OK I have a story to tell:
Played around the state for three years in the early 80's and built up a following that averaged at about 800 punters per show 3 and 4 nights a week. None of us were in the Musicians union and none of the venues we played required us to be.
Then one day we score the support for the reformed Mk2 Deep Purple. 25,000 at an outdoor venue. We were to get $650 for the support which was all good because the extra publicity is hard (or expensive) to buy. The $650 was enough to cover the cost of the crew and incidentals for the show.
20mins before we were due to go on a small fat bald guy with a bad attitude comes up as we were warming up and says "hey, are you guys in the union lets see some cards".
We politely say no, we have never been or needed to be in the union.
He then bluntly tells us that if we are not in the union then this is a Union controlled venue and no non union members can play here.
Our manager John says "OK well what do we have to do to become members?"
He gets us to fill out some forms and charges us $150 each ($750).he then proceeds to inform us that as he is aware that we have been playing around the place for longer than 12 months that he will be charging back fees for last financial year. So far we are up to $1500.
This is minutes before when we are trying to get ourselves ready to play in front of 25,000 people!
Well we still figured that it was worth the publicity even though it was now gonna cost us $850.
5 mins to go and the promoter walks in and informs us that as we are are now union members and we were not when the contract was signed that he is no longer bound by the contract and as union members he was only required to pay us the Minimum fee as laid out in the Unions conditions of engagement.
He paid us $150
Thanks to the incredible protection of the Musicians Union we went from doing a show at a break even rate and getting a lot of cheap publicity to paying $1350 to support Deep Purple.
Thanks guys