It felt like a flashback to the summer of 2023 along a crowded stretch of Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon. A brass band played Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” on the sidewalk as pedestrians streamed by, a man with a bullhorn led unison chants, and demonstrators held up picket signs with messages aimed at company bosses.
This wasn’t a strike picket, though. Members of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) gathered on the doorstep of the old McGraw-Hill Building to kick off a new round of contract talks on the union’s TV Videotape Agreement, which covers the players on live and taped television programs such as Saturday Night Live and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
About an hour before negotiations, musicians and union representatives from Los Angeles, Nashville and New York made their demands clear outside: better pay, higher residuals, more comprehensive health care and limits on the use of artificial intelligence as a replacement for entertainment workers — issues that also drove last year’s marathon walkouts by WGA and SAG-AFTRA.
Wearing blue “Musicians United” T-shirts, they assembled about a block away from NBCUniversal headquarters at Rockefeller Center, the site of daily Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA picketing a year ago. They handed out leaflets to curious passers-by and set their demonstration to live music, courtesy of a brass ensemble called the Five Boroughs Band whose ranks grew as the rally progressed.
Shawn Pelton, longtime drummer and percussionist for the SNL house band, was spotted playing snare drum. Dave Pomeroy, a Nashville recording and session musician and AFM representative, showed up with an acoustic bass guitar and later performed a song he wrote for the occasion.
“It’s called ‘What Unions Did For You,’” Pomeroy said. “Feel free to sing along.”
Which demonstrators did.
Joining the musicians were leaders and members of SAG-AFTRA and WGA, whose overlapping strikes in 2023 spanned several months and brought most scripted film and television production in the U.S. to a halt. On the heels of actors and writers finally settling with the studios and production companies, the 70,000-member AFM in April signed its own three-year contract renewal with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
That deal covers the players and composers who work on scripted fare for the big and small screen, and those negotiations lasted months with a union strike authorization hanging over them, but ultimately no work stoppage was necessary.
The subset of 6,000 musicians covered by the Live TV and Video contract are negotiating directly with the television networks, including NBC, CBS and ABC. The AFM has not pre-authorized a strike in their case.
“We hope to secure a fair contract through negotiations,” an AFM spokesperson told Deadline.
AFM members and supporters on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan on Wednesday
Sean Piccoli/Deadline
Some of the musicians at the tune-up rally described feeling even more vulnerable than their acting and writing counterparts to encroachment from AI because they’ve lost ground over decades to synthesizers, music-generating software and pre-recorded tracks in live settings.
“We’ve been replaced already,” said one veteran AFM member who asked to remain anonymous. “This is the [last] straw.”
Tino Gagliardi, the AFM’s president and chief negotiator, told demonstrators that his membership has been “way behind on a lot of issues.” But no more, he vowed.
“I’m gonna go in that room, and I’m gonna try and hammer out a deal that’s gonna be progressive enough to get us at least to catch up to where we should have been five years ago,” Gagliardi said. “So here we go, ladies and gentlemen.”
Union musicians, who supplied live music and morale at WGA and SAG-AFTRA pickets, were met with solidarity on Wednesday from some of last year’s most prominent East Coast strike leaders.
“You guys have a hard fight ahead,” said Rebecca Damon, SAG-AFTRA’s Chief Labor Policy Officer and New York Local Executive Director. “But today, as SAG-AFTRA … we pledge to be with you every single time you need it.”
In the crowd was a member of both AFM and SAG-AFTRA: Janice Pendarvis, one of the backup vocalists featured in the acclaimed 2013 documentary 20 Feet from Stardom, and the musical leader of a memorable picket outside NBCUniversal in August 2023 in which singers performed the classic protest anthem “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around.”
Pendarvis didn’t sing on Wednesday but sounded ready to if asked. “This is my community, these are my people, and I’ll do anything for them,” she said.
