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.
….
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.
#55dcrazmo….are you serious???
Yes! Full time BALLET would solve the problem.
Enough with this City Opera crap – it’s not worth saving. Kill it and let it rise from the ashes in another venue if it can, or let it give regular Sunday matinees in the ballet house.
Sanford,
Sorry if I misunderstood you earlier. YEe, you are right that AGMA can not guarantee work for a minimum number of it’s entire membership.
802s contract used to stipulate that a theater (not the producers of an individual play) had to hire a certain number of musicians for every production that came into the house, regardless of whether or not it was a musical. So every play had to have a gaggle of musicians at the theater for each performance, doing…nothing. It was a huge bone of contention whenever the contract came up for renegotiation. Loretta (#60), thinking that I’m Sanford — WHAT AN HONOR! — has corrected my assumption that it’s a practice still going on. Perhaps she will be so kind as to explain to what the current contract stipulates as to the Nederlanders and Shuberts.
dcrazmo, it is quite possible that we are indeed one and the same as we have never been seen in the same place at the same time. Loretta, no harm, no foul.
Wow, I feel like I’ve arrived! Like this is my own, personal coming out party! (Not that I didn’t already have one of those years ago.)
“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?”
Yes my dear, that’s exactly what I’m telling you.
Only in America do ordinary people tear one another down for having more job security and better benefits as a result of years of their own hard work and struggle through labor unions. Only in America do ordinary people lack the historical understanding and critical analysis which obviate forming opinions about such issues based on petty resentment (how dare anyone have better working conditions than me and my friends?), and a pathetic identification with the ruthless cretins who ultimately profit from driving down everyone’s wages and working conditions (do you expect Robert Rubin to pat you on the head for supporting his right to exploit you?).
I still follow this blog for the considerable knowledge and discernment of La Cieca and some of the other commentators. However, these comments have confirmed my impression that overall the “community†here loves opera not nearly so much as it loves to make vituperative comments about singers, instrumental musicians, and everyone else who actually creates a performance.
“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.”
Not going to pointlessly argue. Unless you live here, you simply don’t know.
You still don’t understand how the “walker” situation worked, dcrazmo. Yes, there was a minimum number of musicians to be hired for a musical in each given theater, based on the capacity of the house. (Obviously, if you can sell more tickets in the Winter Garden then in the Music Box, you can afford a larger orchestra there.) There were no walkers for straight plays because there is no orchestra minimum contracted for straight plays. (I believe there is a middle ground called “play with music” for a show that has only a few minute of live incidental music, whith a different number of players required under that contract.)
By the late 1980s more shows were being scored or adapted for synthesizers, which meant that one or two keyboard players could (with minimally acceptible results) replace most of the orchestra. Local 802′s position was that the producers should hire the full complement of players per the contract; it was up to the producers to decide whether to use them or not. Eventually, over the course of the 1990s (a very profitable time for Broadway) new contracts were negotiated that allow concessions in most cases for new shows coming into Broadway. Meanwhile, the producers discovered that there is a fairly strong market for revivals of classic shows that use a fuller, more acoustic orchestra (e.g., Gypsy and South Pacific) which balances out the demand for orchestra personnnel.
It should be stressed that the “walker” situation was temporary, lasting only a few seasons, and that even when there were walkers, part of that responsibility lay with the producers. These musicians were available to play for performances had there been parts for them.
It should also be noted that in the early 1990s, the nut for a big musical was around $300K weekly. During that time the salary of an orchestra member for a show was just about $1K weekly. So the reduction of an orchestra by as many as six players would reduce the nut by only a couple of percentage points. (The biggest cost, as always, for running a Broadway show, is theater rental, an item that skyrocketed during the early 1990s while producers were complaining about how those greedy musicians were bleeding them dry.)