Stupid Union News #123436

From the Las Vegas Sun: "When Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns and assorted Las Vegas big-band musicians put on their rollicking music showcases at the Tropicana each week, everyone’s happy.
The assembled musicians, given the opportunity to play for scores of avid late-night fans, are happy.
Those who attend the free Monday night performances at Tiffany Theatre and Celebration Lounge -- many of them musicians themselves -- are happy.
Tropicana hotel executives, who pay scant wages to Santa Fe & The Fat City Horns to compensate the musicians and reap the benefits of a few hundred potential gamblers and drinkers each Monday, are happy, too.
But officials with the Las Vegas Musicians Union Local 369 … not so happy.
In a skirmish likely to unplug the late-night jams that follow the Santa Fe performances at Tiffany Theatre, the Las Vegas Musicians Union has sent letters to member musicians who participate in the post-show performances at Celebration Lounge to stop playing. Union President Frank Leone said the union began contacting musicians this week, asking them to cease playing in the hour-long showcases.
“We’re simply asking our members not to do this,” Leone said. “We understand the big-band musicians who want to have some place to play, but we can’t condone it happening in a Strip casino that is the beneficiary from liquor sales and ancillary playing -- people who stroll over to the machines in the casino -- and the musicians are not getting compensated.”"
So, you have musicians wanting to play for free or minimally compensated and they play for their friends and customers and they are doing it voluntarily. But the union says, no, no, no. We don't want you to play because we are the union and we are the law.
So, who wins? No one. Who loses? The musicians because they lose a place to play and in Las Vegas, it is very difficult for a band to find a place to play. It also hurts the musicians because it is a place for them to be discovered so they have a chance to play in the big shows in Vegas. The customers lose because they won't be able to listen to true jam sessions. The casinos don't lose because the customers already are in the casino.
So, the local musician union show why unions have become pretty much irrelevant and are tone deaf. No one was being harmed and the only one's who look like fools is the union.