San Francisco Symphony Contract

Davies Symphony Hall

Photo by Lisa Hirsch

Yesterday, San Francisco Classical Voice published an article that Janos Gereben and I co-wrote. It is one of the more important articles I've had any responsibility for, and it grew out of Janos's long history of reporting on labor relations at SFS and my dogged tracking of vacancies at San Francisco Symphony, here and elsewhere on this blog. 

To make an extremely long story (it ran 2600 words or so) as short as possible: the SFS musicians took a huge pay cut during the pandemic and have been working without a contract since last November; there are currently more than 20 vacancies in the orchestra, some apparently spurred by a combination of the pandemic and incentives to retire; all parties in the negotiations have been surprisingly quiet during the talks. There was a one low-key public outreach effort by the musicians: back in January, they handed out flyers in the Davies lobby before a concert, politely chatted up curious audience members, then, after intermission, held up their information flyers from the stage.

A few odd ends didn't make it into the story, but they might be relevant.

• The orchestra has alleged $40 million in losses. This tracks with the drop in the endowment from fiscal year ending August, 2021 to fiscal year ending August, 2022, and corresponds to a big drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the same period. The DJIA has gone up a lot in the last year, but the audited financials for FY ending August, 2023, won't be out until next year. It's possible that the endowment has recovered; it's possible that the $40 million comes from somewhere else.
• The late Robin Sutherland, principal keyboard for more than 45 years, retired in 2018. Five years later, his position has not been filled, although he occupied a named chair that is funded in perpetuity. I have to assume that this is a matter of priorities; Marc Shapiro and others have played piano and other keyboards very ably, but still.
• Freelance musicians subbing with the orchestra are paid the low end of the full-time contractual salary, but on a per-service basis, with some modifications for instrument doubling (flute and alto flute, for example) or playing in a principal position. 
• You might have seen a notorious classical music site linking to the article and using the phrase "XX musicians have left under Esa-Pekka Salonen," which is despicable phrasing, implying that somehow Salonen had something to do with this. It's the orchestra that negotiates musician contracts; it's the board that's responsible for making sure the money is there to pay the musicians appropriately; it's the board and orchestra that apparently offered some financial incentives to encourage retirements. Salonen, as I hope the article makes clear, has no responsibilities in these areas.

I also want to mention that the freelancers who've been playing in the orchestra are, by and large, terrific musicians. I wish, for their sake and that of the orchestra, that they were being hired on an annual basis rather than a per-service basis. Job stability is an all-around good thing.