The Opinion Pages

City’s artistic gem must be preserved

This letter to the editor appeared in The Journal-Gazette on January 15, 2023.

My husband and I moved to Fort Wayne 20 years ago from the Chicago area. We were pleasantly surprised to see in the Arts United package that was mailed to our home that Fort Wayne had a Philharmonic.

I called and ordered tickets to a few concerts for that autumn of 2002. After viewing these concerts (Masterworks series), we were amazed by the high quality of its musicians. We have been subscribers to the Philharmonic ever since. For a city the size of Fort Wayne to have such a talented and professional group contained in a Philharmonic is a true artistic gem for this city.

Fort Wayne is the cultural and economic center of northeast Indiana. To have and keep a Philharmonic has made this region distinctive. To allow this to be lost would be a civic and cultural hole to the city of Fort Wayne and area. The musicians of the Phil have made significant contributions to environmental and human rights projects in this city. They also do numerous outreach programs to the community for people of all ages, especially school-age children, not to mention the amount of work and study to keep themselves the high-caliber professional musicians they are.

We find it hard to believe that Chairman Rick James, President and CEO Brittany A. Hall and the board seem not to value the musicians of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. At the least they should be given a wage of $32,000, knowing the assets of the Phil and the Endowment Fund. We strongly implore them to ratify a contract with these professional musicians to keep this cultural gem of this city flourishing.

Mary Jane Novosel

Fort Wayne

Invaluable assets enhance life here

This letter to the editor appeared in The Journal-Gazette on January 19, 2023.

It is inconceivable even to consider reducing the quality of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic. Many claim that this orchestra is even better than the one in a larger city where they used to live. What a treasure we have!

Fort Wayne entices more companies to settle here; there is now a pedestrian area, a new park, trails, murals, festivals, etc. Many of these new features are not truly “profitable,” but they make the city more livable, more beautiful and attractive.

Why jeopardize the fabulous orchestra? According to maestro Antonio Abreu, “Music must be recognized as an element of socialization; it transmits the highest social values, such as solidarity, harmony, mutual compassion, and respect … It can unite an entire community by expressing sublime feelings … It is an essential part of our growth as human beings.”

Our orchestra exposes people to the beauty of music, which can lift our souls, express our feelings and transcend social classes. Beauty may not be profitable, neither is a sunset, an old tree or soft spring rain, but they nurture and console and make us feel alive and grateful.

Ours are well-trained, dedicated and highly professional musicians; give them what they deserve, what we as a community should cherish. Why do they have an enormous endowment? Others recognized their value.

The board should treasure the orchestra’s members, pay them a living salary and respect their time as professionals so Fort Wayne can proudly say: “Yes, we have also an amazing orchestra. Come live here.”

Erna Vanhelfteren

Fort Wayne

If both sides do their jobs, Philharmonic impasse could end quickly

by Christopher Guerin, January 20, 2023, in The Journal-Gazette.

The board of directors of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic has shown its true intentions with the cancellation of concerts through February. They want to severely weaken the musicians’ union to the extent that the players will no longer have a say in anything the board or management does.

While the financial package has been agreed upon, the board put into its “best and final offer” several poison pills that would have caused any union to vote it down.

They’ve also chosen to eliminate paying health insurance premiums they have been paying throughout the negotiations as a gesture of goodwill – which it was, and laudably so. Now the board, to further pressure the musicians, takes away a medical safety net when COVID-19 is still very much with us, and one of the musicians has a baby on the way.

The board’s bad faith goes all the way back to the fall of 2021, when the one-year contract had just been signed in June. What follows was confirmed to me by a board member in attendance. The board’s paid labor attorney “was asked to speak at Tuesday’s board meeting, and explained that the strategy for the next negotiation will be to ask for further concessions, bargain to impasse, and implement a contract.”

And this appears to be exactly what they’ve tried to do.

The board wants to gut the grievance procedure and expand the importance of the “management rights” clause, to be able to make major changes without the players’ input or ability to object. They also want to eliminate three full-time jobs, and downgrade a fourth, plus take away four hours of personal time per week without paying for it. These are the poison pills I mentioned.

A grievance is typically a protest filed with management by a musician or musicians who feel management has violated the terms of the contract in some way affecting them. More often the clause simply helps facilitate a discussion between players and management when some issue arises that is not explicit in the contract.

