agma “likely” to strike nyco
The American Guild of Musical Artists said in a memo to members that “given the changes that George Steel wants to make in our contract, members are advised that the possibility of a strike against New York City Opera is likely.” At issue is what AGMA characterizes as Steel’s intention to eliminate guarantees of work for chorus and production staff. [via Bloomberg News]
Any AGMA members out there willing to forward a copy of the memo to lacieca@parterre.com?
Those of you who do not work at City Opera, even though you feel perfectly free to comment about the on-going situation there, are obviously not aware of the fact that at NYCO each seperate part of the bargaining unit is represented on the negotiating committee and each votes seperately on the contract. Any of those groups, the soloists, the chorus, the associate chorus, the stange managers and assistants, the dancers, and the Director and assistants can by majority vote, ratify or hold up the ratification of the entire contract.
Those of you who identify yourselves as soloists also have to be aware that part of Steel’s plan is to essentially eliminate all of the weekly soloists and, instead, spend NYCO’s money on hiring a few ‘name’ soloists in the hope that they will attract ticket buyers.
Obviously no sane person would actually want to close down NYCO if there was an acceptable alternative. But in considering how much of their contract to give up, each of our groups of members at NYCO need to be aware, in making that determination, of the possibility that all the concessions in the world might not matter. What good is a NYCO job where people are contractually bound to a position that does not pay a living wage, makes it almost impossible to earn income from another source, and no longer covers healthcare for one’s spouse or children? No job at all might be the better option.
In any event, it’s not AGMA’s professional staff or it’s lawyers who determine what AGMA will do…it’s those of our members, in all job categories, in any particular shop that determine whether to negotiate, when to negotiate, what to negotiate, how to negotiate and whether or not to ratify a contract.
Finally, please don’t confuse the possibility of an AGMA strike with the Writers Guild strike or the potential SAG strike. In the movie business, those unions are run by their professional staffs and a handful of elected leaders. AGMA is run by its members. Moreover, both the WGA and SAG focus on getting even more money for people who already earn unimaginable amounts. If the AGMA-represented employees at NYCO ever decided to strike, it would be to maintain their basic self respect.
Ofcourse we’ll eventually negotiate with NYCO and I’m sure that if NYCO is reasonable those negotiations will result in reasonable compromises. If NYCO’s unreasonable, that will be a different story. Most of our negotiations with the companies that employ our members, although adversarial in nature, are based on, and conducted on, mutual respect. In those few recent instances where employers have been wholly unreasonable and tried to destroy contractual protections, we have developed as an institutional philosophy that those companies will exist under reasonable contracts that provide reasonable wages, reasonable working conditions, and reasonable protections for their employees…or they will not exist at all.
That’s the position our members have wanted us to take, and that’s our position at NYCO.
Alan S. Gordon
Executive Director, American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO
@ #60
I um… believe this was already iterated in a brilliant post around #19…
Ha, sinnst du Verrat?
Verrat am Vertrag?…
Verträgen halte Treu’!
Was du bist,
bist du nur durch Verträge;
bedungen ist,
wohl bedacht deine Macht.
In other words: contracts are not worth the paper they are written on!
Comment #55 incorrectly states that Florida Grand Opera is in bankrupcy, calling again the question of just how accurate, thoughtful, and smart many web posters actually are. FGO is currently completing its 68th season with a production of Madama Butterfly.
Alto: I think you are using a faulty comparison. A chorus is not a group of soloists; it is more reasonably comparable to the opera orchestra. Singers choose a solo career knowing (or should be knowing) that they are taking higher risks for the opportunity to achieve greater glory and (possibly) more artistic fulfillment.
So, while we’re at it, why not just disband the NYCO orchestra? It’s easy enough to find a pickup band in New York, and if you lower your musical standards enough, you can even get people who can scratch out some kind of noise for as low as minimum wage.
Not like an orchestra either, unfortunately, because not every opera calls for a chorus! Yes it would be ideal to have them paid a salary all year to sit around, but I don’t see how they will be able to do that right now.
Having an ‘ad-hoc’ chorus for a couple of years is not so bad an artistic slide as having a pick-up orchestra instead of a house orchestra.
A synopsis of Gordon’s message:
“Zo not blame me! Blame ze collektiv!”
Hands to your hearts, everybody!
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I have to say that the anti-chorus sentiments professed by Togu and C.Dupin are in Togu’s case anti-collegeal (I’d hate to work on stage with him, as he sneered at the “choristers” behind him), in Dupin’s case naive and disrespectful to the profession, and in both rather disgusting in their elitism – they read like “all we care about are the soloists anyway – who needs a decently paid chorus?” Neither of you seem to understand that perhaps the Union is trying to negotiate in good faith, and Steele is giving them nothing in return.
And the board is still a useless mess. Maybe they should start living up to their responsibilities.
“Certainly Madame Shane never sang at La Scala as Lauren did.”
Uh WRONG. Rita Shane DID sing at Scala. She sang Fiakermilli with Sawallisch conducting as her debut, amongst other things.
Don’t state things as true unless you know the facts.
Flaningan shenaningans laid waste to her career through long time behavioral problems and emotional issues with every single company she worked at (some which I witnessed first hand both in the rehearsal room as well as on stage), she was dropped by or left virtually every manager in the business as she either refused or “forgot” to pay her commissions. Things got so bad that she infamously declared bankruptcy (about her only claim to a Warholian attempt at fame.) She frequently showed up to jobs with music completely unlearned, and had to be drilled by repititeurs in order to get it in her head, all the way along making mistakes (again, witnessed first hand.) She was of course, not invited back to companies after exhibiting this behavior.
The list of her negatives is long and widely understood as fact in the industry, so your attempts to whitewash her image and to purport her as some sort of savior of NYCO is laughable.
squirrel: Yes, you have a very accurate picture of how opera houses work. The only time the chorus shows up is five minutes before they are to go onstage, and the rest of their time on clock is spent hanging out in the green room smoking cigarettes and watching soap operas. As is well known, choristers are born knowing the music to stuff like Margaret Garner and Cendrillon and everyone just makes up his own staging for Candide and Cavelleria Rusticana.