BPO Season Opener Cancelled

[ghmerrill]

Maybe I'm missing something significant here, but the article referenced indicates that the sticking point is about a demand for "mileage compensations" for musicians who live more than 10 miles from the theatre. For most of my job history (in both academia and industry) I lived a lot more than 10 miles from work (generally on the order of 35 or more miles) and never received any compensation for travel expenses -- and never remotely thought I should. This included periods when I would commute via public transportation (bus and train), and periods when I would commute by car. When I worked for Bell Labs in the Chicago area (after leaving academia), it was 62 miles from my home to the Bell Labs parking lot. Prior to that, it was 40 miles to my university job at Loyola in Chicago.

In North Carolina, my commute over more than a 20 year period was (for each of several jobs) about 35 miles one-way. My wife worked a contract for Wachovia Bank for over a year in Charlotte where her commute was 133 miles each way and she ended up with a combination of driving and staying overnight (at her expense) without any additional compensation.

Really? This is all about compensation for commuting expenses for people who live more than 10 miles away? In the real world, it is VERY unusual (I'm tempted to say virtually unheard of) to be granted "mileage compensations". And this is what's killed the agreement for the BPO? For distances over 10 miles? Color me really puzzled.

[BAtlas]

With all due respect to ghmerrill's comments...I can't think of any specific regional orchestra that doesn't offer mileage (at least not in my experience), but can think of at least 5 that I have actually received mileage compensation from. Regional orchestras, unlike full time orchestras, have to pull musicians from a wider geographical area and will offer mileage to make musicians driving extended distances for rehearsals/performances possible. Some symphonies even provide over night per diem with mileage for distances sometimes covering many hours.

Also, I strongly suspect that the $67,000 that they are spending in mileage is not coming primarily from people living within 10-15 miles of the rehearsal/performance locations. In my own most extreme example I've driven 4 1/2 hours for a rehearsals and been compensated for mileage.

“We value our local musicians, and we have also become a regional orchestra,” Chandler said. Which I interpret as meaning, "We have locals playing here, but we also pull from a much wider geographical area."

“It’s a tenth of our budget that’s in mileage alone,” Hall said. Meaning, the total operating budget of the BPO is somewhere in the neighborhood of $670,000. Even divided 70 ways that is less than $10,000 a musician (and that's not even counting all the other various expenses that come out of the operating budget). This is not a full time job for any of them, which means many of them probably have day gigs some amount of travel away. Yes, they could do without mileage, but they would also dramatically reduce the pool of musicians they have to choose from at auditions.

Then again, I'm not a member of the BPO and I have no idea what I'm talking about because I'm not a member of the BPO. Negotiations are a complex and long process which we are not privy to (unless someone leaks).

[BAtlas]

let me just go ahead and tack on the aforementioned comment:

"If a musician in the Binghamton Philharmonic played all 28 guaranteed services the orchestra offered at the base rate of $85/service (which is abysmal by the way) he or she would earn a whopping $2,380.00! Don't you naysayers think the musicians who spend between four to six hours of their day just getting to Binghamton deserve a reasonable amount of compensation for their time, as well as gas and the wear and tear on their vehicles?"

[swillafew]

I have been a union member (non-music) where the negotiations were suspended by management (just as the union rep says they were) , and I can tell you it's not pleasant. The mileage is ploy to blind you to the issue at hand.

[ghmerrill]

What's peculiar about this is the payment for commuting to the job (a cost, by the way, that the IRS won't even let you deduct under most examples of contracted employment). And what's peculiar about that is that it isn't related to the job that's being performed or the level of competence or expertise or experience of the worker. You just get this extra money because of where you live. And you choose to live there.

All I'm saying is that this is quite bizarre/unheard-of in American industry (including academia), and the normal way that this would be handled is that you'd look at the job, look at your costs for taking the job (clothing, meals, travel, etc.), look at what you're being offered in terms of salary or wages, do the math, and either take the job or not -- or say to the employer "Well, I'm very enthusiastic about the job you have, but because of my circumstances I'll need $x more per year in order to take it." Then the employer either says "Okay, we can do that for you." or not, and you act accordingly. The result may be that the employer needs to pay you the requested increment, or else the employer needs to find someone to do the job who lives closer. That's how it normally works.

