My orchestra colleagues and I are facing a dilemma...One which inevitably centers around the question of to what degree artistic talent should be compensated, and when affordable public access to artistic product should be given priority.
There are two organizations for whom many of us play which put those questions into different corners of the same scenario. The first is the local opera company, which has been in business for a little over fifteen years. After many years of quality performances and sold-out houses, certain changes in management of the company and competition from a second venue began to have a negative effect on that success. From that point on things have taken a slow slide downhill.
In those early years, musicians came to love playing in the opera orchestra. The conductor was superb, and made the effort of performing a three hour show (following singers who weren't watching the conductor or listening to you, no less) seem almost effortless. We would get something akin to a runners high going through the marathon week of rehearsals and late-night shows, and our collective artistic consciousness rejoiced in what we could achieve.
With new management came new, "minimalist" ideas (using projected images instead of actual sets, modern costumes instead of period frocks with lots of fabric) and a heavy emphasis on tying our southwestern community to New York in every conceivable way (promoting "opera stars" from New York, emphasizing the executive director's connections to talent from New York, bringing in conductors from New York, etc, etc) as if our town's talent isn't good enough to stand on its' own.
Productions were reduced from two per season to one, and the number of rehearsals also reduced to save money (thereby cramming the same amount of work into a smaller time frame, allowing for more mistakes and less professional results).
Now, the offered pay scale is at issue. Rehearsals have been scheduled for three and a half hours (longer than in the past) without any adjustment in compensation. The company wants to try doing at least one show across the border in Mexico, and will not offer jobs in the production to anyone who does not have a passport. Information on the projected schedule and pay scale were not provided until very late in the game, leading me to believe there are serious financial issues and the very real possibility of not getting paid at all.
We have to ask ourselves, "should we feel any responsibility for aiding this arts organization's financial stability by taking a cut in pay, or do we stick to our guns even if it means the company won't be able to go through with the production as a result? Considering the morale in the pit over the most recent years, I'd say my loyalties to keeping this organization going have faded. Ten years ago, it might have been a different story.
The other group in question is my least favorite orchestra. Many of its' musicians including myself, travel from another city for the gigs, and most of those folks are union members accustomed to having a contract and regular (if small) pay increases from season to season.
This orchestra is in a smaller community, but one full of well-off retirees who moved there because of the sunshine and low cost of living. It has existed for some decades now, and in the past ten or fifteen years had maintained a successful budget and some completely sold-out seasons.
We play on a university campus and have some financing from the university (they pay the conductor's salary). There are a few student musicians in the ensemble who get a scholarship of sorts for playing, but in recent years the conductor (and controlling interest in the group) has pushed out the community volunteers and anyone else he thinks isn't talented enough in favor of hiring a lot of out-of-town players. The locals who do still play are paid only about a third what the "union" musicians get, but not because we've demanded it. Our pay has never been up for negotiation, and in light of recent revelations about our employment status and what it means, the pay has become basis for a call-to-arms.
In this orchestra, we are considered independent contractors, and although performing musicians take that role often by playing various church gigs, weddings, etc, membership in a symphony orchestra creates a different sort of working atmosphere. It is an ongoing job, regular employment essentially, from season to season, which runs counter to the definition of independent contractor. My other orchestra has always considered us as statutory employees, and rightly so.
Companies who call regular workers "contractors" do so mainly to save themselves money and paperwork. If this orchestra were on my good side (if musicians were treated like valued members of a team rather than the worker ants that we apparently are), I would continue to forgive the practice in favor of supporting my local arts organization. They provide me with work, after all.
Trouble is, and the vast majority of us just found this out, we have to pay both gross receipts taxes and liability insurance in order to legitimately do the jobs that we've been doing for this organization. The state in which this orchestra resides treats musical performance and even things like teaching (lessons) and tutoring vastly differently from our neighboring state, in which our other orchestra lives. We have to pay for the privilege of doing business here, adding to what some of us already pay in state income taxes. The expenses for playing in this orchestra just went up exponentially.
Approaching management with our concerns has so far yielded only the comment that "it is what it is". I have tried submitting a bill for sales tax on my earnings, with no response. Past complaints that local players receive unfairly low pay got a tiny increase for them, but only just.
To put this ensemble under an umbrella term, it is pretty much just a vehicle for our conductor's ego. It exists in its current glorious state as a testament to his fund-raising prowess and being able to pull together a fine bunch of musicians (none of whom get any credit for playing well...it's the conducting that matters) to prop up his self-image. He can't get a job as a symphonic conductor any other way than through his job at the university, so he is stuck here. We make him look good, and that is our function. This being the case, it is time he paid for his vanity by treating us like the professionals we are.
If this organization wishes to continue calling us contractors, then we must have a written contract with our required wages and terms of service laid out. We have the right to charge sales tax on our services, and to negotiate those wages each year. If they refuse to comply with our wishes, then we will have no choice but to request the IRS to reclassify us as employees. Thanks to a very recent survey, that is exactly what we all agree should be the next step.
Artistic endeavours should be a gift to their communities in some ways, but the creators of such things have bills to pay just like everyone else. We can't exist on handouts. Time for a little more respect.
End of rant.
No comments:
Post a Comment