Some form of grievance procedure is included in the vast majority of collective bargaining agreements in the country, regardless of the industry. Over the course of many years, management has often requested a “variance” from the contract in order to schedule a concert or for other reasons. Almost invariably, the players have agreed to the variance.

The only reason management would want to change the grievance procedure is to be free to violate, or at best ignore, the contract at will, without any input from the players.

For decades, the grievance clause has been a tool for conversation and compromise between management and players when an unforeseen circumstance arose. It is an instrument encouraging an atmosphere of partnership. The board now wants to call all the shots, regardless of the issue. Partnership dissolved.

Two of the jobs the board wants to cut – the harp and tuba – have been full time for more than 40 years.

The board’s rationale is that these players don’t play as many performances as the other full-time musicians. This is true for a simple reason. Composers don’t always write harp and tuba into their works. However, when they are needed, the work requires the best players possible. Hiring in extras from another city to fill those seats means the orchestra must work with strangers or a different musician in the chair from concert to concert.

Why is this an issue? A significant portion of the endowment was raised from donors specifically to allow the expansion of the orchestra from 18 to 44 full-time musicians.

In campaigns I managed in 1988, 1996 and 2004, the “case statement,” the reason for the need, could be expressed in a single word: “ensemble.” The word defines a group of musicians who know one another musically from consistently working together. They know each others’ strengths and weaknesses; they can anticipate one another; they can blend with each other.

In short, they are a unified whole; they play as one. And artistic quality, musical excellence, is born of “ensemble.”

Many of the endowment donors bought into this concept to such an extent that they pledged large sums to have their names associated with specific instruments. To cut any endowed position from the “ensemble” is in violation of the donors’ original intent.

I wonder whether the board even understands the consequence of cutting these positions. In addition to affecting quality, it will put three small ensembles – the harp/percussion quintet, the brass quintet and the second wind quintet – out of commission. These three ensembles annually perform dozens of education and community engagement programs.

The board also insists on taking away the players’ personal time from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays without paying for it. Those hours allow the players to schedule private student lessons, an important supplement to their meager salaries.

The phrase “best and final offer” is simply a term of art. The players rightly voted it down, but they are willing to continue to negotiate.

Board members, instead of continuing to work for the conclusion they say they want, cancel five weeks of concerts. This punishes everyone, the patrons as well as the players. It’s meant to put pressure on the players, but the board totally underestimates their resolve.

The players have already given up much since the last contract, including three weeks of paid vacation and two weeks of work. In the past 15 years, the concert season has dropped from 38 to 28 weeks. They have watched as program after program, concert series after series, has been cut or eliminated.

At the beginning of the century, the Philharmonic performed 70 to 80 orchestral concerts each year; that number, according to the Philharmonic’s website, is down to 27. Gone are the chamber series, three Masterworks concerts, Unplugged, Community Concerts, pairs of pops concerts, and a large number of the concerts performed in the nine surrounding counties, many of them in schools.

Since 2007, the board has tried to cut its way to profitability. They, and the managers they hired, don’t understand the symphony orchestra business. They cut and cut and the deficit only grows and grows.

Why? Because concerts generate ticket income, grants and sponsorships.

I congratulate the board for increasing the endowment, which has made its current financial offer possible. I applaud their efforts.

But what I and others watching this drama unfold do not understand is why, now that the financial package has been accepted, does the board insist on changes that virtually no union contract contains?

The path to the sustainability the board seeks is simple. Pay the players a living wage, stop trying to get rid of full-time jobs (which would hurt the orchestra artistically), put on a great many more concerts, fix the (dismal) marketing, sell more tickets and raise more money. Stop trying to roll back the “partner-based” elements of the contract to the 1970s.

In other words, the board should do its job and let the players do theirs.

Christopher Guerin was the Philharmonic’s president from 1985 to 2005.

Philharmonic board undercuts progress

This letter to the editor appeared in The Journal-Gazette on January 22, 2023.

I have followed, with increasing dismay, the course of the contract negotiations between the Fort Wayne Philharmonic management and the musicians’ association.

When we moved to Fort Wayne almost eight years ago, we quickly learned that the city had an outstanding orchestra that was part of an amazing arts community. We felt so fortunate that our new home had such regard for the arts.

However, in recent months, it has become apparent that the management of the Philharmonic does not hold its musicians in such regard, despite the years of education and commitment to their art that each musician brings. They have not been paid a living wage for years.

