The Musicians have been negotiating in good faith with Symphony Management to try to reach a deal before the Carnegie Hall tour begins. At 4:30 Sunday morning the talks broke down.
Even though the Musicians believe that the Symphony is in excellent financial condition, they have attempted to address Management’s concerns more than half way. Unfortunately, opportunistically attempting to seize on the misfortunes of other Orchestras, SFS Management continues to insist that the Musicians accept draconian cuts in compensation and benefits and concede work rule changes that would set back by decades the protections in the Musicians’ contract designed to ensure artistic excellence. They have attempted to justify this policy with talk of “operational deficits” which were largely the self- created results of outsized programming and spending an additional 11 million dollars last year on a Centennial Celebration, providing enormous bonuses and compensation to top executives and consultants and directing resources away from the core mission of the Orchestra. Even with all the additional spending the SFS has experienced significant growth in the endowment, reported a 32 million dollar surplus to the IRS, and is projecting substantial growth in revenue this year.
The Musicians’ concern over vacancies in key positions, defections of their most talented musicians to better paid orchestras and Managements’ demands for erosion of essential contract protections has them willing to stay out on strike until Management makes a fair contract offer – one fitting for an organization in solid financial condition and that will help to maintain the artistic quality of the orchestra that has taken so long to build.
In the meantime, we continue to believe that Management, especially given the public money it receives, needs to make public the Symphony’s finances.
Super – why don’t you make public right here, right now, the salaries of your principal players and concertmaster. After all, you do want the full support of the concert-going public, right?
Some salary information is publicly available because the symphony is a non-profit organization. You have the right to see most recent tax records here: http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990_pdf_archive/941/941156284/941156284_201108_990.pdf
Concertmaster: $440k
Principle Trumpet: $236k
Principle Horn: $218k
MTT, Inc. was compensated 2.4 million dollars
And, as has already been widely reported, base salary in the ensemble is more than $140k.
The way he plays, principal trumpet Mark Inouye is underpaid.
Seems to me that Truth 2 Power isn’t seeing the forest for the trees, orchestral salaries fall within a range for both tutti players and principals, including concertmasters, as do those for management and music directors. That doesn’t have much to do with the financial health of the non-profit unless there’s not enough money to support the organization long term, which does not seem to be the case here.
San Francisco is an expensive city. However, SFS is not a city orchestra, it is a world class orchestra. We do not compare SFS to other orchestras around the bay; we compare SFS to orchestras around the globe. To give an idea of scale, about 25% of San Francisco households have incomes greater than $270k, while about .000000000001% of San Francisco households have members as talented as SFS musicians.
@Truth 2 Power The principal players’ and concertmaster salaries ARE public as SFS is a non-profit and therefore must make transparent the wages of the top 5 employees. Unfortunately, SFS management is not forced into the same level of transparency. Good luck to the musicians, I hope the best for you.