Refund Demand Buoys Musicians : Symphony Director Says Bargaining Won’t Be Affected

Demands by San Diego Symphony subscribers for $350,000 in ticket refunds will give the locked-out musicians more clout when they sit down today for contract talks, the head of the musicians’ negotiating committee said Tuesday.

“I think that affects the negotiations very definitely,” said committee chairman Gregory Berton, who, along with other musicians, hasn’t been paid by the San Diego Symphony Assn. since Sept. 15. “I think they should reconsider their bargaining position in terms of trying to starve the musicians out. It looks like they’re the ones that got starved out.”

Stalemated contract talks in the bitter labor dispute between musicians and the symphony resume at 10 a.m. today after a one-month hiatus.

Besides the refund requests, more than $400,000 in state, local and federal payments to the orchestra have been either suspended or canceled due to the decision by symphony directors to cancel the winter concert season, and pending the outcome of contract talks with musicians.

Symphony Executive Director Wesley O. Brustad denied that the refund requests, when added to the costs of a twice-monthly staff payroll and payments on $3.66 million in loans, have affected the symphony’s bargaining position.

“Any refund affects the financial position of the symphony,” Brustad said. “We like to see cash coming in. Obviously, the cash drain is very costly to us.”

Brustad said he will arrive at today’s talks with a plan for a spring mini-season. He also said he has completed plans for next winter’s season, pending a labor settlement.

Asked whether the $350,000 in refund demands and the curtailment of income are moving the symphony to the brink of bankruptcy, Brustad responded: “Absolutely not.

“It would have been worse if we’d accepted that contract (offered by the musicians). We’d probably be out of business right now if we’d done that.”

Before the season was canceled, the two sides were $500,000 apart on wages.

A key stumbling block in previous discussions, musicians say, was the symphony’s demand for more than 40 non-wage concessions. Berton said that “they had better be willing to give up (all non-wage concessions) because that’s the only way the musicians will be able to consider the compromises they are asking us to take as fair compromises.”

The chief non-wage issues include proposals that would give the music director more hiring and firing power.

Other seemingly innocuous symphony proposals bother the musicians, French horn player Warren Gref, a member of the bargaining committee, said. One is a change proposed by the symphony that would remove the requirement that weeks in which the musicians play a high number of concerts and rehearsals be offset by a following or preceding week in which no more than six “services” are scheduled.

“Ordinarily these things might not necessarily be a problem,” Gref said. “But when you see how abusive (the symphony has) been, there’s the fear that if we grant them, they’ll take them to the limit.”

Berton said the musicians have voiced their concern about non-wage proposals “from the beginning. We’re not prepared to make non-monetary concessions if we’re making monetary concessions. I hope that message is loud and clear.”