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.
For the people who are attempting to call me on my “outrageous” statements, and who obviously don’t live in New York: poverty level in New York City is determined at a much higher wage than the national level because it costs ten times more to live here than anywhere else in the country, and the way the city determines poverty level for funding of federal housing and food stamps is around the UPPER TIER City Opera level wages.
People who make 40,000 a year here don’t live in the city directly, and if they do, they have roommates and live hand to mouth IF they’re lucky. 100,000 a year in New York is considered middle class. BARELY. City Opera staffers and choristers barely survive in Manhattan unless they have a rent stabilized apartment from twenty years ago, otherwise, they don’t live in Manhattan, they live in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, New Jersey, or even Connecticut. I don’t think I met a City Opera chorister that didn’t also have another job.
Hell, friends of mine who decided to take the Met chorus route find it difficult to save money for retirement and have a family unless they live in postage stamp sized apartments in fringe neighborhoods in the ghetto, and they START their wages at 100,000 plus a year.
I’ve lived in the city for many years now, starting out as a student, and I’ve come at it from the low end of wages, to being comfortable out of school. I know what I’m talking about concerning wage standards, so don’t attempt to argue with me about it.
Been there:
“Many of you have no idea how many concessions, cutbacks, and hardships, NYCO Choristers have had to swallow. To just flippantly say they and AGMA should tighten belts yet again, is very uninformed. I worked there years ago, and it’s been the same for years. Always asking the unions to settle for less, even in good economic times. And yes, those years were about poor managment, not econonic effects.”
Been there, from your statement I would conclude that each contract that the NYCO chorus has signed has been worse than the preceeding one.
Somehow I doubt that that is the case. Or am I wrong? I’m thinking that the union is tired of hearing managements requests for concessions but the union isn’t tired of asking for increases.
From what I’m hearing from both sides of this mess I would say that you deserve each other. It’s hard to determine who’s whining more, management or AGMA.
Cassandra, a single friend of mine just accepted an offer for a job in NYC at $102,000. Are you telling me she will BARELY be middle class?
Alex: There are plenty of two-person households with a total income between $150,000 and $200,000 who cannot afford to live in Manhattan, and quite a few of them were priced out of Brooklyn in the mid 2000s.
Rents are lower now than they were a couple of years ago, but your friend can count on an easy 35-40% of her gross income going to housing, assuming she’s in Manhattan and living in something larger than a studio.
If you haven’t all figured it out by now….LA CIECA KNOWS WHAT SHE’S TALKING ABOUT … in union vs. management matters………and ALL ELSE!!! Also, NO OPERA COMPANY will EVER go belly-up because of the AGMA contract. It’s simply too small a piece of the pie!!! The board and management are responsible SOLELY for this mess…and as I’ve said before, “There should be public beheadings in Lincoln Center!” DON’T blame the singers, chorus, stage-managers, orchestra, costume department, and stage-hands!!! Susan Baker and her friends ought to wend their way to the “palco funesto”. GOD, what a great way to unveil the new Lincoln Center fountain!!!
61 “because it costs ten times more to live here than anywhere else in the country”
Sorry, Cassandra, I am going to argue with you about it despite your instruction otherwise. Of course the cost of living in New York is among the highest in America, but I find it hard to believe than an apartment that rents for, say, $3000 per month in Manhattan is going to cost only $300 per month in the comparable neighborhoods in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, South Beach, Honolulu, etc. (or conversely, that a $1500 monthly rental in those cities corresponds to a $15,000 monthly rental property in NYC). Such exaggerations don’t help your argument.
loretta, I’m not sure you’re talking about the same issue I’m talking about. My point is that if there are 1000 people in a union, the union doesn’t get to require that any particular percentage of them are employed at any given time. Which is an entirely different point than how many people in any given cast are union members.
Loretta: Lay off Sanford. It was I that made that assertion about 802, and if I’m wrong, I’m happy to be corrected. Never too old to learn.
Since so many people here bitch about the quality of singing at NYCO, maybe they should just hire scabs. How much worse could they be?
#53 – I’ve been told that there have been conversations between NYCBallet and ABT. If NYCO moved out, then ABT could take over those time slots which would A) keep ballet in the house that was built for ballet all through the season, and B) give ABT a better venue than the Met, and C) not have the two companies competing with each other by mounting their programs at the same time in the two houses on the plaza. Those talks didn’t go anywhere while NYCO was still in residence, but if it goes belly up, then those talks can certainly be revived.