Submission

Submission the the Federal Labour Standards Review Committee (Part III Canada Labour Code)

Dear Sir/Madam:

Please accept my submission for your review. I am a professional musicians who has performed with and served hundreds of Canada's professional musicians over the years, principally, but not exclusively, in London Ontario. I have previous experience in bargaining under Canada's Status of the Artist Act and have earned some credit in concluding successful agreements for the London Musicians Association (AFM Local 279) with Orchestra London Canada and CFPL Television, a division of CHUM Ltd. While I no longer work for the AFM as an officer, I continue to remain an AFM Canada member in good standing and am in my 11th year of membership in this organization. I am not commenting in any official AFM capacity but rather, as a rank and file musician member who has extensive experience in labour negotiations who is intimately familiar with the wages and working conditions of Canada's professional musicians. It is in this capacity that I am compelled to comment on this review and would be pleased to come before this group if it decides to hold public hearings in Vancouver over the next few months.

I continue to perform regularly in Vancouver and have been a member of the Banff Centre for the Arts Jazz Orchestras of 2001, 2002 and 2004 editions. My website is www.jeremyprice.net

The Canada Labour Code affects the working lives of Canada's professional musicians, particularly those whose music is either performed or rebroadcast on radio, television and by new means such as satellite radio, digital radio, digital media distribution etc..eg. iPod, Napster, ring tones, etc etc.. The public and private sectors of Canada's radio, television, and telecommunications industry do not treat musicians in a uniform manner that is reflected in agreements governing wages/fees and benefits eg: overtime/pension etc. for work rendered by musicians to their employer/engager..

Case in point is that private broadcasters have remained very reluctant to forge collective agreements with the American Federation of Musicians (AFM Canada) which represents approximately 20,000 working musicians here in Canada.

While AFM Canada has collective agreements with CBC radio and television that provide such things as pension and minimum basic fees for professionally performed music that goes to air through a variety of media, no such reciprocal and copmparable agreements exist with Canada's federally regulated private broadcasters..

On another front, the advent of digital media distribution for music demands that greater attention needs to be placed on ensuring professional artists are compensated when their work is distributed in this fashion. So here I am talking about labour standards for work done by musicians delivered by digital means. To the best of my knowledge, there are no labour standards in place for music exploited in this manner.

I understand at the present time, there is virtually no regulatory framework for compensating musicians (and other copyright holders eg. publishers), when their works are transmitted/broadcast on digital and satellite radio media eg: Galaxie, Satellite Radio, iTunes etc etc.. Just because technology has changed does not suddenly mean that broadcasters can somehow skirt their responsibilities to recognize that musicians still must be compensated for their services rendered! I think it was justice Conrad von Finklestein who recently ruled on digital broadcasts being beyond the reach of copyright/royalty rules. This ruling has very negatively impacted on Canada's professional musicians who are now trying to derive income from digital transmission of their works.

Commenting in the capacity as a 10-year member in good standing of AFM Canada and a former officer of 5 years and change in that organization, I can assure the Federal Labour Standards Review Board that AFM Canada musicians do not enjoy comparable benefits of collective bargaining agreements with private broadcasters as compared to the AFM-CBC accords . In fact, such collective agreements with the likes of Corus, Rogers, Standard, and CTV (Bell Global Media) are virtually non-existant and where they do exist, the benefits are minuscule compared to the benefits accorded professional musicians under the AFM CBC-Radio and AFM CBC Television Agreements.. There is no "competitive and fair" market among Canadian broadcasters when they access the musician labour pool, in fact, I submit this is one of the most grossly unfair labour markets in Canada. Should this review take an in depth look at musicians wages/fees and benefits in the radio/tv/digital broadcast sector, wages for musicians in the public and private broadcast sector are nowhere near equal for comparable work....

I would like to see some kind of "harmonization of labour standards" across the public and private broadcast centres. It seems to me that the private braodcasters have enjoyed a virtual free ride on the backs of professional musicians since the AFM CBC Agreement was put into place back in the early 1960's. Canada's private broadcasters have not recognized that professional musicians deserve decent payments and pension contributions in the way that the CBC has recognized. The FLSR should "level the playing field" by compelling the private broadcasters to provide musicians with comparable and equitable basic terms and minimums that AFM Canada musicians get with the CBC. I know that Canada's private broadcasters won't like having to recognize they need to improve the way they treat musicians in the workplace but from my vantage point, they have had an unfair competitive advantage over the CBC for many many years.

At the moment, the only means available to bring private Canadian Broadcasters to the bargaining table is through the quasi judicial Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal or CAPPRT which deals with matters under the Federal Status of the Artist Act. CAPPRT alone does not have the legislative reach to bring about uniform labour standards in Canada's public and private broadcasting sectors as it does not regulate standards of wages and benefits that are under the review of FLSR.

It strikes me as fair and reasonable to suggest that Canada's private broadcasters should be held to the same sort of labour/bargaining standards that the CBC accords to Canada's musician professionals represented by AFM Canada.

In other words, the Federal Labour Standards Review Board should establish norms for "fair and equal wages/fees and benefits" between AFM Canada professional musicians and the private broadcast sector using the wage and benefit standards currently in place for AFM Canada musicians and the CBC.

Thank you for considering my submission.

Yours Sincerely

Jeremy M Price