Rams Face the Music in Battle Over Bands

The Los Angeles Rams must decide by today whether to accept a settlement, or face a formal complaint and hearing from the National Labor Relations Board, in a dispute over the team’s switch last summer from union to non-union musicians for home games.

Under the settlement, proposed by the NLRB, the Rams would pay the union musicians who were put out of work for the season and would agree to bargain in good faith in the future. “They’re supposed to let me know,” said Neil Warheit, an NLRB Region 21 field attorney who investigated the complaint filed by Orange County Musicians’ Assn. Local 7.

Rams officials did not return phone calls to The Times on Tuesday. As outlined, the settlement would cost the team almost $25,000 in payments to 22 musicians for 11 home games, plus an undisclosed sum in benefits. The 22 musicians would have made $102 plus benefits for each of three exhibition games and eight regular season games.

If the Rams reject the settlement, the NLRB will issue a formal complaint and schedule a hearing before an administrative judge, to be held in two to three months, Warheit said. Charges against the Rams, according to Warheit, would include failure to bargain in good faith, refusal to provide information to the union and discriminating against employees because of union activity.

The Rams broke off negotiations with the union in July after the union refused to reduce the size of the band from 22 members to 15, which Rams officials said would have saved them about $1,000 per game.

The team then assembled a band of 22 non-union musicians, including some Cal State Long Beach students. Some of those musicians have said they were paid $50 per game, about half the union rate and not including benefits provided under union contracts.

For the previous 10 years, the team had contracted with professional players from the musicians’ union.

During the Rams’ three home exhibition games last summer, the union hired a plane to tow a banner over Anaheim Stadium reading “Georgia and the Rams Unfair to Union Musicians” (a reference to Rams owner Georgia Frontiere). “We thought that would be more visible than pickets,” local president Frank Amoss said.

The union filed charges alleging unfair labor practices with the NLRB Oct. 12. The Rams then moved to reopen negotiations, according to Amoss, but turned down a union-proposed compromise of an 18-piece band, sticking with its demands for a reduction to 15 members.

Talks broke off again, with union officials deciding to wait for results of the NLRB investigation, which was concluded early this month.