While management has finally proposed a wage increase, to which the musicians have agreed, management continues to demand job cuts and elimination of workplace rights. These demands will diminish the quality of our orchestra and its ability to keep these amazing musicians here.

Fort Wayne has worked to gain recognition nationally as a wonderful place to live. The actions of the Philharmonic management serve to undermine this endeavor.

Pat DaRif

Fort Wayne

Philharmonic board's degradation of assets has been a multi-year effort across many fronts

by Alex Laskey, January 31, 2023, in The Journal-Gazette.

I joined the French horn section of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in January 2018.

I was just out of school with two degrees in my instrument, and the idea of a full-time orchestra job with benefits was appealing. The salary of a Philharmonic musician was extremely modest then, but as a young, single person who found a 500-square-foot studio apartment, I made it work.

I was excited to be performing multiple times a week, both on stage at the Embassy and at schools and nursing homes with the Philharmonic’s brass quintet, putting to good use the skills I had developed for close to 20 years. As someone who hadn’t heard the Fort Wayne Philharmonic perform prior to auditioning, I was extremely surprised just how good the orchestra sounded.

I made many valuable friendships with my colleagues there.

The pandemic hit the performing arts industry as hard as any. But as the initial shock started to settle, I saw orchestras around the country show great creativity in moving forward – the creativity you might expect from an arts organization.

Orchestras’ online presence grew exponentially, small ensembles with proper social distancing eventually started performing, and those orchestras kept their musicians engaged and spreading music however possible.

It was then extremely disappointing to see that while these other organizations saw the pandemic as an opportunity to innovate, Fort Wayne Philharmonic management saw it as an opportunity to slash.

Temporary concessions were being made by musicians in neighboring orchestras, but these terms were just that – temporary – with an intention to return to business as usual as soon as possible. Fort Wayne Philharmonic management refused anything less than permanent reductions, initially attempting to cut both salaries and individual musicians’ positions.

This made their intention clear: to push the Philharmonic into what is known as a “pickup orchestra.” Rather than having a core of musicians, orchestras of this nature hire out every show, piecing together performances from whatever available musicians they can find.

The benefit is the ease and flexibility it puts on managing the orchestra. With musician salaries and benefits out of the picture, concerts can be put on more infrequently and money can be saved for whatever else those managing the organization wish. Making changes to how the organization is structured becomes much easier.

The downside is that it simply isn’t possible to achieve the same level of artistic excellence as an orchestra with full-time musicians.

Those managing the Fort Wayne Philharmonic aren’t naive to this fact. They either don’t think the audience will notice, or they don’t care whether they do.

Seeing the writing on the wall, I chose to leave in 2021. What was once a barely livable wage was turning into a completely unlivable one, and those in charge revealed their values to be drastically different than mine.

I consider myself lucky in this regard. Having not spent enough time in Fort Wayne to have strong roots there, leaving was much easier for me than most of my colleagues, many of whom had given decades to this orchestra and the city. To see these wonderful musicians and people be reduced to simply costs to be minimized was, frankly, infuriating.

While I wished for a more harmonious future for the Philharmonic, I was certainly not hopeful given the obvious objective of those who manage it. A year and a half later, I’m very disappointed to have been proven right.

The role of a nonprofit organization is to serve a specific and worthy mission while staying true to a set of values related to that mission. It is the role of the board of that organization to act as its compass, keeping the ship pointing true to those values. The Philharmonic’s values, as listed on their website, include “artistic integrity,” “transparency,” “shared accountability” and a “celebration of excellence in classical music,” among others.

Does the board of directors honestly feel the Philharmonic is currently aligned with these values?

Is an organization that so quickly looks to cut the compensation of its workers while keeping its own inflated executive salaries “competitive” (their own words) an organization that values “shared accountability”?

Can the Philharmonic purchase and push a reduced version of “The Nutcracker” (losing money in the process), then claim they value “artistic and organizational integrity”?

I don’t think that an institution that concludes its most successful fundraising campaign ever on top of its exceptionally large endowment, then claims it can’t afford to pay its workers a living wage, is one that values “transparency.”

And if the Philharmonic is successful in its efforts to reduce itself to a “pickup orchestra,” how can it claim the value of a “celebration of excellence in classical music”?

This nonprofit has lost its principles, and that is a direct failure of the board and management, not the musicians.

