The 11-month-long Symphony Nova Scotia dispute is nearing an end.
The new 60-page contract has yet to be signed, but full-time musicians voted last week to accept an offer from management.
Both sides say they’ve reached a deal that will give full-time players a 6.6 per cent raise over two years. The 2012-13 increase is retroactive, meaning full-time musicians will make a base rate of $29,000 this year. Beginning Sept. 1, 2013, that starting salary will increase to $30,000. Roughly half of full-time players earn the base salary.
The base rate for new section musicians was a major sticking point during negotiations, which began last March. New full-time musicians who made it through a rigorous hiring process could previously expect to work 33 weeks per year, including weekends and holidays, for a base salary of about $28,000 before taxes.
Over the years, full-time salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Before their contract expired Aug. 31, the 37 full-time SNS musicians demanded a base salary increase to $30,000.
Musicians also wanted increases to their pension and health plan contributions and additional workweeks, but management couldn’t meet these demands, a union press release said. Instead, the two sides agreed to non-monetary arrangements such as giving notice of schedules further in advance.
On Feb. 6, management made its last offer. That evening after rehearsal, full-time symphony musicians met for about 15 minutes on the second floor of the Dalhousie Arts Centre to discuss the offer. Full-timers then voted electronically to accept. The vote was finalized at a meeting Feb. 12.
“A clear majority” accepted the deal, chairman of the SNS Players’ Association and double-bass musician Max Kasper said. The union would not give the orchestra specific numbers.
The deal comes after a tense few weeks at Symphony NS.
A source inside SNS described the atmosphere leading up to the agreement as “acidic.”
On Feb. 3, the union representing full-time musicians submitted strike notice to the province. Kasper said the players were prepared to strike the week of a major concert (Neruda Songs, composed by former Halifax Shambala Centre director Peter Lieberson).
“I’m not saying we would have [gone on strike], but we had filed with the ministry to take job action if we deemed necessary,” Kasper said.
“We had done that earlier in the week, prior to the meeting on Feb. 6, to up the stakes a little bit and to show that we were indeed serious.”
It worked; management responded with the offer the union later voted to accept.
But then on Feb. 7, principal bassoon player Ivor Rothwell wore a light-coloured suit and a protest sign on stage during a dress rehearsal. Musicians were told to wear black. The sign, attached to his jacket, read: “20 years, 24 per cent.”
The sign referred to contract negotiations 20 years ago that required full-time Symphony NS musicians to take a 24 per cent wage cut in order to keep the orchestra afloat. Rothwell was a full-time SNS employee at the time. Over the phone Monday, Rothwell said musicians have never made back the 24 per cent management cut in 1993.
He said he voted against management’s most recent offer.
“It’s another contract that has an increase of two or three per cent per year, and we’re just not getting back that 24 per cent that we gave away in 1993,” Rothwell said.
“Our negotiating team this year had an accountant do up some figures whereby they estimated that if we had not given up that 24 per cent, and if we had kept pace with that, then the [base] pay would be over $40,000 at this point,” he said.
By protesting, Rothwell was “colouring outside the lines, so to speak,” Kasper said. “That was not what the group had decided to do.”
“In many ways, it was not helpful to us,” he said. “But that’s his right.”
When asked about Rothwell’s argument, Kasper, who has played with Symphony NS since 1986, said he personally thought it was unrealistic to ask for the 24 per cent back.
“We took those cuts so that the orchestra could survive, because we were teetering on bankruptcy, and if we had not taken those cuts, the orchestra would not be here,” he said, offering his own opinion and not that of the Players’ Association.
But, he added, “[Rothwell’s] not alone in his sentiments.”
Symphony NS management said they were happy to hear full-time musicians accepted the offer.
“It’s a relief,” Symphony NS CEO Erika Beatty said over the weekend before boarding a plane for Puerto Rico.
The 11-month-long negotiations took 44 hours total, Beatty said. Scheduling problems on both sides stalled the conversation. On Sept. 6, musicians applied for provincial conciliation.
Lawyer Ron Pink, a seven-year member of the Symphony NS board, represented symphony management in the contract dispute pro-bono. The Pink-Larkin partner declined to comment on his involvement in the negotiations. Pink-Larkin is known for representing unions during labour disputes.
Management cut back admin, marketing, development and production costs in order to meet the players’ demands, Beatty said. They agreed in principle to add a third year with another three per cent raise to the contract. If these funds aren’t available, however, the new contract will expire Aug 31, 2014.
For the last two years, the orchestra has operated at a loss. In 2011, expenses outpaced revenues by $32,000, and in 2012 that number was almost $138,000. Previous financial records were not available.
Last year, HRM gave Symphony NS $20,000. Since 2005, the city’s average grant to SNS has been $17,916.
By comparison, the province gave the orchestra $446,000 last year.
According to an Orchestras Canada survey that compared public funding of orchestras across Canada, municipalities contribute five per cent of orchestras’ total revenues on average. Of Symphony NS’ total revenues in 2012, HRM contributed 0.5 per cent.
HRM’s grant would have to rise to $218,964 per year to be on par with average municipal grants across Canada.
That sounds like a fair number to Dalhousie music department chair Jennifer Bain. She wrote a letter to councillors and the mayor explaining why the municipality should be donating hundreds of thousands more to SNS. In 2012, London, Ontario, a city of a similar size to HRM, donated $482,688 to its symphony, Orchestra London, Bain wrote.
Despite the 3.1 per cent increase over 2012 and 3.45 per cent raise in 2013, Bain says Symphony NS musicians are still underpaid and undervalued.
“I still think it’s a very low salary and I would have loved to see them get more.”
It’s the entire local arts sector that’s underfunded by the city, Beatty added. “If one of us suffers, we all suffer.”
Along with Symphony NS, the Greater Halifax Arts Coalition has petitioned HRM to donate more to arts and culture in Halifax. At the federal level, Canada Council grants are frozen, making municipal funding that much more vital, Beatty said.
“We’ve been really pleased with what we’ve been hearing back from this council, since the election, on the priority the importance of arts and culture to the city of Halifax and to the economy of Nova Scotia,” she said.
Now that negotiations are over, management and musicians will together try to convince HRM they’re worth more than what they’re receiving.
“We’re very glad the contract has been settled,” Kasper said. “It’s a really weird, adversarial process where you sit across from these volunteers who are there because they love music, they love the Symphony, and you have to fight and jostle for more money from them. And in turn, they don’t have the money, they have to now go out and find it.
“So it’s a very weird process, and now it’s over, we have to work together again to find that money. That’s the real challenge now.”
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Letters to the editor, March 7, 2013
This article appears in Feb 21-27, 2013.
The orchestra was being filmed by CBC for a film when the bassoonist made his protest. There is no “starting” salary in SNS. A section player of 30 years makes the same as a section of 2 years.
When was an HRM mayor or councillor at a SNS concert ?
When was an MRM mayor or councillor at a performance at Neptune ?
This is why, as a music student in Halifax, I (along with the vast majority of my colleagues) am essentially being forced out of the province to find any kind of meaningful employment. SNS is roughly half the size of most pro orchestras, preventing them from performing the big works that draw a wide audience, in turn preventing them from bringing in the revenue to hire more musicians, etc. Moreover, they’re stuck playing in a (hardly) repurposed lecture hall with incredibly bad acoustics. Grr. Halifax, this is why we can’t have nice things.