Contract Negotiations

Postcard of the War Memorial Opera House and Veterans Building, SF

From my personal collection

Some of you will remember that San Francisco Opera's 2024 opening night performance of Un ballo in maschera was delayed by maybe half an hour. My assumption at the time was that, well, people were inebriated and just taking their time settling down.

We learned within a few days that the SF Opera Orchestra refused to go on until they got some labor concessions from management. There were various negotiations and eventually management and the orchestra signed a contract covering the period from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2026.

Well....negotiations started in May and they have not been going well. Today, the Opera Orchestra announced that they would on strike as of opening night, September 12, unless there's a contract in place by then.

Here's email sent earlier today by the orchestra:

Dear Friends,

We are writing to let you know that the musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra will not be able to perform on Opening Night, September 12, unless management has reached a fair contract with us before then. We are letting you know this weeks in advance rather than having you be surprised at the door.

Our contract expired on July 31, and the season is about to open without a new one. We came into these negotiations months ago, expecting to build on the modest agreement we reached two years ago. Management instead proposed a 26% pay cut, which would have returned us to 2015 wages. They have since "improved" that offer to a 20% cut, which would put us back at our 2018 pay. We cannot begin a season under proposals like these.

The San Francisco Opera is not a company in trouble. By management's own account, and by the financial information they have shared with us:

● Six productions have sold out in the past three years.

● Ticket sales and subscriptions are rising. Donations have increased by $8 million compared to last year, exceeding the Opera’s stated goals by $2.2 million.

● The Opera has recently received several high-profile gifts, and the number of “Producers Circle” donors–those who contribute over $100,000 per year–has more than doubled since the pandemic.

And yet despite the recent momentum, our seasons continue to shrink—we are now down to only six productions this year, compared to twelve productions in 2008. Every round of programming cuts has been presented as the cure for the organization’s deficit. But what their own financial reports have shown is that the diminished schedule has only exacerbated the issue.

Fewer performances mean less ticket revenue and fewer production sponsorships, while the fixed costs of mounting an opera remain the same. Twice in the past two decades, the deficit was larger after the cuts than before them. And while management claims that production costs are only going to continue to increase, they refuse to explore less expensive offerings such as semi-staged productions or concert operas.

We are not walking away from the table, and we want two things. First, a contract that gives the musicians of this orchestra stability and pay that keeps pace with the cost of living in this city. Second, a working partnership with management to reverse the pattern of cuts: more performances, longer runs of the productions that sell out, and a plan to grow the company's audience and offerings rather than further reduce its ambitions.

This is not a decision we take lightly and we hope that it can be avoided by management agreeing to a fair contract. There is nowhere we would rather be on September 12 than in the pit. We ask for your support so that we can make that happen.

If you want to help, write to San Francisco Opera at PatronServices@sfopera.com, tell them what opening night is worth to you, and ask them to settle this before the curtain.

Sincerely,

The Musicians of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra

Here are some older background articles, by Janos Gereben and myself:

• SF Opera Orchestra Reaches Contract Agreement Through End of This Season, November, 2024, SFCV, by Janos
• S.F. Artists Keep Up the Fight for Better Labor Contracts, December 2024, SFCV, by Janos
• SF Opera Orchestra Signs New Labor Contract, July, 2025, SFCV, by Janos
• SFO Season Announcement, February, 2026, SF Chronicle, by Lisa

A few thoughts -

I've heard Matthew Shilvock discussing the current financial situation a couple of times in talks to donors and I've also chatted with him about it. SFO is unquestionably in a pretty good financial situation: the endowment is in good shape and they're not having to dip into it; as the musicians say, subscriptions and major donations are up; the audience is expanding.

It is also true that costs are going up. You can tell this from looking at the various financial documents that SFO is required to production. There are the 990 federal tax forms filed by all nonprofit organizations and the audited financial statements that they also produce. 

For many years, you could take the number of performances at the Opera and the budget for the year and what you'd find was that it cost, in aggregate, about $1 million per performance to put on opera at the international level. As of the 990 filed last year, though, costs were roughly $90 to $93 million to put on around 45 performances and several one-off concerts, meaning costs were up to about $2 million per performance.

We are all aware of the amount of inflation we have seen in this country, with food, fuel, and many other costs going up. For opera companies, costs like getting costumes made and sets built have gone up, because of both labor and material costs. I have heard this from SFO and from another opera company I talk with.

It is absolutely true that the cost of living in the Bay Area has gone up a lot, in the cost of staples like food, cars, and so on, but also in the absolutely wild cost of buying or renting your home. 

Fewer performances means the musicians are providing fewer services (the length of time that rehearsals and performances are measured in, bearing in mind that opera performances can run up to five or six hours) than when they were playing 75 performances per season. I have absolutely no idea what you have to do to raise their pay for playing fewer rehearsals and performances and no idea what I think is fair. I assume that management's thinking along these lines is behind the attempt to cut the musicians' pay, which I find extremely distasteful. (See the example set by a famous union member who made sure to have union contracts in place and pay a fair wage throughout her long career. That would be the late Dolly Parton.)