Requiring the employer to commit to a broad agreement (and relative to an arbitrary distance) for one particular kind of cost that some (who knows how many?) potential employees might face (and which might make it impossible for some but not others to take the jobs being offered) just seems very odd. There are lots of carpenters and tradesmen around here who commute a lot further with no subsidy for their commuting expenses. So the sentence you need to fill in the blank for is "Symphony musicians, unlike normal workers, should be compensated for their commuting expenses because ...", and I just find it very hard to imagine a convincing or sensible way of filling in that blank.

Maybe it's a union thing? But if so, it's a thing that makes the union look a little weird from the perspective of most "normal" people. Even if it's just some kind of "bookkeeping" thing (so a certain portion of the cost of running the orchestra is buried outside the salaries and wages), it looks a pretty weird. Because any "normal" person (i.e., a person with a "regular" job for wages or salary -- including fast food workers, farm workers, construction workers, teachers, etc.) is going to look at this and say "You're kidding, right?"

[MikeMilnarik]

If someone has a job that is W2 income (taxes and other deductions taken out) your mileage is considered commuter mileage and cannot be deducted. An orchestra can offer mileage reimbursement as a benefit of the job. W9 or 1099 income is for independent contractors (no deductions)...which means you run your own business. Mileage reimbursement in this case takes the place of the mileage that you can deduct on your taxes for being self employed. So the income you get is taxed and the other is a mileage reimbursement. Most of the full time jobs (in the "real" world) that you interview for and then decide to move to the area based on what is offered are W2 income and mileage is commuter mileage (not deductible).

Adjunct college teaching can be W2 income, but may offer mileage as a benefit - but usually doesn't. Had this happen to me once because I traveled 2 hours one direction to teach at a school. The adjunct rate was set by the university and there was no individual negotiation of raises - so the music department gave incentive to teachers in the closest large city to travel to them and fill the holes in their faculty because the university was located in a place that didn't have as many professional musicians due to the lack of performance opportunities in that area.

Given the amount of money many organizations can or are willing to compensate individuals with, musicians need to piece together their income from a number of different sources and in many cases there is a lot of travel involved. Some of these regional orchestras need musicians to travel from farther away and giving them mileage is an incentive to get players to travel to them. Again, mileage reimbursement takes the place of deductible mileage on your taxes and (I'm pretty sure) is not considered income.

As for take it or leave it...getting experience and making a living at what you love to do is not very easy as a professional. So musicians are willing to travel long distances for a while until they can audition and win a better position in a higher paying organization. If you can't make a living in a major city due to your experience, you stay there to get some work, make connections and move up the food chain and you travel to far off places to be able to scratch out a meager living in the mean time...with the hopes of eventually moving up to something that makes life easier. So every penny counts, and every benefit that an orchestra (or other arts organization) has provided as part of a previous negotiation is very important. Once it's been agreed upon, it's bad news to go backwards. When things do, people start to ask "What's next?", lose faith in the administration and begin looking for work elsewhere. The whole thing begins to crumble.

If this were a new negotiation and the orchestra was considering this for the first time and decided not to pay this benefit, different story. But, there are musicians that are, and have been, playing in this orchestra that this benefit has been a part of their agreement when they accepted employment. Now, the orchestra is trying to cut it. If I have my facts correct, Philadelphia Orchestra declared bankruptcy a few years ago so that they could financially restructure the organization with the sole objective of cutting a retirement benefit that they had agreed upon in a previous negotiation. They didn't do this because the orchestra was going under financially, maybe going through tough times, but not going under. They may have been having trouble, but this was more about looking for a place to make a cut rather than maintaining what they had already agreed upon and that was the only way out of the benefit was by declaring bankruptcy. Yet, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees. Again, I may be incorrect on some of this, but I believe this was the situation.

There are two sides to every story, of course, but sometimes the board of directors come upon tough times financially and rather than them stepping up to raise the money that is needed for the organization to survive they get lazy and start suggesting cuts. Cuts should only happen when there is absolutely no other alternative. An organization should never go backwards unless there is absolutely no other choice, and then there needs to be lots of communication between administration and the players.

