My BBB (bratsche blogging brother) Robert Levine has posted a very good article about the pitfalls of the addiction to the over scale model of orchestral recognition in his new post over at polyphonic.org. He calls over scale (individually negotiated wages for members, usually principals, of the orchestra that are greater than the contractually specified minimums) the third rail of orchestral politics, and it is so. He also puts his finger on why this is so:
So that was the “aha”: this wasn’t about the money (and everyone recognized that management was highly unlikely to have any money for individual raises anyway, even without management telling us, which they did anyway). This was about people feeling special; special in that they were more valued by management (as evidenced by the additional money), special in that they were part of an elite corps within the orchestra, and special especially because they had an individual relationship with management different from that of most of their colleagues. Section players are workers; only artists have the clout to negotiate individual overscale.
What we had taken away was not any real prospect of overscale raises for three years; what we had taken away was their specialness.
It’s a big problem when it comes time to address pay raises or cuts, as people who are at the bottom of the pay scale often end up getting the smallest percentage increases and the largest percentage decreases, unless the negotiating committee is keeping a watchful eye for more fair solutions (such as a fixed dollar amount raise per player, rather than a percentage of their pay scale).
I would strongly advise my colleagues (and their managements) around the orchestral world to read this article, and to consider taking actions to prevent what happened in Milwaukee from happening in their own orchestras. It can get very ugly.