Tag Archives: covid19

December 2020 Overture Online: Keeping the Music Alive During COVID

Inside This Issue:

Keeping the Music Alive During COVID

Creative ways musicians are coping with the crisis

AFM Local 47 General Election

Polls open 9am – 9pm on Tuesday, Dec. 8

Making Music & Making Progress

Locals 47 & 802 will co-host a free webinar on diversity, equity and inclusion on Friday, Dec. 11

and more!

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Overture Online is optimized for reading via smartphone or tablet. For those without access to a smart device, recent issues may be viewed on a web browser from the Magloft bookshelf. The complete pdf archive may be found here.

Local 47 COVID-19 Emergency Relief extended

The AFM Local 47 Executive Board has extended Emergency Relief for members who have lost revenue due to work stoppages resulting from the coronavirus COVID-19 emergency. Continue reading →

Musicians Need Help NOW: Extend pandemic unemployment benefits!

SEND IN YOUR LETTER NOW

Pandemic unemployment benefits are about to expire!

The supplemental $600 unemployment benefit many musicians have relied on will end before August, reducing the max unemployment benefit in California to $450/week.

Please send a letter from your family to the U.S. Senate today. Tell them how the crisis has impacted your ability to work, and why these benefits are so important. Continue reading →

Moratorium on 2020 Membership Dues Extended

While we have been working hard to ensure musicians get back to work while protecting everyone’s health and safety, we understand that the vast majority of our members remain unemployed due to the global pandemic.

Today the Local 47 Executive Board voted to extend the moratorium on suspensions and expulsions for delinquent membership dues for an additional 60 days. Your Membership Dues for 2020 are now due by July 31. Continue reading →

June 2020 Overture Online: Safer At Work

Inside This Issue:

Safer At Work

What we’re doing to ensure musicians return to work safely and soon

Music Employment Town Hall

Friday, June 5th – Open to all Local 47 members

Member Spotlight

Jay Cohen first Local 47 live performer to return to work

and more!

Download the FREE App:

Overture Online is optimized for reading via smartphone or tablet. For those without access to a smart device, issues may be viewed on a web browser here. Local 47 members may download archived pdf versions from the members section at afm47.org. Continue reading →

Town Hall: Music Employment in the Age of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated our musical community. We have lost friends and colleagues, and almost all of us have lost our work. Yet our future will arrive, and we need to do everything we can to ensure our health and safety when the opportunity to return to work together arrives.

Please join our distinguished panel on Friday, June 5, at 7 p.m. featuring guest speakers. We will cover a variety of topics including:

Whose job is it to keep us safe at work?
Who are the stakeholders and gatekeepers for deciding when we can go back?
What is our Local 47 doing?
And more…

Prepare your questions; we will be dedicating a substantial portion of the Town Hall to Q&A.

This Town Hall is open to all AFM Local 47 members. Registration is required. Link and password will be emailed upon membership verification.

Continue reading →

Safer at Work Update: Recommendations Adopted for Film/Television Music Scoring

Helping all of our musicians get back to work while protecting your health and safety continues to be our number one priority. AFM Local 47 has been working with adjacent unions, management, both the City and County of Los Angeles, infectious disease specialists, rank-and-file musicians and scoring stage crew, as well as gathering the growing body of scientific studies of safety for orchestral musicians being gathered both here and in Germany and Austria.

The Local 47 Executive Board has adopted a series of recommendations created by the Post Covid-19 Work Rules Working Group to ensure safe work environments for post-production music that can allow millions of dollars of wages to return to the thousands of musicians who provide the world-class scores for the projects that California and Hollywood depend upon. Continue reading →

A Message from President John Acosta: Safer at Work

Musicians have suffered deeply as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Helping us get back to work while protecting your health and safety is our number one priority. Several top-level processes have launched in an effort to provide a pathway to reopening for the entertainment industries, and we are working around the clock for you. In a major step that ensures musicians will have a clear voice, I am pleased to report that I have been appointed to Los Angeles County’s new Economic Resiliency Task Force as a member of the Film and Digital Media sector. We are also working with our entertainment industry union allies to develop health and safety standards that can be used throughout California, and throughout the country. Continue reading →

A Message to the Working Professionals in the Entertainment Industry

The undersigned guilds and unions represent the diverse, professional workforce that, in ordinary times, come together on productions throughout each year to bring our stories to life for audiences across the globe. Now, in this time when the coronavirus pandemic has brought an unprecedented challenge to our industry, our solidarity is more important than ever before. We come together on behalf of our respective memberships to ensure coordination between our efforts to secure relief, financial support and other critical assistance for the working professionals in this industry. Our members understand the unique power of collective action. Through our unity, we reinforce that power to safeguard our members as much as possible during the extraordinary set of events we face today. Continue reading →

Now More Than Ever, Union Contracts Can Help

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought our industry to a complete halt, and even as we are socially isolated from one another, we are suffering together both economically and artistically.

But we are a diverse union. Our members include musicians who compose, prepare and perform music in an incredibly wide variety of fields, from theater and club work, symphonic, opera and ballet, film, television, sound recordings and other recording work — if it involves music, at least some of us are doing it as part of our livelihoods Continue reading →