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The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

sasymphony.org

11–20 of 86 posts

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#11

If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?

Seems like the base full time wage would have been 24k, with many of the positions changed to part time at 11k/year with no benefits.

So, maybe? McDonald's will likely have better compensation.

https://www.afm.org/2021/09/san-antonio-symphony-musicians-d...

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#12

If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?

> If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?

Who says they aren't? The people I've known working in the arts very often have multiple jobs, even if one of them is notionally “full time”, usually at least one of the jobs is a personal business. Performers very often are tutors/teachers of the same kind of performance.

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#14

If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?

And if this symphony dies and takes its Board of Directors with it perhaps the city of San Antonio can get a symphony and people running it who can actually pay the bills.

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#15
post #3
post #2

Seems to be some background here: https://sanantonioreport.org/san-antonio-symphony-2021-2022-...

Honestly from this article nobody comes off looking great: there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side, and management acting in bad faith and firing the conductor out of spite on the other. Pity.

> there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side

In what way? The article specifically cites Lubbock (a significantly smaller city) as managing to handle paying their musicians and being fiscally solvent.

This doesn't seem to be an unsolvable problem yet the current Board of Directors can't seem to pull it off.

Let it go bankrupt. Surely someone will want to put a symphony together and they can avoid all the baggage.

Or not. And that will say something as well, no?

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#16
post #3
post #2

Seems to be some background here: https://sanantonioreport.org/san-antonio-symphony-2021-2022-...

Honestly from this article nobody comes off looking great: there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side, and management acting in bad faith and firing the conductor out of spite on the other. Pity.

> there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side

Maybe the "fiscal reality" is that they can use this time to do better things which maybe are also paid better.

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#18
post #3
post #2

Seems to be some background here: https://sanantonioreport.org/san-antonio-symphony-2021-2022-...

Honestly from this article nobody comes off looking great: there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side, and management acting in bad faith and firing the conductor out of spite on the other. Pity.

I don't think the musicians come off looking bad.

They were skilled employees at a business. The business decided to substantially cut half the employees' salaries from $36,000 to $24,000 and demote the other half to part time workers making only about $10k per year. The employees did not accept this. Nothing about that speaks ill of the employees.

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#19

If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?

For this tiny group of people, maybe and even that’s not guaranteed. Not worth giving up collective bargaining power, reasonable hours and benefits for over the long term.

Re: The Board of Directors Announces the Dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony

#20
post #9
post #8

It's important to remember that this is a statement made by one party to a dispute, not a neutral statement of facts. It's unclear whether any of the claims made in the statement are true, or whether this is an intentionally destructive response to hard bargaining by the musicians.

Either way, they’re shutting down. That’s not really a bargaining tactic. It’s failure mode.

No it’s a bargaining tactic. We won’t work for a dismal wage. It makes a statement. This failure is worth a lot.
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