I don’t know about you, but the constant and persistent stream of terrible ideas, misinformation and utter lies blowing up my phone on an hourly basis has me yearning for the relatively halcyon days of two months ago when we didn’t have to think about the government every minute of every day. Instead of dwelling on that and to give us all a small break, I’d like to report on some positive advances in our union. While you may not realize the importance of the day-to-day goings on at Local 802, everyone certainly notices when things don’t function, whether it’s our Web site, access to staff, or receiving critical notifications in a timely manner. A considerable component of our responsibilities as officers is to do our best to ensure the most efficient service possible. With that in mind, here is a preliminary round up of what’s been going on in my corner of Local 802 operations (other than contract negotiations, which I will report on next month). As mandated by our bylaws, our audited financial statements will be published in Allegro in late spring.

FINANCE AND MEMBERSHIP

Keeping our membership numbers up is going to be of critical importance over the next four years. Our strength is in our union density — in other words, the number of people in our profession who are union members. Without a high percentage of union members, we simply will not have the power to fight back when we are attacked, and we are always being attacked. I’m afraid the recent hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center is just the beginning of a very challenging four years for the arts. This is not the time to curl up and let someone else fight or to go it alone. Please remember to keep your membership active so we can continue to indeed be “stronger together.”

Our income from basic membership dues was slightly higher than the previous year for the period January 2024 to November 2024. Our total number of members was 5,846 as of December 31, 2024. Income from membership dues has increased about 2 percent which is tracking with the yearly trend since the pandemic.

Our total income, including work dues and realized gains from investments has increased about 5 percent since last year.

Personnel expenditures — always our biggest expense — are up 6 percent. Due to our tight budget, we had to lay off some staff members at the end of 2024. Therefore, our personnel expenditures in the first quarter of 2025 will be a bit lower than the previous quarter.

Our finance team is currently working on our yearly audit, which is always a major undertaking and especially challenging this year. If you require anything from our finance department, please allow a little extra time for us to fulfill your request.

Although our building renovation was put on hold in November, most of the demolition has already occurred. We had been planning on using $2 million of our own funds for the project; In December, we liquidated $1 million to pay for the work that has been completed. To protect as much capital as possible, we borrowed the money from the strike fund rather than our general fund. As you may know, the money in our strike fund is invested in CD’s, which keeps them relatively liquid as well as less likely to lose principal in a market downturn. By retaining assets in investments, we hope to continue to see some good returns. Rest assured that we remain financially prepared for a strike in the event those funds are needed.

OUR I.T. DEPARTMENT

Just as our building was in desperate need of major upgrades, so was our technology. We nearly had a catastrophic failure of our computer system a few weeks ago, when one of our very old and outdated servers failed. Thanks to our excellent I.T team working into the wee hours of the morning, our backup system worked, our data remained safe, and we had no interruption of service. We are now 100 percent “in the cloud.” This has saved us over $250,000 by not having to keep our files on site in our aging hardware. Migrating to the cloud was not only cheaper but more secure, allowing us to increase storage as needed, and is far more efficient than our old system. We also upgraded the back end of our Web site, which was running out of memory and frequently crashing.

Stay safe out there, friends. Put down the phone. Breathe.