No it’s a bargaining tactic. We won’t work for a dismal wage. It makes a statement. This failure is worth a lot.
They filed chapter 7. It’s gone. Many symphonies around the US are struggling with money. If your income can’t pay the bills, you can’t operate. This isn’t the first one to shut down and it won’t be the last. Patronage is declining.
It will take a few of these to make the point and that’s okay. If the free market isn’t willing to pay a reasonable wage (which was already dismal at $36,000), then we just won’t have symphonies for now.
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.
Are you hoping the new symphony isn't unionized, or are you saying that after the parasite killed its host, you hope it finds a new healthier host?
You're going to defend an organization that can't stay solvent when it is paying its workers a whopping 25K per year? Really?
As the article points out, Lubbock, a much smaller city, doesn't seem to have a problem with paying their unionized musicians or staying solvent.
They filed chapter 7. It’s gone. Many symphonies around the US are struggling with money. If your income can’t pay the bills, you can’t operate. This isn’t the first one to shut down and it won’t be the last. Patronage is declining.
It will take a few of these to make the point and that’s okay. If the free market isn’t willing to pay a reasonable wage (which was already dismal at $36,000), then we just won’t have symphonies for now.
The vast majority of symphonies in the US aren't full time, like most performing artist jobs in the US. There are well more than 1,000 symphonies in the US and only something like a couple dozen that are full time; San Antonio was notable in that it was. The free market supports many symphonies that pay 4 digit "salaries" (often they're paid per-service) per year. But they're only working a few days per month. San Antonio was trying to cut back, but negotiation didn't work out. This wasn't a free market decision to disappear, it was a labor negotiations decision.
If your income can't pay the bill, then society as whole must think about it's useful to keep you alive or not. There is another world outside the economical one.
I look forward to hearing the argument that society should indefinitely bankroll large symphony orchestras at good salaries, but I am skeptical that it would actually convince people. It seems to me that outside of the very rich and the very old, the popularity of classical music has dramatically among audiences. "Think of the oboeists!" is not necessarily a winning campaign slogan. I mean it when I say that I hope t…
Attitudes about this vary a good bit depending on where you're at around the globe.