. Those agreements are legally required before the clubs can begin paying into Local 802’s pension system. Two years ago, the union elected new leaders who have made pensions for jazz artists a priority.

When the legislation was passed, the union estimated the major jazz clubs  each stood to gain about $67,000 a year from lifting the tax. In 2008 the state estimated it amounted to a tax loss of about $2.2 million a year.

Some club managers say the plan was flawed from the start. Repealing the tax saved the customers money but never produced extra revenue for the clubs, they say. The owners have balked at raising ticket prices to pay for the pension contributions, though some have suggested collecting donations from patrons.

Lorraine Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard, said she supported the idea of pensions for jazz artists but added that profit margins are slim at clubs and that costs continue to rise.

“I pay all the traffic will bear in a little club,” she said. “My bottom line is what I have to look at, in order to keep the club functioning.”

Other club managers also argue that asking them to write a separate check to the pension fund for every musician who steps on their stages each year is impractical and costly. “It would be an accounting nightmare for us,” said the programming director for one of the city’s major jazz clubs, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals from the union.

He said the clubs generally hire bandleaders, who in turn employ side musicians. He said that the bandleaders are independent contractors, and that it makes more sense for them to pay into the pension fund on behalf of their employees rather than the clubs.

Union leaders say the goal of the campaign is to reach bare-bones labor agreements with five of the biggest jazz clubs in New York City — the Blue Note, the Village Vanguard, Birdland, the Jazz Standard and the Iridium — as well as with Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, which is run by the nonprofit Jazz at Lincoln Center.

John O’Connor, a vice president of the union, said those pacts, if signed, would only be the beginning. The union also intends to reach similar agreements with clubs in other major cities, creating a network of places that pay pension benefits. That way touring musicians could rack up credit in the pension system no matter where they played. But the key to the union’s long-term plans, he said, is persuading prominent clubs in New York to come aboard.

“What we are really trying to do is to expand our house,” Mr. O’Connor said. “We want 802 to become the champion of all musicians in New York City.”

Under the union’s proposal the owners of the clubs would make a contribution for every musician they hire — both bandleaders and sidemen — whether they are vested in the pension or not. The amount would be a percentage of a minimum wage scale established under the agreement.

Musicians do not have to be in the union to qualify for a pension, but they do have to earn a certain amount in clubs or other workplaces that have agreements with the union. Specifically, a musician must earn an average of $3,000 a year from covered employers for five years.

That threshold is hard for musicians who play most of their gigs in nonunion clubs. “It’s a real Catch-22,” said Wendy Oxenhorn, the executive director of the Jazz Foundation of America, which helps destitute musicians.

She said many jazz players, especially sidemen and second-tier performers, find themselves facing old age with no pension and little in the way of Social Security, since much of their pay was in cash and off the books.

In private some jazz musicians oppose the union’s efforts, arguing they would rather handle their own retirements. But others support the union and say the owners reneged on a promise they made in return for the tax repeal. They say they doubt the owners’ contention that it was the ticket buyers who benefited from removing the tax.

“They are collecting that money, and they are using it for whatever reason they feel like,” said Bernard Purdie, a jazz drummer and bandleader, just before going on at Carnegie Hall with Galt MacDermot and the New Pulse Jazz Band. “They have been getting away with it for the last four or five years.”

A version of this article appeared in print on December 13, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Jazz Musicians Start a Pension Push.

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J4JA! Musicians, led by Jimmy Owens, Rally Outside the Blue Note. Photo: Enid Farber.

Justice for Jazz Artists! (J4JA!) is a coalition of over 3,000 musicians, advocates, and fans who seek equity in the form of fair treatment of jazz (and other musicians) in the NYC nightclubs.

Since 2005, J4JA! has been seeking to engage with NYC nightclub owners (including the management of clubs such as Birdland, the Blue Note, Iridium, the Village Vanguard and the Jazz Standard) to negotiate for fair working conditions in the clubs,  especially in regard to the issue of retirement benefits.

Jazz artists have historically been among the most exploited and abused in the music business. They are often the lowest paid for their music and commonly receive none of the retirement benefits that musicians in other fields take for granted. Many find themselves facing old age with no pension and little in the way of social security payments after a lifetime of performing in the club scene.

This unfair and abusive dynamic must be changed.  For years, we have been trying to get the clubs to do the right thing and treat jazz musicians with dignity and respect.

WE DEMAND:  fair minimum scale wages; decent pension contributions;  protections against exploitation of musicians regarding recording (and the reuse of recorded music);  and a process for settling disputes with club owners.

Musicians and fans are encouraged to sign the J4JA! petition (click on link above) and to volunteer by sending an email to jazzjustice@local802afm.org

Justice for Jazz Artists!

www.justiceforjazzartists.org