S.D. Symphony Musicians OK 3-Year Contract

Just in time to assure the performance of the San Diego Symphony’s season-opening concert Friday night, orchestra musicians Tuesday approved a new three-year contract. When the votes were counted at 11 p.m., the 81 orchestra members had given their “almost unanimous” support to Monday’s tentative agreement, according to Joe Pallazola, president of Local 325 of the American Federation of Musicians.

The tentative breakthrough came on Monday, the day the previous two-year contract expired, after more than a month of negotiations between symphony management and the players’ union. After the executive committee of the symphony board approved the Monday agreement’s new terms, the musicians had 24 hours in which to vote on the new contract.

The terms of the contract involve compromises on both sides, including a reduction of the season from the current 38 weeks to 36 weeks--the musicians had asked for an expansion of the season to 40 weeks by 1993. Orchestra members will see their weekly salary increase from the current $700 to $740 in 1991/92, to $780 for 1992/93 and to $825 for 1993/94.

“We wanted to keep pace and increase the weekly wage; that’s only fair,” said symphony executive director Wesley Brustad. “But we needed to reduce the number of weeks out of concern for what the local market was able to absorb.”

“When computed on a weekly basis, the salary increase is 5% (for each increment), which is the industry standard,” said principal trombonist Heather Buchman, a member of the orchestra’s negotiating committee. “But it’s not industry standard to cut back the number of weeks in a season.”

Buchman pointed out that, even with next season’s weekly raise from $700 to $740, the loss of two week’s work will mean an annual raise of only $40.

A key issue for the musicians was getting a contract for the full three years, Pallazola said. Management had offered a single-year contract.

“A three-year contract ensures a certain level of stability and peace,” Buchman explained. “Negotiations are too distracting to do that frequently. It’s like someone who runs for Congress, wins, and then has to spend the entire second year of the term thinking about how to get reelected.”

Other significant issues included cost ceilings on musicians’ health insurance premiums and scheduling the symphony season around the San Diego Opera spring schedule. For the about one-third of the symphony musicians who play in the opera orchestra, such coordination is crucial in order to keep both jobs. Brustad said symphony management is committed to make the scheduling compatible, although Buchman pointed out that both organizations, symphony and opera, have to cooperate to arrive at a compatible schedule.

(Coincidentally, the contract between the opera orchestra musicians and the San Diego Opera expired on the same day as the San Diego Symphony contract. Negotiations with the opera management have not yet been scheduled because the opera season does not open until January, 1992.)

All parties agreed that the recently completed negotiations were particularly harmonious, a contrast to the bitter negotiations of 1986 that put the orchestra out of business for an entire season.

“The spirit was friendly, and there were no hard feelings,” Pallazola observed. “In the six years I’ve been here, which includes three symphony negotiations, the tenor was the best it has ever been, which pleases me no end. I don’t think you should go into these things with boxing gloves on.”