I was thinking about the Detroit Symphony strike today, as I was going about my business, and a few thoughts came to me. My first thought is what are all of the stakeholders at the DSO feeling right now? Surely, they are all relieved that the orchestra did not go over the brink and cancel the entire season and suspend the summer season and what followed. That would likely have meant the death of the organization. As it is, the DSO faces major challenges over the coming months and years.
My next thought was that this entire episode is rather like a divorce proceeding with children involved. The orchestra players are one spouse, then management and board, the other. The children are the concert-going public. How will they feel after this extended custody battle for their hearts and minds? Because, unlike divorces, the players are going back to work for the same management which, in their view, forced them to strike. The parents are back together, but a lot of very ugly things were said in front of the children. How will they react? Will they seek emancipation and take their dollars elsewhere? Or will they, though years are reassurance and therapy, return to the fold?
My final thought is this: what has this strike earned for we fellow unionized musicians? We’ve been told (and told each other) that the DSO musicians were not only doing it for themselves, they were also taking a stand on the front line for the rest of us. Ok. I can respect that, admire it even. But what will this have done for us as the months and years go by? Will managements take a more inclusive line in their negotiating tactics? Will players be more aggressive in theirs? Will boards look to the manifold mistakes and mismanagement that have happened in Detroit and learn some lessons about how to deal with their property and infrastructure issues? Will players parse the progress of the negotiations and learn to better gauge the circumstances of the broader community in which they serve before taking hard action?
Many advances in technology and learning take place in the period during and directly following acts of war. Medical technology is a prime example – with practices learned on the battlefield being brought straight into the urban trauma center. Will the same sorts of lessons be learned in the aftermath of this bloody conflict in Detroit? I can only hope so, because if we do not heed the lessons learned here, than it will have been all for naught. And that would be a terrible waste, indeed.
UPDATE: According to the Associated Press, the starting salary for the Detroit Symphony in the new contract (including the electronic media guarantee) will be $79,000. That’s a 33% cut from the previous base wage. That’s substantial by any measure. However, I was curious just how much $79,000 in Detroit would equal in Portland dollars. The answer, found here, was $128,000. I’m feeling less than sanguine about my own salary after reading that.
8 replies on “detroit after the dust settles”
Excellent post Charles! My hope is that as a result of this unprecedented strike, managements will think twice before implementing draconian cuts on their orchestra — and I’m thinking more in terms of the non-economic cuts than the salary cuts. There are many lessons to be learned and much insight will come after the dusts settles, as you say. But communication breakdown, which is what happened in Detroit both before and during the strike, should be avoided at all costs. And negotiating through the media does very little to improve progess toward resolution.
In terms of the cuts we’ve taken, I think it’s closer to 24%, since base wages were previously at $105k. And I think it bears mentioning that I know of only one person in the DSO who lives in the city of Detroit. Sad, but true. The suburbs are considerably more expensive, though still not as pricey as Portland. I think your adjusted salary would be at least 15% lower. I love it when people mention, “You’re from Detroit? You can buy a house for $1 there!” … Yeah, a “house” without electricity, running water, floorboards, roof…
Thanks for the reply, Una! And thank you for the clarification in terms of the salary cuts, too. As for Detroit cost of living – you mean you guys aren’t all living in giant manses bought for $1 and rebuilt to state of the art for a couple thousand $$?? Inconceivable!
Always interesting to see US orchestral salaries discussed, particularly when I know a recent advert for the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra mentioned a sub-principal 2nd violin position offering a starting salary of about £32500 (US$53200 approx.) I think most people would consider the cost of living to be higher in the UK: gas/petrol prices currently being more than twice as high = a great example.
So are our impoverished British musicians not worth the same kind of salaries on offer in the USA?
Of course they are.
Or perhaps, somewhere along the line a real sense of economic reality has been lost over the past few years during contractual negotiations amongst American orchestras?
I certainly wish my extremely hard-working musician friends and colleagues in Britain could earn the level of “reduced” salary now seemingly offered by a restructured Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
For info for anyone unfamiliar with the city: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birmingham
Food for thought from over the Pond…!