It is very possible there are members of the board who don’t agree with the current direction. The organization has been off course for some time now, and to stand up against precedent takes courage. I argue this courage is part of the responsibility of being in such a position: not to simply go along and obey the loudest voices, but to make an informed, individual decision, recognizing that decision has very real consequences for people within and outside the company.

The Fort Wayne Philharmonic has created a reputation as being “one of those orchestras” – one the orchestral world sees as mismanaged, unjust and misaligned.

The board has the opportunity to start turning this reputation around, and I beg them to do it.

If, however, it truly is the board’s vision to see the Fort Wayne Philharmonic reduced to a funnel for executive salaries that occasionally puts on mediocre concerts, then I suppose that is its fate.

The musicians will suffer. The community that enjoys the Philharmonic will suffer. The art form will suffer. Philharmonic management will be just fine.

Alex Laskey now lives in Norfolk, Virginia.

Board's stubborn focus preventing Philharmonic accord

By Campbell MacDonald, February 23, 2023, in the Journal-Gazette.

On behalf of all Philharmonic musicians, we would like to thank our community for the overwhelming support we’ve received.

This has been a challenging period for our families, friends and patrons. We are entering our sixth month of negotiations with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, and management recently announced the cancellation of all March performances. The question our community continues to ask is, “What’s the holdup?”

In the weeks following our decision to strike, the Philharmonic presented wage proposals that addressed musician salary cuts agreed to during the uncertainty of the COVID pandemic. By early January we agreed to management’s proposal for musician wages. While not lucrative, it provides us with an approximate 3.75% average annual increase over our 2019 pay.

Additionally, we have agreed to give the Philharmonic expanded access to our personal time and further scheduling flexibility for daytime and evening services. We accepted cost-saving modifications to employer-provided health care, and have proposed a host of other compromises to needs outlined by management.

With these concessions and our agreement regarding wages in place, this strike should be over.

But this is not enough for the Philharmonic’s Board of Directors. Instead, the Philharmonic is steadfast in attaching degradations to long-standing and functional contract language, eliminating our workplace bargaining rights and insisting on a punitive attendance policy that would allow them to fire us should we take leave already granted by management.

Throughout this negotiation, the Philharmonic has sought to portray our handling of routine business as unreasonable, both at the bargaining table and in comments made to the public.

Philharmonic Board Chair Rick James extended this strategy to Journal Gazette readers on Feb. 11, attempting to rationalize the Philharmonic’s demand to bolster management rights and attendance requirements for musicians.

Conspicuously absent in the piece (“Harmony remains goal of Philharmonic board”) was any mention of the Philharmonic’s far-reaching and destructive proposal to strip us of our right to bargain workplace issues not covered under our contract. James’ words show a disconnect from standard practices in our industry, the nature of productive partnership in our workplace, and even the position inhabited by the Philharmonic’s negotiation team.

Our agreement already contains a management rights clause that is broadly inclusive. The Philharmonic acknowledged the breadth of our current contract language in its most recent proposal to musicians by rescinding its proposed expansion of management rights – but only if we agree to eliminate our workplace bargaining rights.

The right to address workplace issues as they arise is a core component of any union contract. Its proposed elimination is an affront to anyone who seeks dignity and respect in their workplace and would remove the essence of cooperation called for in the Philharmonic’s stated position.

Our long-established partnership with management has come under attack during these negotiations. Elected musician representatives meet and communicate regularly with management to discuss issues related to our contract. In recent years, our diligence has provided the composition of contract language that brought the Philharmonic’s Club-O program into accordance with federal labor law, the creation of COVID safety protocols, and the avoidance of countless scheduling violations.

Exceptions to rules outlined in our contract can be addressed with a variance. Recent workplace disagreements between management and musicians have revolved around scheduling violations that could only be addressed in this way. For many years, we have by and large granted variance requests from management.

Following the Philharmonic’s furlough of musicians and our acceptance of pandemic-related salary cuts in 2021, management has made no requests for variances. Any concern about leave taken by our colleagues, which is management’s justification for its proposed Orwellian attendance policy, went entirely unmentioned.

The Philharmonic leadership’s unwillingness to manage effectively does not justify the destruction of a balanced system of addressing workplace issues that has functioned for decades. Their weaponization of our bargaining rights is an unfair attempt to leverage inequitable control into the hands of administrators.

The Fort Wayne Philharmonic’s continued attempt to extract all it can from us in exchange for a modest wage raise has our audience and our country’s orchestra industry shaking their heads.