We could say ... just let the organization dissolve, who cares if they exist? If they can't pay enough what's the point of having them around? Those are good questions, however, the lack of culture in this country is at an all time low, compared to other countries around the world. We need arts organizations to survive AND we need those organizations to keep pressing forward to help make conditions better and better for those that dedicate their entire life to our culture. All organizations have to start somewhere, but then they need to keep growing. For a cultural entity that sole focus is the community (501(c)3 - non profit organization) there needs to be an evolving leadership that can constantly grow the organization, not letting it step backwards. BPO has been around for a long time, they're not new at this. That's a much bigger conversation, that probably transcends the walls of TubeNet. I'll just say that some, not all, arts organizations that import artists from distant places in order to offer cultural benefits to our communities are very important. (IMHO)

BTW - I have nothing to do with this orchestra.

Mike Milnarik

[ghmerrill]

I probably agree with about 90% of what Mike says. But it's oriented to fairly broad considerations of the support of the "arts" in various ways in the US, and not to this case specifically.

At this point (partly as a reaction to Mike's observations, and somewhat to others), I'm getting the feeling that the "function" of the proposed subsidy of travel expenses is primarily, or in large part, to attract musicians (maybe "better musicians") from outside the area of Binghamton (and maybe more generally the southern tier) to these positions in Binghamton. So maybe attracting people who live in, say, Syracuse, Rochester, Scranton, Ithaca, Utica (do people still live there?), Albany (maybe overlapping from the Albany Symphony?), maybe New York?

I mean, really, if you draw about a 50 mile radius with Binghamton as its center, there's practically not much in it. I can tell you (I grew up in Oneonta, went to college in Troy and graduate school in Rochester) that you probably can't expect a lot of symphony-level capabilities from places like Norwich, Watkins, Glen, Cortland, etc. and certainly nothing to the south closer than Scranton.

But this calls into question the whole idea of a "local symphony orchestra" in a city the size and complexion of Binghamton. I confess, that I was (given my history in NY State through graduate school) astonished that Binghamton would even have a professional orchestra.

So if the idea is "We should have a professional orchestra in Binghamton, but there aren't enough people who are good enough in the local area to fill the positions, and so we have to import people from quite far away." then I've got to wonder about the premise here: that Binghamton should have and attempt to support a professional orchestra -- rather than, say, scheduling concert series by well established and stable orchestras that themselves are otherwise struggling.

Well, that's something of a deviation from my original puzzlement about this BPO affair. But I think it does raise some significant questions about the philosophy underlying the existence of the BPO and its management.

[MikeMilnarik]

Excellent points, Gary, and I concur.

Mike Milnarik

[Three Valves]

We could say ... just let the organization dissolve, who cares if they exist? If they can't pay enough what's the point of having them around? Those are good questions, however, the lack of culture in this country is at an all time low, compared to other countries around the world. We need arts organizations to survive AND we need those organizations to keep pressing forward to help make conditions better and better for those that dedicate their entire life to our culture.

Start by making the programs interesting to the public and profitable.

[Three Valves]

So if the idea is "We should have a professional orchestra in Binghamton, but there aren't enough people who are good enough in the local area to fill the positions, and so we have to import people from quite far away." then I've got to wonder about the premise here: that Binghamton should have and attempt to support a professional orchestra -- rather than, say, scheduling concert series by well established and stable orchestras that themselves are otherwise struggling.

Exactly.

We already have a Police Athletic League, Boys and Girls Clubs, Scouting, Pop Warner and Little League and have for decades.

The culture is declining because we don't care or don't spend enough money??

[bort]

The suits figure the players "love music" and will either drive to their locale for free or another "music lover" will take their spot.

Well, in real world (non-union) business, that's the way things work. "If you won't do it, I'll find someone who will."

Putting on my suit for a moment... I actually find it a little surprising that this is such an issue in Binghamton. It's not a big city, and it's not really near many other large cities (Syracuse or Scranton, neither of which are particularly large either). This is to say, the number of professional music performance opportunities is very limited to begin with. Add on top of that the fact that the business (the orchestra) is having money problems, then something needs to be done. Yes, I'm sure it sucks to have the mileage payments cut. But at some point, it comes down to "this is the job and this is what it pays... do you want it?"

