AN INJURY TO ONE IS AN INJURY TO ALL

The Cleveland Orchestra is going to establish a 3 week residency in Miami. The 10 year agreement with the new Miami Performing Arts center is now official. Musicians in Seattle & Salt Lake City are making nonunion recordings for films. The Philadelphia Orchestra has come up with a radical new way to pay musicians for recordings. The Montreal Symphony is going on strike, citing no raises since 1991 as one reason for going out on strike. The Columbus Symphony just accepted cuts. Veteran musicians in Seattle and Portland are being fired for possibly questionable reasons.

What do all these have in common with each other? They are all examples of the old union adage ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’.

In this hyper-competitive, dog-eat-dog profession it is natural to want to push your way to success. But we all should also consider the consequences of these kind of actions to the industry as a whole.

Cleveland in Florida? Great! But what about the Florida Philharmonic? This orchestra collapsed in 2003 and there are musicians in Miami who are suffering from lack of work. Doesn’t this undercut them? Shouldn’t the Cleveland Orchestra musicians be refusing to participate in digging the grave of the long-suffering Florida Philharmonic musicians livelihood? ? Talk about the haves and the have-nots. (The rich get richer............)

Musicians making nonunion recordings? Nice work if you can get it. But what about the people in LA who depend on that work for a living? These folks aren’t suffering as much as the Florida Phil. musicians..... yet! But just wait. There’s going to be suffering there too. Courtesy of AFM musician who are doing non-union work that undercuts fellow union members- albeit in another local.

Philadelphia finds new way to make recordings? Intriguing! But now we see that the management in Boston wants to copycat this agreement, and the musicians in Montreal are being scolded because they want to be paid for recordings the way they have been paid for years- with a nationally negotiated AFM recording contract- BEFORE we know if this new model will work! Sure, the International (AFM) agreed to the Philadelphia terms- but shouldn’t they have made an agreement that covers ALL AFM musicians? The way it stands now, there’s going to be a dogfight and it ain’t going to be pretty. How can our union subject it’s members to the drip-drip torture of an orchestra-by-orchestra series of negotiations that pit one local against another.

Columbus takes cuts to ‘save the organization’? Boy, that sounds familiar. The Honolulu Symphony has taken cut after cut for the last 15 years. We’re down to a 30 week season from a high of 42 weeks in 1991, the weekly pay is down too. Yet oddly enough, we’re still not yet saved, and in fact are currently in what possibly might be our worst crisis ever. Yet, we and other peer orchestras that have taken cuts are being held up as examples of how cuts are good in the long run. We should have considered the impact on the industry as a whole before we agreed to cuts. The line in the sand needs to be drawn somewhere.

Musicians fired? That’s fine for young talent hoping for job openings. But what about when they get middle-aged. Won’t they want fair tenure guarantees then? And what does that do for orchestra unity- both artistically and in the realm of working together effectively in other ways. Isn’t that the point of these kind of firings- to demoralize the musicians and create dissent so that management and music director can have more power and control?

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My point is that in the current situation where the orchestra business is reeling with change and there are questions of even whether they are relevant to 21st century America, can we afford to be making decisions that adversely affect our brethren, our industry? Won’t be be the next head on the chopping block possibly be yours- or mine?

When the musicians of one orchestra agree to cuts, that affects musicians in other orchestras as managers like to compare situations. (Funny how when a peer orchestra gets a raise that usually fails to get similar attention from management.)

When the musicians of one orchestra agree to participate in a three week, ten year residency that not only undercuts but could be the final death knell to fellow union members, that’s selfish and thoughtless. Shame on them.

An injury to one is an injury to all.

We all should remember that timeworn adage, and should encourage our union officials and orchestra committees to remember it, too. Especially important is for old geezers like me to pass this knowledge on to the younger generation so that they don’t unwittingly allow the gains our profession has made over the past few decades to erode.

I personally think that the International (AFM) needs to be more assertive and to encourage unanimity, not competition, between locals, but that’s fodder for another blog.