sound of silence?
La Cieca has obtained a copy of the main part of the email sent to AGMA members by the organization’s national executive director Alan Gordon in the wake of yesterday’s abortive meeting with NYCO’s George Steel.
At the last meeting of the AGMA bargaining unit at NYCO, we advised you all of our basic legal position: That AGMA is not obligated to enter into negotiations with NYCO until the 2010 expiration of our contract. That remains our position. As you know, NYCO has a completely different legal position and, if we were to tell NYCO that we are simply not going to negotiate, we would quickly become involved in litigation as to which position is correct. While our lawyers and the Negotiating Committee may develop a recommendation for you, ultimately the members of the NYCO bargaining unit will determine which course of action we will pursue.
We also told you that, following the conclusion of the negotiations between NYCO and Local 802, we would probably meet with George Steel on an informal basis to listen to his arguments as to why we should consider making concessions to help NYCO achieve viability. While we all share a desire to consider concessions that would assure NYCO’s continued operation, any concessions we might consider should not be more than those accepted by the orchestra.
On Monday June 22 Bruce Simon, Candace Itow, Deborah Allton-Maher and I, along with the delegates, met with Steel and his attorneys. At that meeting, Steel gave us a formal set of proposals which, he said, “reflected the same agreement NYCO had reached with the orchestra”. In fact, however, his proposals to AGMA were far more destructive in effect than the ones he made to the orchestra and would, if accepted, decimate the AGMA bargaining unit.
Consequently, we told Steel that there was no point in continuing the meeting, that we would not ever consider negotiating from his proposals and that, in due course, we would get back to him.
According to a recipient of the email, the missive continued with details about NYCO’s proposals for revisions to the current contact with AGMA, including
a quarter of the chorus gone, all weekly soloists… fired, ten orchestra positions eliminated, all dancers and movement people fired, 4 weeks eliminated from the choristers pay, reduction in stage management staff, associate chorus completely eliminated, no health care for stage managers or [assistant directors], health care reduced for chorus and orchestra, no annual coverage of health care, only work weeks, overtime basically eliminated.
La Cieca is informed by her source that there will be another shop meeting to discuss options “shortly,” but that at this point “AGMA is not currently talking to Steel or NYCO.”
Very well articulated Mr. Gordon.
Would Mr. Steele have made this kind of proposal to the orchestra? I rather doubt it.
It seems be have returned to the bad old days when singers were not considered real musicians. If Mr. Steel’s proposal tells us anything, it tells one what he values. Perhaps it also tells us what he feared: pissing off Local 802. Perhaps he thought he could rob Peter to pay Paul? Nice. Very nice.
agmany:
No need to put my name in quotes, it’s my real name as I do not use a punning pseudonym as so many do here.
The reason I speculated on AGMA’s using the death of the Arbitrator as a way of eliminating the possibility of any further compromise with NYCO was that while you explained in your first post the specific skills of the chosen Arbitrator, you did not mention as you did in your follow-up that you considered him unique in this country and that nobody else could possibly do the job.
I suppose that’s really bad news if Chicago or San Francisco, Seattle or Santa Fe gets into serious financial trouble and needs arbitration.
I wish AGMA and NYCO well in their negotiations. But most of all I wish New York City’s opera lovers well.
$200,000 for a trombonist at NYCO? Good for him or her, but that is outrageous… especially when one considers the relatively skimpy number of notes called for in trombone parts of the NYCO repertoire. I don’t even think they bring a cimbasso to the mix in Manahan’s mess there.
Quanty Painy Fakor,
this information comes from the Bloomberg.com article of June 1 which posted the salaries of the top NYCO execs as listed in the 990 tax returns. Specifically: “David Titcomb, a trombonist and the orchestra manager, was paid $240,000″
Agmany’s post conveniently omits that “the trombonist” was also the Orchestra Manager and surely was paid the bulk of his compensation for that work. The Orchestra Manager was the second-highest paid staff member after Music Director Manahan.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agoLPgXaoo.A
This kind of spin to the facts is why I will take a huge dollop of salt when reading the Agmany posts.
OK, you’re right. the trombonist is also a manager, but is it appropriate for a company in financial distress to pay all of its singers, the people who actually sing opera, less total money in a year than it pays to just two non-singers? Without its singers, NYCO is just another philharmonic orchestra, a fact about which George Steel is apparently forgetting. Take whatever anyone says with salt, but at the end of the day, colloquies aside, there will be a viable AGMA contract that protects its members, or there wont be a City Opera.
Alan Gordon
Don’t forget the rubber ducky for the baby when you throw him and the bathwater out, Gordy.
Well, judging from the Bloomberg exposé at
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=agoLPgXaoo.A_,
here’s another $387,000 NYCO wasted last year:
the following was omitted from #17 above (according to Bloomberg): “Jane Gullong, who left as executive director in the fall of 2008, was paid $254,000, up 2.7 percent. She was named president of the Brooklyn Philharmonic in November. Genovese Vanderhoof & Associates, a Toronto-based arts management and fundraising consultant, earned $133,000.”
FYI, Jane Gullong is now gone from that job too.
The June 1 Bloomberg article also had a piece of positive news buried in all the ax-grinding. Namely, that there was “a surplus in the year ending in June 2007 of $2.8 million.”
The 2007 season was the last ‘normal’ one before the recession hit and before the inexplicable decision to sit out the Koch Theater’s revovation year.
To me this suggests there just still might be enough ticket-buyers and donors around to support the company at (or nearer) the 29-week level.
Of course the recession is nowhere near over, and the raided endowment won’t be much of a help. But the $11 mil. debt burden is gone… so…
is the glass half full or half empty?