Musical Diversity Initiative in Basel: USDAM supports the NO campaign
The Central Committee of the Union Suisse des Artistes Musiciens (USDAM) considers the Basel initiative for musical diversity to be counter-productive.
Of course, USDAM supports the demand for greater musical diversity and better support for the independent music scene, especially if this is to ensure that musicians receive a fair, living wage, which unfortunately is not the case anywhere in Switzerland today.
However, we regard as counter-productive the initiative for musical diversity's move to allocate 30% of the total subsidies allocated to the music sector to the independent scene in Basel, without being aware of the consequences for the institutions' permanent - and often also self-employed - employees in the event of a corresponding reduction in their subsidies.
Basel's orchestras, which are uniquely diverse in Switzerland, employ a large number of freelance musicians, who will be the first to suffer from the reduction in funding, which will also lead to staff cuts among permanent musicians.
As a musicians' union, how would we position ourselves in the face of such developments? These are very likely to occur, since to our knowledge no political commitment has yet been made regarding the necessary increase in global subsidies for music. Moreover, such an increase, if it were to take place, could prove problematic from a union point of view, if only one cultural sector (music) were to be favored, and not the others.
This is why the Central Committee of the Swiss Union of Musicians (USDAM) has decided to support the campaign for a NO vote on this initiative, not only to protect the workplaces of our orchestra bound by a collective bargaining agreement, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, but also to protect the various commitments of our freelance members as supplementary members in this orchestra and as permanent or intermittent members in all the other Basel orchestras (Chamber Orchestra, Sinfonietta, La Cetra, etc.). We arrived at this position precisely because the USDAM is the union not only for permanent professional musicians in Switzerland, but also for freelancers. The canton of Basel-Stadt is in a good financial position and might be able to mitigate the effects of the initiative if it were accepted, but this is not the case for other Swiss cantons if they were to follow such an example.