James, you're right about needing more music in rural areas. I think we're going down an interesting path right now -- more college-degree musicians than ever before, and less paying music jobs than ever before. What does this mean? A TON of musically talented people, all over the place, who have to work non-music jobs. I think this is a GREAT opportunity for community groups and local small ensembles to start providing quality music in the places where they happen to live. I can only hope that happens to the extent that it makes live instrumental music part of the culture again, to the point where it's important. I kind of doubt it, but I'm sure going to try.

Regarding physical location, in addition to your examples, I remember taking lessons from Toby Hanks, who took Amtrak from NY to DC a few times a week. Fedderly did the reverse trip, from Baltimore to Juilliard for many years. None of that particularly made much sense, apart from going where the jobs are, and only being able to live in one place at a time. Speaking of that, another example of that is Alan Baer... who seems to be on the music faculty of just about every school in NY/NJ.

[eupho]

Come on, people, the negotiations are between the Union and the Orchestra. Your 2 cents doesn't matter or have any impact.

Adam is a good friend of mine and his intent seems to be one of information.

[bort]

Your 2 cents doesn't matter or have any impact.

Right back at ya.

[Three Valves]

...just because an area is small and rural doesn't mean they should be without classical music.

The inability or unwillingness to support live performances of classical music is not limited to smaller, rural communities.

If I were a Drive-In movie management professor with a huge student loan debt, I suppose I'd feel the same about the demise of Drive-In movies.

(Or find creative ways to make them more appealing)

Cursed TV!!

[bort]

Death of the blue hairs? Certainly. The days are gone when going to a symphony concert 5 or 6 times a season is considered a desirable thing. We have to give them a REASON to come beyond just being on stage playing "something".

I'm not sure I believe the "they're dying off" rationale. Does everyone believe that the blue hairs have been lifelong classical music lovers, and THAT's why they go? Someone who is in their 70s today, was in their 20's in the 1960's -- a decade well-known for it's popularity of classical music...? Yeah right.

Point is, people grow up and interests change. Not for all, but definitely for some.

[Donn]

I'm not sure I believe the "they're dying off" rationale. Does everyone believe that the blue hairs have been lifelong classical music lovers, and THAT's why they go? Someone who is in their 70s today, was in their 20's in the 1960's -- a decade well-known for it's popularity of classical music...?

Well, you added your own proposition in the second sentence. The people he said were dying off are the ones that come to symphony concerts. Why, is a different question. Classical music lovers have always been a minority, but yes, I could easily believe it's a shrinking minority that's significantly smaller that than it was 20 years ago.

But if the issue is how many people want to go to the trouble and expense of attending a classical music concert, I really can believe they're dying off.

[swillafew]

All the chatter is about tiny money for the musicians, while the board shuts down their own season a concert at at time. No one is going to win there with that strategy.

[bort]

But if the issue is how many people want to go to the trouble and expense of attending a classical music concert, I really can believe they're dying off.

I think the trouble of it is a major factor. In many cities, so many people moved out of city centers into the suburbs that going BACK to the city center for a concert became a major event. Instead of a regular entertainment.

I can only hope that as cities are starting to reverse the trend and attract more people to live downtown, this can help restore (or at least more easily maintain) attendance bases.

Either way, I'm happy that 1) in 1 week I'm moving to Minneapolis, 2) my new place is about a 10 minute walk from orchestra hall, and 3) the Minnesota Orchestra already went through their walkout/contract mess and are good for a few years. I plan to go regularly, and plan to bring my son with me as soon as he's able.

[Sandlapper]

It isn't just music organizations and concert attendance. Civic organizations and service organization at least in this area have seen declines in membership. Not sure what the canary in the cold mine is for any of this stuff.

[Three Valves]

remember I was referencing who came to concerts 20 years ago. these people would have been in their teens in the 30's, being raised that going to the symphony was what was expected from cultured, well off people. That culture is literally dying off

People who dress up to go out and listen to classical music are snooty objects of derision now.