Most aspiring musicians dream of performing, not the world of contracts, taxes, and negotiating their pay.

But while the non-musical aspects of a life in music can be daunting prospects for young musicians at the outset of their careers, knowing how to protect your rights and earn a fair wage can make all the difference. SFCM students are helped along with this by academic offerings like Financial Literacy and events like PDEC's mock contract negotiation held this summer. Given by the President of the American Federation of Musicians' local branch president, Kale Cumings, the event was a chance to learn from a local musician and labor leader. 

SFCM's Newsroom caught up to Cumings to get a deeper understanding of what musician unions—and in particular, AFM's Local Six chapter in San Francisco—can do for students.
 

SFCM: What's a common misconception about unions that you face in your work?
Cumings: That unions and musical organizations are on different sides. We're all working to ultimately benefit any organization and the musicians. Like any relationship, there are sometimes conflicts, sometimes tense negotiations, sometimes things that have to be worked out, but it's still ultimately about trying to improve things for both parties.

I very strongly reject the idea that what the musicians want and need is diametrically opposed to the other side of the table's wants and needs and it's just a fight to "win." I'm not trying to contribute to that narrative. It's ultimately going to be better to think about these issues more in terms of the things that are challenging all arts organizations right now on both "sides."

What are some of the difficulties faced by labor unions in 2025?
I think it goes without saying—and most young people probably already understand—that the days of being able to get a job with Ford Motor Company when you're 21 and work there until you're 70 when you can retire with a pension are gone. That's just not how things happen in America anymore.

The reality is if you're going to work as a musician in America starting now, you're going to have to take on more of the managing your own career than you previously would have. As with any freelancer, they have to do all of the things that normally would be done for them at a 9-to-5-type job. That's difficult for anyone and especially for musicians, who continually have to refine their skills and raise their performance level higher and higher as their career progresses.

The main point about a union is that you don't have to do all that work alone: There are thousands of people that are already doing it. So you have a choice of trying to run a career with all these inherent obstacles alone, or finding places where you get support with that, where other people are doing the same thing, where you can interact with them and discover your full range of options. That's what the American Federation of Musicians Local Six is.

How does the AFM approach its work?
We think of ourselves as a social justice organization, trying to create justice in the working lives of musicians. There are certainly employment laws that every American who works are protected by, but the basis of employment in America does not come with any guarantees or promises. So we try to organize the relationship between musicians and employers so that the musicians have an equal amount of power to negotiate their own terms.

Mostly what I do is negotiate contracts and try to help people find other people to put together and give them power. I build power for musicians in the workplace: That's the main thing unions do.

Can you give an example of how that works?
For instance, for a musician trying to get a job playing at a BBQ place on Friday night, the BBQ place has all the power. Playing for them is a "yes" or a "no," and if you ask for better pay or what have you, and it's a "no," what are you going to do? Boycott them by yourselves? What the union can do is put you together with other musicians also working at the BBQ place to help you find options, some power, some actual control. That does not come from the union, that comes from the collection of people. The key to the whole story is that the musicians who work at the BBQ place don't have power individually, but if all of them got together, they could have power that would equal the management's power to dictate the terms of their work.

Here's a local example: There's a group of musicians that play in the Golden Gate Park Band, which is one of, if not the, oldest continuously operating musical organizations in California. They had been rehearsing at another location on Sunday mornings and then driving over to the park to play.

So they came to me and said how difficult it was to have a rehearsal in a different location and then drive to the park—and now the city wants to start charging them for parking. So we got a bunch of them together and we went to the city and we told them the problem, and we said, "We've got to do something better for these people, because this is a free event to the public, and it's something that the public loves," and the city heard us. This year they're opening the bandshell early so that the band can rehearse there in the morning and we also are on the docket for the parking fee situation as well.

What do you tell musicians who might balk at the costs associated with union membership?
Well, the union is not a service-based organization. Lots of times people will ask me, "It costs $200 a year. What do I get for that?" And my answer to that question is always, "If that's how you're calculating this, it's probably not worth it to you." We're not a concierge service. We're working as a social justice group. Joining us is joining a mission to make the world better for all musicians, not just for you or union members. Let's do that work together and join with other people that are doing that work and let's make it have teeth and let's make it valuable.

What about musicians working in genres that aren't typically unionized, like pop music or jazz?
Classical musicians, particularly those working for larger organizations, have some advantages that other musicians don't. Number one, for the most part, they're working for one employer or a small group of employers. Most other musicians living off regular gigging are independent contractors and that's way harder to organize the way that orchestra musicians are. 

The division along genre lines is a complicated issue, but the simplest truth is that classical musicians are better organized because they have the benefit of working for only a few employers as W2 employees. There's no legal structure for organizing 1099 employees in the same way.

The reality is that for musicians who are independent contractors, for every gig they get, they know already they're in competition with other musicians that would just as happily play the same gig for less. It's easy to blame the bar, restaurant and club owners for this situation, but as long as a businessperson can get something for $75, they won't pay $100. That's just business 101.

 

 

 

 

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What would you tell students taking in all this information as they're preparing for their careers?
If you realize that there's some unalienable truth about you as a person that requires you to create art in order to function as a well-rounded, balanced human being, and you decide that you want to elevate that to the place where you want to make a living doing it, or you want to at least try, don't let all the red tape dissuade you.

The very best thing you're going to understand as you go through this life of being a musician is that the most valuable lessons and the most poignant support you will ever receive will come from your colleagues. So the sooner and the quicker and the better you figure out how to join them—and not just the ones you know personally, but ones you don't know around the country—the better chances you're going to have of navigating this life.

We've put together an amazing team at Local 6. We've got connections with all of the labor communities in Northern California. We're very strong with the California Federation of Labor Unions. The second you join our union, you're a part of a many, many, many-thousand-people strong organization in California that's trying to change the world.

Unions give you access to a complete legal framework and history of labor in this country and to thousands of other people who have already been living a life in music and would be more than happy to fold you into that process. So essentially one of the ways I put it to young musicians is, "Do you want to do this alone or do you want to do it together?"

Learn more about SFCM's Professional Development and Education Center, or about AFM Local Six.