New West Symphony Faces Threat by Union : Labor: Amid troubled contract negotiations, American Federation of Musicians considers barring members from playing in orchestra.

The American Federation of Musicians union is threatening to raise the stakes in its pursuit of a contract with Ventura County’s newly formed symphony.

The union has received permission from its headquarters to place the New West Symphony on the union’s International Unfair List, a move that would bar thousands of Southern California’s best musicians from playing with the orchestra.

But local union President Michael Smith said he has not enacted the ban and is hoping that New West--formed in March by the merger of the Conejo and Ventura County symphonies--will offer union musicians first crack at 80 open positions with the new symphony.

“We don’t want to have such a protracted struggle that the symphony won’t open this season,” Smith said. “But this is just one more tool in our arsenal, but only as a last resort.”

New West officials said Thursday they were not aware that the union was planning such a move.

“I’m very surprised at this action,” said Dwight Brown, president of the New West Symphony board of directors.

“We don’t have a single musician yet,” he said. “We want to be fair to everyone and put the finest musicians on stage that we can. I think the union has the same intentions.”

In the latest round of negotiations, New West officials Wednesday proposed allowing musicians who played with the former Conejo and Ventura County symphonies to be first in line to audition for the new symphony.

If all 80 positions were not filled, New West officials said they would then open auditions to other musicians. No date has been set for those auditions.

But union officials rejected that proposal.

“The union position is that the whole word audition is holding things up,” Smith said. “Why do you have to try out for a job that you already have?”

The International Unfair List is published monthly in the union magazine, International Musician, and lists about a dozen organizations in the United States that the union believes have been unfair to its workers.

Union musicians who play with organizations on the list can be fined $3,000 to $5,000 and are barred from playing with other union symphonies.

The union currently has collective bargaining agreements with most major Southern California symphonies, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Pacific Symphony and the Santa Barbara Symphony.

The union spent last summer hammering out its first agreement with the Ventura County Symphony, a contract that expired when the concert season ended in June.

New West Symphony officials say their organization does not have to honor that agreement because it is a new company. But union officials contend that New West is a successor of the dissolved symphonies and should let them play without having to audition.

“It doesn’t seem right that players who have auditioned for positions, won them and served them should have to compete with musicians from all over,” said Stephen Thiroux, a bassoonist and chairman of the union’s negotiating committee.

Meanwhile, symphony conductor Boris Brott remained optimistic that the symphony seats will be filled before October, when New West plays its first concert at the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks.

“Subscriptions are moving well, we’ve raised all sorts of money,” he said. “This type of thing can be a bombshell. But as I see it, both sides have been working together in a spirit of collaboration.”