The Musicians’ Union has launched the Work Not Play Campaign.

• The purpose of the campaign is to raise public awareness about the growing trend of professional musicians not being paid for their work. As well as being a place where musicians can share their stories and experiences, we are also encouraging people to sign up for updates.

• This means that next time there is a situation like Café Rouge getting musicians to work for free, we will be able to send an email out to all supporters – who will then be able to start tweeting about the offending venue/organisation.

• That, coupled with the ‘name and shame’ section on the website, is aimed at putting pressure on those who don’t pay musicians a fair wage.

• Since the Olympics lots of MU members have been asking us to tackle the non payment issues – and the hope is that this website and twitter campaign will provide more of a useful hub for this issue that the various facebook pages that have sprung up recently.

The FAQs might be helpful in answering any queries:

http://www.worknotplay.co.uk/faqs/