Dear Colleagues,

We offer you, your families and friends, very best wishes as you celebrate Labor Day. We hope it is a great holiday for all. This is a great time to reflect on the contributions made to our own lives and those of our communities, contributions made by courageous men and women throughout the labor movement. We owe them so very much, even as struggles for social justice and worker rights continue.

Currently our friends and colleagues in the Indianapolis Symphony are facing an oppressive and very difficult time with their management and we ask that you stand with them by checking in at www.isomusicians.com. Please take a moment to support their petition for fairness.

Standing together. There is no greater way of honoring those who came before us in the spirit of Labor Day. There is also no greater way of our honoring ourselves; we are the musicians who enrich the world, educate the generations and create the profit streams. By standing together through thick and thin we protect our own dignity, protect our own livelihoods, and protect the music.

We stand together for the fair treatment of musicians in symphony orchestras when they are threatened by destructive management. We stand together with jazz artists working for decent treatment at major New York City clubs. @J4JA. We stand with musicians who are fighting against a fundamentally unfair practice, where film companies like Marvel Studios get tax subsidies – U.S. taxpayer money – and then fly overseas to record the music on foreign shores. And we stand with forward-looking musicians working to get fair treatment with Fair Trade Music @Fairtrademusic.

Musicians have long stood on the cutting edge of history, and none more than AFM musicians. From amalgamation of segregetated Locals in the 1950’s and 60’s, to union democracy movements both then and now, musicians have often been ahead of the historical curve. We are living in a worldwide cycle of adversity, but standing together we stand strong.

To all of the AFM’s Locals, to our fellow Player Conference members and to all of the AFM’s dedicated musicians, we wish you

HAPPY LABOR DAY

Marc Sazer

President RMA