For the period January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021, Local 802 realized a surplus of $860,669. The audited financial statements are downloadable here as a PDF in this issue of Allegro. We were able to achieve this surplus by both reducing our expenses and receiving $887,517 in PPP (Payroll Protection Program) forgiveness and $259,857 of payroll retention credit. Our total Covid-related assistance was $1,147,374 in 2021.

Total income for 2021, not counting the Covid assistance, was $3,282,781 compared to $3,124,024 in 2020, an increase of $158,757 or 5.08 percent. Improvements in our numbers began to show towards the last quarter of the year, once the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, and Broadway began to open. At that point, many members began to reinstate their membership as well. Total dues collected in 2021 was $617,587 more than in 2020, an increase of 26.55 percent.

Local 802 managed to spend less in 2021 than in 2020 by $422,377. We achieved $327,713 or 22.4 percent of that savings by reducing staff and instituting salary cuts across the board for all remaining staff and officers through September 2021. With less staff working onsite, building expenses — which cover items such as cleaning, security, and waste removal — were also significantly reduced by $120,101. In other office expenses, we spent $19,374 less in 2021 compared to 2020.

Our overall result for 2021 was positive, but we are not out of the woods yet. Membership is not yet back to pre-Covid numbers, nor is work 100 percent back. Another variable, which will be addressed in next year’s financial statements, is the many outstanding checks that we were unable to process before closing our books by year’s end. As has been reported here previously, we had significant problems with a new data management system starting in August 2021 and were largely unable to process data in a significant way for the better part of six months. We are now back to KMR, our previous system, but we are still uncovering checks that were not processed due to missing payroll from employers, short staffing, and the data system failure. We are rectifying all these problems by reaching out to employers, restaffing, and training at a furious pace.

For the Finance Department, receiving the PPP loan forgiveness was the most significant event of 2021, allowing us the flexibility to begin to rehire again and better serve the needs of the membership.

Thanks to Alla Emelianova for assisting with this report.