Minnesota Orchestra violist and all-around thoughtful professional, Sam Bergman, posted an intriguing thread on Twitter where he wondered aloud about the relationship between orchestras announcing positive/negative financial news and collective bargaining agreement cycles.
And just in case you miss it in the tweets, Sam makes it clear he is not referring to his own orchestra.
Someone should really do a serious study someday of the surpluses/deficits symphony orchestras announce to the public, compared against how close their labor contracts are to being renegotiated.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
It would be tricky because you would have to research news stories etc from each year, rather than just going to orchestra 990s. Because, of course, orchestras deficits are an almost entirely fictional construct.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
By which I mean, it’s a private company, not the federal govt, so you can’t actually run a deficit without closing up shop or filing Chapter 11 or something.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
So when orchestras (or other non profits) *say* they’ve run a deficit, what they almost always mean is that they had to take money from somewhere they didn’t want to take it from to plug a budget hole they weren’t anticipating.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
Surpluses, by contrast, can be very real, if they mean that the orchestra got to plow extra $$ back into the organization, which can be a real boon. Most announced surpluses, though, are so tiny as a % of overall budget as to be meaningless, or (more likely) fictionalized as well
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
In case it’s not clear, I’m speaking here about major US orchestras with budgets in the tens of millions, endowments, and so on. I’m also deliberately posting this today because I’m not aware of any major orchestras currently releasing budget numbers etc.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
Anyway, since most of what gets announced as surplus/deficit is about moving money around in a way that serves the org’s priorities, there is a strong incentive to make things look rosy when you’re locked into long-term labor contracts that can’t be changed.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
And while some orchestras do a creditable job of trying to shot straight and consistent with budget numbers year in and year out, many find it all too tempting to start hinting that the sky might be falling when they get within 18 months or so of an expiring musicians’ contract.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
One major reason that my employer is currently such a lovefest between management and labor is that we saw the worst of this manipulation under past administrations, and it’s been a priority of the current one to shoot straight with both us and the public.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
^^^^^ Just want to call further attention to previous tweet to establish that I am not in any way subtweeting my employer.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
Anyway, I’m not aware of any recent study that looked comprehensively at the data orchestras make available to the public stacked up next to those releases’ relative proximity to labor negotiations. I suspect such a study would be instructive, if anyone wanted to do one.
— Sam Bergman (@violanorth) August 31, 2018
Granted, there’s no shortage of observational knowledge but I’m not aware of any formal studies.
I would love to see one if it exists and this sort of empirical study could go a long way toward providing an answer Bergman’s causation or correlation questions.
From a purely anecdotal perspective, I can say that releasing public statements to support a planned bargaining position is an old bargaining tactic. So yes, it happens. But there’s no where near enough reliable information to conduct a meaningful examination.
If there’s an Arts Admin MBA candidate out there looking for a fascinating research project, here it is. If there’s enough data available, I can guarantee it would become a highly valuable commodity as a learning resource.