Negotiations

I. In response to Eric Anderson’s opening comment:

As has already been noted, we all bring different experiences to the discussion. I have only ever heard one manager (thankfully long gone from the field) espouse the philosophy that his goal was “to present performances at the least possible cost.” Boards and Management in general want to give their musicians the best deal they can afford, and want to structure the work in a way that maximizes opportunities to create revenues (of course, there is plenty of room to disagree about what “they can afford”). Every orchestra strategic planning process that I have been part of has included some form of “investing more money in the orchestra” as an organizational strategy. And I can honestly say that I’ve never seen a single case where musicians were invited to serve on a committee as a tool to keep musicians happy and in their place or divide the musicians against themselves.

II. General comments

In my experience negotiations focus much more on what I would call tactics, not strategy. We focus primarily on incremental changes from what we are doing now. I don’t think the bargaining table is the right place to introduce a major shift in strategy for the organization. It may well be the right place to discuss how to implement strategy, and it may even be the place where we find that a planned strategy proves unworkable, but I don’t see it as the right place to develop the strategy itself. And many strategic goals take more than a single bargaining cycle to accomplish.

I also think that musicians should look at strategic plans as providing another layer of accountability, always for management and board and at times for the music director as well. If the organization fails to achieve its strategic goals, and comes back to the musicians saying, “sorry, we can’t afford what we thought we were going to be able to afford” the musicians have every right to be asking “who didn’t do their job?” and “why should we believe they’re going to do any better next time around?”

As for the issue of “excessive staff and salaries, rip-off arts consultants and facilitators,” again I can only speak from personal experience. Orchestra staffs are by and large made up of talented people working very hard for less money than they deserve (sounds familiar, right?), and in most cases less money than they could make somewhere else. If Management is coming to its musicians saying we’re in trouble, you need to “sacrifice” they should be willing to talk about what is being spent on staff and consultants, and how these expenses are benefitting the organization. Five years ago we made a decision here in Dayton to double the size of both our marketing and development departments. It would be perfectly reasonable for the musicians to ask me whether these new positions are really necessary, and making a positive contribution to the amount of money we have available to put into the orchestra.