Detroit Musicians: We'll Strike to Save Our Orchestra

Musicians of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) voted August 28 to reject both management’s “final” and “almost final” offers in contract negotiations now ongoing for a year and a half. The vote by members of American Federation of Musicians Local 5 was also a strike vote, and a strike is likely.

Though the terms of management’s Proposal A were severely onerous (a 28 percent pay cut, for example), negotiators said that if it was turned down, only the punitive Proposal B would be on the table. The pay cut would grow to 33 percent and musicians would be effectively “at will” employees.

The musicians, in turn, have offered an unprecedented 22 percent pay cut, for a contract designed to be as concessionary as possible while still retaining a modicum of stature—and hope for the future. Their proposal represents $9 million in savings over three years.

But management has refused to move off its demand for a 32 percent cut in the overall cost of the musicians’ current contract. Musicians say such drastic pay cuts would make the DSO unable to attract top-notch new players and drop the orchestra far out of its traditional top-ten placement among major American orchestras.

Beyond severe pay cuts, management has many other steep demands. Among them:

• Reduce the orchestra from 96 to 85 musicians.
• Freeze pensions.
• Sharply reduce health care coverage.
• Institute a three-tier wage scale with significantly lower pay for substitutes and new hires. This proposal would see the entry wage plummet 42 percent.
• Make a sweeping revision of job descriptions. In a given week, musicians would be required to teach, to perform alone or in small groups wherever management might send them, and even to carry out non-playing duties such as library work, public speaking, or fundraising. While musicians already participate in many such activities, often on a volunteer basis, forcing them into these roles would also put the DSO at a great disadvantage in the competition for top talent.
• Remove the safeguard of a peer review committee for a musician who is not renewed for reasons of musical competence. Peer-reviewed tenure protection is standard in the symphonic field and functions fairly and efficiently.
• Remove the musicians' role in ensuring that only guest conductors rated above average are engaged. Management would be able to use guest conductors rated below average.

Management Shoots Self in Foot

The musicians view management’s position as adding insult to injury because many of the orchestra’s financial difficulties were caused by administration blunders. They point to long-term errors such as the loss of Meadow Brook, the orchestra’s suburban summer venue for nearly three decades. Instead of rebuilding a fiscally viable summer season, management now seeks to permanently eliminate summer weeks from the contract. Since virtually every top-ten American orchestra has a 52-week season, this move alone would destroy Detroit’s high-ranking status.

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Another mistake, costly enough to more than pay for the difference between the two sides’ offers, was the faulty financing of the Max M. Fisher Center, a $60 million addition to Orchestra Hall. Though in a position to almost completely defray construction costs, management gambled on a burgeoning economy in 2003 and floated bonds. When the economy tanked, the loan payments, combined with higher operating costs, created a burden of nearly $3 million a year. Now, a bank consortium is threatening to foreclose.

For even more misfortune, the administration brought on board a new management shortly before the economy collapsed which has proven distinctly non-entrepreneurial. Ungifted at generating new income or projects, this management has increasingly turned to cutting costs as a means of finance. Symptoms of this toxic philosophy include an accelerating loss of musicians and management staff to other orchestras and organizations, a belligerent division among musicians, management staff, and the board of directors, and now a probable strike.

In fact, a strike would likely be under way by now except for yet another management error. The tardy filing of a 30-day-notice form with the Department of Labor caused an extension of the current contract to September 23, a cost to management of nearly $700,000. It does not take a genius to guess how management is dealing with the price tag of this error: they want to deduct it from the musicians’ next contract.

Visit the musicians here. Please ask DSO Chairman of the Board Stanley Frankel to help the musicians save the orchestra. Write to him at stanleyfrankel [at] detroitsymphonymusicians [dot] org.

Doug Cornelsen, clarinetist, is vice president of the Detroit Federation of Musicians, Local 5.