If you are offered a contract and are not sure what to do, please do feel free to get in touch with us. Photo: Shutterstock.
In June 2022, the MU included the issues of ‘triggering of effects and AMD pay’ in our claim for West End musicians. These were not dealt with in the negotiations, and SOLT promised that there would be a working group convened swiftly to discuss both issues. Unfortunately, every attempt we made over the next year to begin these talks was met with silence.
In June 2023, given the lack of any engagement at all, we included the issues in our claim again, this time putting a value on these additional duties. During negotiations at ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service), we were told that they would not agree to put a financial value on either of these issues and that this time, a working party would genuinely be created to discuss first triggering, and then AMD pay.
We have now reached an impasse
Once again, we had to wait many months for a meeting and it wasn't until October 2024 when we received the following offer.
“The starting, stopping and/or progressing of click tracks (including those facilitated by systems such as Ableton, QLab and similar) which provide metronome information and/or musical cues, sounds or sequences, shall not incur any additional payment. Where a musician is required to be the sole and direct activator of a separate non-musical technical effect, the musician shall be entitled to an additional weekly payment to be agreed in good faith by the parties.
“In addition, we [SOLT] propose drafting an Appendix that will outline good practice to follow when engaging musicians to trigger non-musical effects, to include how this should be communicated to the musician. We can produce a draft of the Appendix if you agree with this as a way forward.”
When we asked to see a draft of the proposed Appendix, we were told they wouldn’t share it unless we agreed to the principle first. Clearly, we weren’t going to agree to something we had not seen. They will not budge from this position, so we have now reached an impasse.
MU recommendations
Our firm belief is that both musical and non-musical triggering cues should be additional duties to the ‘player’ role, and guidelines for minimum payments must be agreed to protect players from being exploited, or from being coerced into accepting a low payment for what can be very demanding additional work.
Our strong recommendation is that from February 2025, members being offered a new contract should not agree to any work not explicitly covered by the SOLT/MU Agreement. Any triggering of effects should be paid at the rate of a doubling fee per show for musical effects only, and an additional doubling fee per show for non-musical cues.
It is important to stress that this advice is for new shows only – we are not encouraging our members to withdraw from duties for which they already have an arrangement in place – this could be a breach of your individual contracts.
Our belief is that without this payment, stage managers are best placed to trigger lighting effects etc, and MDs should trigger the musical cues.
The producers have been told this will be our recommendation to our members, and fixers will also be informed to allow them to budget accordingly. If you are offered a contract and are not sure what to do, please do feel free to get in touch with Jamie Pullman, MU London Regional Organiser, via jamie.pullman@themu.org.
Should anything change in the weeks and months to come, we will of course let members know.