The Negotiation Process: Who Does What

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This installment of the “Negotiation Process” series will examine the answers to a common misconception about who does what during contract negotiations. Next in this series of articles, we’ll take a deeper look into “who” does “what” during the process. Mary Lo from Washington wrote to ask, “Why do the musicians care about all of this if they just have a lawyer doing their negotiating anyway?” Mary has a typical idea …

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Loss Of Momentum

Among all of the gloom and doom talk mixed in with sunshine and rainbows there’s an important conversation that doesn’t get the attention it deserves in this industry.  I’m talking about the loss of momentum concerning fundraising on the board level.

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The Negotiation Process: Why Bother?

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After posting the initial articles from for this series on the Negotiation Process, many Adaptistration readers wrote in wondering why orchestra musicians are part of an organized labor union. Sam from Golden, Colorado wrote in to ask: “I don’t really think of musicians like auto workers, why do they even have a union?” Not long ago, I asked a very similar question to, Len Leibowitz a veteran labor lawyer that has …

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The Negotiation Process: A Historical Timeline

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The manner in which contract negotiations have developed over the past 50 years has been fast and furious.  Even the term “traditional bargaining” is in itself, not very accurate since it’s only been used for the past 40 years or so. Before then, musicians didn’t even have a voice in how their contracts were negotiated; it was all handled between the AFM local union officers and the orchestra managers. By and …

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Pension Plans And Negotiations Part 2

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To continue where Part 1 left off, we’ll examine how some of the pension issues related to the Philadelphia Orchestra situation have influenced the course of negotiations. The Philadelphia Orchestra Association (POA) utilizes a defined benefits pension plan. This means the POA and not the individual players assume the risk to ensure that the pension plan has enough funds to make the required payments to retired employees. The POA expands on …

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