Just observing a few trends from the latest rounds of labor negotiations for US orchestras:
- Unpaid furloughs seem to be the way of dealing with labor costs, rather than lowering the pay rate (either per week or per service).
- Managements are trying to trim costs in their own offices as well as in the ranks of the orchestra.
- There seems to be a race to the bottom in terms of slash-and-burn expense cutting, and musicians are largely going along with this strategy.
- Most orchestras are not raiding their endowments to pay off deficits – yet.
- Scaling down rather than shutting down seems to be the order of this business cycle.