mayday!
La Cieca has obtained a copy of the NYCO shop letter from AGMA:Â
MAY 18th at 6PM
SAVE THE DATE – TO SAVE YOUR JOB
AGMA represented artists at New York City Opera will have to make some basic decisions that, for all intents and purposes, may determine whether or not you will continue to work for NYCO and, ultimately, whether or not NYCO can survive.
We have scheduled a meeting of the entire AGMA shop for May 18th at 6 PM. The participants at that meeting will determine whether we should enter into early negotiations with NYCO or, alternatively, whether we should pursue litigation to resist NYCO’s attempt to re-open the contract.
If you determine that we should negotiate, NYCO would agree to wait to conclude an agreement with us until after it concludes its negotiations with Local 802, provided that we, in turn, agree to begin negotiations in early June and finish within 15 days following the conclusion of the 802 agreement. Our negotiations with NYCO could lead to a mutually satisfactory contract or to an impasse. If, by the 45th day following the conclusion of the Local 802 negotiations we had not reached an agreement, the contract would terminate. At that point, NYCO could impose its last and final offer to us, and we could decide to strike.
It is highly unlikely that NYCO could survive a strike by AGMA. Although we all share the hope that we will be able to find a way in which to assist NYCO’s resurrection, members will ultimately have to determine whether to tolerate working under a terrible contract or force NYCO to choose between maintaining our current guarantees or go out of business.
Although AGMA will do everything possible to assure that our members do not suffer because of decades of mismanagement, given the changes that George Steel wants to make in our contract, members are advised that the possibility of a strike against NYCO is likely.
In his first year, with only five operas, these are Steel’s plans: Eliminate the 26 week guarantee of work for the chorus; reduce the size of the chorus; eliminate the continuity of employment and, instead, pay choristers only when they are working; reduce medical coverage and eliminate paid family coverage, eliminate weekly soloists; eliminate Associate Chorus recall rights; eliminate production staff employment guarantees, reduce the number of production staff members and reduce the work available to whichever production staff members remain.
As you all know, the ultimate question for any union and its members is whether to work under an employer-imposed contract that eliminates previously hard-won guarantees, protections and financial and professional rewards or, instead, to engage in a job action that has the likelihood of closing down the employer forever. As we’ve said, it is unlikely that NYCO can survive an AGMA strike and the attendant negative publicity that will impact projected ticket sales.
For those of you who think of your work at NYCO as a full time job, George Steel has said that, if he has his way, employment at NYCO would no longer be sufficient to constitute full time work.
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This meeting is your opportunity to help determine the future of work at NYCO and the continued existence of NYCO itself. . If you don’t attend, don’t complain about the result.
Come on, AGMA,….do eveyone a favor and put NYCO AND it’s idiot of a General Manager OUT OF THEIR MISERY!!! I bet Mr. Steele has full medical coverage for himself and his family…and after all, who needs trained, professional choristers with repertoire and experience …. and stage managers who know what they’re doing …. ?? You can hire singers, choristers and production staff show by show …. and put on a show like Mickey and Judy did …. in a barn…..won’t it be fun!!!??? Hell, why don’t you do a season with NO CHORUS, NO BALLET ….. two pianos …. and Mr. Steele can call the shows himself!!!
oh, AGMA (and by AGMA I mean Alan Gordon and those aged NYCO choristers) –
Same old saber rattling, name calling and ugly screaming.
AGMA as an institution doesn’t want NYCO to survive. AGMA still thinks it’s the 80’s when there was money for companies to spend. It’s a new economy and a new way in which these companies have to work. Guarantees may not be part of it. And, as many of us know, paid health insurance is no longer a g*d given right by employees.
I think AGMA and the choristers that are whipping up all this hate – should dissolve. Let the company do what it needs to in order to survive. Participate if you’d like in its success (if that’s possible). But, otherwise shut your holes.
Sorry ….. guess it’s STEEL not STEELE.
Lemmings.
As a sttudent of the Union movement in this Country, and as someone who has walked MANY picket-lines as well, I can not recall another instance where the Union prepped their rank-and-file with the statement that a strike would very likely put their employer out of business–and yet still seemed to be calling for that action.(yea, businesses have, in the past shut-down for good after a prolonged labor-dispute-but this seems to be a “horse of a different color”)
Very dismaying…and equally dismaying that NYCO isn’t saying much in their own defense, right now….
So, Alan Gordon wants all or nothing. He would be a perfect mafioso. He needs go get real and realize that some of us would rather tighten our belts and keep our jobs in world-wide hard times rather than end up on a bread line. George Steel didn’t make the financial mess the world is in. He’s trying to keep the doors open. Alan Gordon is trying to shut them.
At the end of the day, Alan Gordon will still have a job, but what about us?
Organized labor has been much more sensitive to the danger of government power and much more aware of ideological issues. Its spokesmen have fought the government in proper, morally confident terms whenever they saw a threat to their rights. (To name a few examples of such occasions: the attempt at labor conscription in World War II, the issue of U.S. contributions to the Soviet-dominated International Labor Organization, President Kennedy’s attempt to impose guidelines in the steel crisis of 1962.) Labor’s concern was aroused only in defense of its rights; still, whoever defends his own rights defends the rights of all. But labor was pursuing a contradictory policy, which could not be maintained for long. In many issues—notably in its support of welfare-state legislation—labor violated the rights of others and fertilized the growth of the government’s power. And, today, labor is in line to become the next major victim of advancing statism.
It was business, not labor, that initiated the policy of government intervention in the economy (as long ago as the nineteenth century)—and business was the first victim. Labor adopted the same policy and will meet the same fate. He who lives by a legalized sword, will perish by a legalized sword.
a smaller chorus??? in *that* barn???
Very interesting. Hopefully everyone understands that all of this is just posturing on the part of both AGMA and NYCO. In the end, it is in everyone’s best interest to reach an amicable compromise, which will require some creative thinking. Speaking of creative thinking, here’s a great example from Baltimore’s Musicians Union in today’s Washington Post:
“In today’s economic climate, it’s become almost routine for orchestras and opera companies to cut staff and budgets. But it’s far from routine for an orchestra’s musicians to volunteer a cut of their own accord. Yesterday, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced that its players had unanimously agreed to forgo wage and pension rate increases and other promised elements of their 2009-10 contract packages, taking an 8 percent cut to make what amounts to a $1 million donation to the orchestra. The donation was presented in the form of a challenge grant.”
Fascinating that after reading what Steele supposedly wants (and there is no reason Gordon would lie to his own membership in an informational email) – the complete decimation of the existing contract – that posters here still feel it’s the Union that wants to destroy NYCO.