From the ROPA mailing list.

Symphony, Musicians Reach Tentative Contract

By MATTHEW ERIKSON
Courant Staff Writer

September 10 2005

At a time of budget cuts and a persistent deficit for the Hartford Symphony
Orchestra, its board of directors is expected to ratify a one-year contract
agreement announced Thursday by its musicians and management. When approved,
the contract would be in place in time for the orchestra’s 2005-06 season
beginning Sept. 23 with its first Masterworks concert.

Contract negotiations among the 14-member team of orchestra musicians, the
Hartford Symphony senior staff and the American Federation of Musicians,
Local 400 began in March and extended past an original due date of June 14.
Tentative agreement was reached Aug. 16, and accepted in a vote by the
musicians last week.

The one-year agreement is unusual. Past HSO contracts have been for three-
or four-year terms. The new contract includes less work for players than
last year and is similar to the schedule of 2003-04. Compared with last
season, the reduced number of “services” (defined as concerts, rehearsal and
other presentations) amounts to a wage cut of between 5.6 percent and 9.2
percent.

Earlier this year the HSO, Connecticut’s largest orchestra, projected a
six-figure deficit for its fiscal year and a cumulative deficit of $1.6
million. (Its annual operating budget is nearly $6 million.) In response,
the orchestra announced a series of budget cuts and major changes to the
2005-06 season. They included canceling some already announced guest
soloists and repertoire, relocating concerts from the Bushnell Center for
the Performing Arts to the University of Hartford campus and the
cancellation of the orchestra’s Rush Hour Classics series.

HSO executive director Charles Owens and music director Edward Cumming have
each volunteered a 10 percent reduction in their salaries. (In the fiscal
year that ended May 31, 2004, Owens’ salary was $105,000. Cumming’s salary
was $150,000. Their salaries for the year May 31, 2005 were not available.)
There have also been major reductions in departmental budgets and in staff
compensation, including several positions which were restructured from
full-time to part-time.

In the meantime, said Owens, the HSO is reassessing its business model and
governance structure, including a rethinking of programming, performance
venues, utilization of musician services and the size of its board of
directors, which is at 67 members. The HSO is working with consultants and
Owens expects a new plan in nine months to a year.

“[The one-year contract] is less about waiting for the environment to change
and more about buying time for our organization to complete the series of
processes that we began,” he said. “We didn’t want to get ahead of
ourselves. We didn’t want to lock ourselves into financial commitments or
types of work rules, or any type of contractual language that would inhibit
our ability to make change.”

According to Ann Drinan, a violist in the Hartford Symphony and a member of
the negotiating team, “the musicians began to feel that [the one-year
contract] was a reasonable approach once we took a good look at the budget
and realized we had a lot of work to do.” Any significant change in the
definition of musicians’ employment, she said, needs to be gradual given the
complexity of musicians’ schedules.

Under the HSO’s pay structure, players are guaranteed a number of services
based on three levels: core, basic and service. Core players, who
essentially make up the HSO’s chamber orchestra, and basic players, who make
up the remainder of the 55-member orchestra, will play in 11 fewer services
next season. (Compensation for a service is $108.18.) For core players, it
means an annual wage of $19,905, a 5.6 percent decrease from last season and
$11,792 for basic players, a 9.2 percent decrease. Service players who come
in periodically for larger repertoire pieces will experience an 8.6 percent
decrease.

The tone of the negotiations was described by Drinan as “blunt but
collegial.” Owens said that the HSO will be in a better position to
negotiate a new contract in the spring that he expects to last for more than
one season.

“I think everyone felt that this was a reasonable starting point,” he said.

Joseph Messina, Hartford Symphony bassist and representative from the
musicians’ union, said, “This agreement spreads the cuts that we felt
necessary in order to preserve for the audience the best possible Hartford
Symphony product on each of the concerts that we’re going to do this
season.”
Copyright 2005, Hartford Courant