What mattered in 2014?
Of the three lockouts that concluded in 2013/2014, there was one which will matter the most in the long term, closely followed in importance by a lockout that didn’t happen. The most significant of the ones that did, in my view, was Atlanta.
It’s generally a mistake to think of orchestra labor negotiations as a contest in which one side wins and the other loses. The reality in most cases is that neither side is trying to “win”: rather, both sides are trying to reach deals that will work for them over the long term, which necessarily means deals that the other side can live with. But Atlanta was different; put simply, the musicians whupped their employer. The orchestra’s CEO was forced out, the real decision-makers on the employer side – the Woodruff Center board – were smoked out and had to come to the table, and the employer’s most important demand – unilateral control over the orchestra’s size – was rejected essentially with no compromise at all. Almost as important, it happened pretty quickly, without the prolonged bloodletting that happened in the Twin Cities.
Of course, none of this would have happened had the Woodruff Center, which was calling the shots, had actually been trying to negotiate, rather than defeat – or impose its will on – the musicians. It helped that the employer’s proposals were, on their face, unreasonable. It certainly helped that the Woodruff Center showed itself in such a bad light in so many ways. Arguably the most telling of these moments was when it was revealed that the Woodruff Center had sold land that had been designated for the orchestra’s (abandoned) hall project and then giving the $2 million in proceeds to an organization outside of the Woodruff Center, all while pleading poverty at the negotiating table. It certainly helped that the musicians had also been locked out in 2012 and had both experience dealing with the tactic and ample motivation to drive a stake through its heart once and for all.
But the musicians and their advisers (in particular Liza Medina and Randy Whately) deserve great credit for handling the situation in such a way that the lockout failed so completely and so quickly. Our field owes them a tremendous debt for disarming a large grenade thrown at the heart of the concept of constructive labor relations.
Of the three lockouts that concluded in 2013/2014, there was one which will matter the most in the long term, closely followed in importance by a lockout that didn’t happen. The most significant of the ones that did, in my view, was Atlanta.
It’s generally a mistake to think of orchestra labor negotiations as a contest in which one side wins and the other loses. The reality in most cases is that neither side is trying to “win”: rather, both sides are trying to reach deals that will work for them over the long term, which necessarily means deals that the other side can live with. But Atlanta was different; put simply, the musicians whupped their employer. The orchestra’s CEO was forced out, the real decision-makers on the employer side – the Woodruff Center board – were smoked out and had to come to the table, and the employer’s most important demand – unilateral control over the orchestra’s size – was rejected essentially with no compromise at all. Almost as important, it happened pretty quickly, without the prolonged bloodletting that happened in the Twin Cities.
Of course, none of this would have happened had the Woodruff Center, which was calling the shots, had actually been trying to negotiate, rather than defeat – or impose its will on – the musicians. It helped that the employer’s proposals were, on their face, unreasonable. It certainly helped that the Woodruff Center showed itself in such a bad light in so many ways. Arguably the most telling of these moments was when it was revealed that the Woodruff Center had sold land that had been designated for the orchestra’s (abandoned) hall project and then giving the $2 million in proceeds to an organization outside of the Woodruff Center, all while pleading poverty at the negotiating table. It certainly helped that the musicians had also been locked out in 2012 and had both experience dealing with the tactic and ample motivation to drive a stake through its heart once and for all.
But the musicians and their advisers (in particular Liza Medina and Randy Whately) deserve great credit for handling the situation in such a way that the lockout failed so completely and so quickly. Our field owes them a tremendous debt for disarming a large grenade thrown at the heart of the concept of constructive labor relations.