On Monday, May 9th the musicians of the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) decided to walk out on strike after more than 18 months of negotiations which proved to be unfruitful. Unfortunately, I haven’t kept up on the issues at the OSM as much as I should but whether or not you think a government funded orchestra system would have a positive influence labor relations compared to the U.S. nonprofit model, the issues both sides are arguing about are exactly the same as the problems which permeated negotiations here over the past season…
Month: July 2005
2005 Compensation Report: ROPA Music Directors
Last in this series of compensation reports is the examination ROPA & IGSOBM ensemble music director compensation. Much like their administrative counterparts, music directors serve as the executive “manager” for nearly all things artistic, at the top level, within an orchestra (although that model is beginning to change). As such, they should be subject to the same amount of scrutiny regarding their level of performance on and off stage and if …
2005 Compensation Report: ROPA Executive Directors
Continuing with this year’s compensation reports, we move on to examine the executive director compensation at 33 ROPA & IGSOBM symphonic ensembles with annual budgets over $1 million. Following last year’s report, we discovered that the discrepancy between executive and musician base salaries was considerably larger than their counterparts in ICSOM ensembles. Let’s see what the numbers tell us for this year… Where The Numbers Come From The following “executive director …
Examining The Union’s Role
The recent announcement from the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union that they will leave the AFL-CIO was headline news yesterday. As a result, I received a few intriguing email messages from readers about how this will impact the American Federation of Musicians…
Appearing Today on WNYC’s Soundcheck
I’ll be appearing today on WNYC’s Soundcheck with Jon Schaefer between 2:00-3:00 EST today…