Interesting analogy….but the concert going public are the children (ie. dependents)?!? Kinda breaks down there but I’m being overly analytical. 😉
It’s wonderful news that the strike has ended but financially the DSO management has a long way to go… unlike the big auto companies I don’t think there’s a Federal bailout in the works. Based on word from friends/former colleagues in Detroit who work in the tech industry… no one is making what they were making a couple years ago & that is if they have jobs! So I wonder if the local economy is well positioned to help the organization recovery quickly. Time will tell.
BTW – No April Fools post this year??? Classical Beaver’s one had me going. I’m such a sucker…
I think the analogy stands up – the audience really had no power in this whole process – they weren’t able to not buy tickets because there were no ticketed concerts to attend (except for benefit/engagement concerts by the musicians). Fundraising was down – but not by as much as one might expect in such a situation. Like children in a custody battle, they really can’t do much except run away, which the audiences in Detroit didn’t seem (to this outside observer with limited information) to do. It’s after the reconciliation or settlement that they make their displeasure known.
I’m glad you added your update. I’ve been writing a bit about the DSO strike, and the cost-of-living comparison has been a horse that I’ve beaten, if not to death, certainly onto life support. The comparison for some of the major orchestras in the states:
Detroit – $79,000 “equals”:
San Francisco – $211,971
Los Angeles – $148, 730
New York – $171,802
Atlanta – $100,836
Dallas – $99,806
Seattle – $146,876
Boston – $166,446
A 33% cut in salary is certainly gigantic, however that still puts them among the highest-paid orchestras in the nation relative to their cost-of-living standards. I understand Detroit has its share of problems and in order to attract talent there they need to pay something of a premium. But I don’t think it’s fair to look at salaries in a vacuum as some of the musicians in the DSO seem to…it is entirely reflected by your time and place, and in Detroit in 2011, $79,000 is still a very significant amount of money.
I hope for the sake of the community in Detroit that the relationship can be repaired. They certainly have a great legacy of music-making, and could really help restore some of the shine to what was once a great, great city.
Crackladen,
Did you base your cost-of-living calculation on The City of Detroit, or the Detroit Metro area? There’s a huge difference between the two– and there’s only one person in the DSO who lives in the city, which sadly has huge problems that make it very hard to attract middle class residents.
Also, if you did a comparison between the Detroit metro area and those of Cincinnati, Minneapolis, and St. Louis — 3 cities whose orchestras come closer to the size/scale/reputation/ranking of DSO than most of the cities in your list, you’d find the cost of living is almost equivalent. According to http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-living-calculator.aspx, St. Louis and Cincinnati metro are about 10% less expensive than Detroit metro; Minneapolis 10% more.
From my own observation, most us were overwhelmingly concerned with draconian work rule changes and lack of musician input on the new community engagement work which lies ahead, and much less on salary. We did offer to take a 23% cut in wages at the outset of negotiations.
The only bright spot in this whole saga was the series of over 20 concerts the musicians of the DSO gave all across Detroit — in the city, and throughout the metro area, and in the majority of those concerts the musicians were not paid. Many of these venues will host DSO concerts in the next few months. Time will tell if the development catches up to the community engagement.
Hi Una,
Those were just quick figures grabbed from Sperling’s, so I’m assuming they are Detroit proper. You are right that the surrounding areas are more expensive. I am admittedly a bit of a hardliner when it comes to that type of thing because I encounter the same types of problems where I live (Kansas City, MO).
We just shut down 29 out of 61 schools in the city of Kansas City because of everyone’s flights to the suburbs over the last couple decades. Many co-workers complain about the expense of living out in Johnson County, KS, which is 20-25% more expensive, the extended commute times associated with living out there, etc. It’s almost as if it was not a conscious decision on their part to live out there. My girlfriend and I still live in Kansas City itself, which has several great neighborhoods (and several much scarier ones), and we have few complaints.
I don’t quite know where I stand. The hardliner in me would say, “they are choosing to live outside Detroit city limits when affordable housing is available in the city itself.” The more understanding hardliner in me would say, “Detroit is certainly a tough place to be right now, and perhaps it’s unreasonable to suggest that living in the suburbs is totally voluntary.” But I do know that my reaction is completely biased and colored by my own experiences here in KC.