Mayor Off Base

Her Honor, Mayor O’Connor, has reacted to the rejection of binding arbitration by the former musicians of the San Diego Symphony with a great deal of heat, but unfortunately, not very much light. She has criticized the musicians for accepting the advice of their New York legal counsel for reasons that had nothing whatever to do with the quality of the advice, but rather where it came from. As a performing arts labor relations consultant, I would beg to differ with Her Honor.

The process of binding arbitration is entirely inappropriate for setting forth the terms of a new collective bargaining agreement. According to federal labor policy as set forth by the U.S. Congress in the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, as amended, collective bargaining is the means by which the parties to a labor agreement arrive at the terms, wages and conditions of employment for an appropriate bargaining unit of employees, in this case the musicians of the San Diego Symphony.

After bargaining with the symphony management for all these many months and deadlocking on the provisions of a new agreement, what would be gained by permitting outsiders to these negotiations to come in at this time and dictate the terms of a new agreement? The mere fact that the proposed arbitrator was acceptable to the symphony management would be reason enough to reject him as an unbiased and impartial arbitrator. To have come up with this ill-advised attempt to get the musicians back to work was an insensitive blunder on the mayor’s part. She had only to read the daily newspapers to understand the depth of the animosity and mistrust that exists between the musicians and symphony management.

Binding arbitration is more suitable to a dispute between the parties of an existing contract where there is a difference in position regarding the interpretation or application of specific provisions. Such is not the case here. While the mayor should be lauded for her concern over the demise of one of the city’s major artistic organizations, her offer to settle the dispute was inappropriate and ill-advised.

SAM DENOV

Escondido