A resolution to our conflict is in plain sight. Contract language that has for years provided the basis of partnership between previous Philharmonic managerial teams and musicians already exists, ready to guide us forward.

We acknowledge the Philharmonic’s proposal of acceptable wages at the bargaining table.

In return, we ask the Philharmonic Board of Directors to recognize our concessions, abandon their unnecessary non-economic demands, and bring our music back to Fort Wayne and northeast Indiana with a fair agreement.

Campbell MacDonald is chairperson of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Players’ Association.

Cleveland musicians offer support for strikers

This letter to the editor appeared in The Journal-Gazette on February 24, 2023.

We would like to extend our support to the musicians of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

The city of Fort Wayne has historically supported a number of exceptional cultural institutions. It is imperative that the fine quality of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic be preserved. This can only happen if all current orchestra positions are retained and the musicians are paid a reasonable living wage.

As members of the Cleveland Orchestra, we know too that maintaining a strong trade agreement that adequately protects musicians is equally important to preserving artistic quality.

A thriving resident orchestra provides the citizens of its city with so much more than just symphony orchestra concerts. The orchestra musicians individually teach thousands of hours of music lessons, play countless small ensemble and solo recitals, and enrich their community with the creative knowledge and empathetic awareness they’ve gained from a life of collaborative work in the orchestra.

We have had the pleasure of making music recently with the principal timpanist of your orchestra, Eric Schweikert, proving that your talented musicians are assets not only to your local community but also on the national stage.

The people of Fort Wayne deserve to have a healthy, vibrant, strong orchestra that continues to attract wonderful new musicians and perform at the very highest standards.

Kathleen Collins

for the Cleveland Orchestra Committee

Board still underestimates musicians' resolve

By Christopher Guerin, March 4, 2023, in the Journal-Gazette.

One would think that a group of people of wealth and position would necessarily be “mature.” This cannot be said of the board of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.

There’s an old saying: “You become an adult when you begin to care more for others than yourself.”

In the case of the Philharmonic strike, the board has demonstrated nothing but selfish disdain for the musicians under their “care.” They are equally disdainful of the art form that it is their charge and duty to protect and nurture.

The proof of this is the reduction from 80 orchestral performances annually at the beginning of the century to 27 concerts today, and a stated lack of interest in adding more concerts in the future.

A recent PBS special report focused on Fort Wayne’s embrace of public art as a sign of its resurgence from hard times in the second half of the 20th century. I hope board members watched this report and took a good look at their own contributions to the resurgence of the orchestra from the mismanagement and programmatic dismantling of orchestral music over the past two decades.

I’m sure they’ll say, “But we’ve done our job. We raised and gave millions in endowment funds.”

Yes, they did, and they’ve even agreed with the musicians to use those funds for the purpose they were intended for – the nurturing of orchestral music in northeast Indiana through the increased financial support of the orchestra’s professional musicians.

But there it ends. Everything in the ongoing impasse between the players and the board has been resolved except some non-financial items. The primary one is a simple concept embodied in the collective bargaining agreement that guarantees the musicians’ workplace bargaining rights.

This concept, which has been in force for now roughly 60 years, needs to go away, says the board, wagging a finger at the players as if they are the naughty children who have brought this about.

As a communications specialist, among other things, I have to admire the audacity of the “spin” displayed in a Feb. 11 op-ed written by the board chair and signed by the board (“Harmony remains goal of Philharmonic board”). It was tendentious and self-serving and thoroughly misrepresented the reasons for the ongoing strike.

The consequences of the board’s demands are that musicians would have no voice in any decision that isn’t explicitly stated in the contract. None.

Is there some big looming issue that necessitates this demand? No. There was one abuse of policy by an individual musician that management didn’t deal with forthrightly. Now they want to use the equivalent of a baseball bat to squash a flea.

As president of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic from 1985 to 2005, I frequently dealt with issues that required communication with the players to reach a quick resolution. It was no great burden to sit down with them and discuss the issues. And in 20 years I had only one grievance filed, and that one the players themselves withdrew.

My approach was simple common sense, but it was grounded in my respect of the players. We were either to succeed together or fail together. And we succeeded because we always found a way to work together.

Events of the past 10 years prove that the players have been willing to work with the board. Why isn’t the obverse true?

Yet, the board doesn’t even want to sit down with the musicians. The players offered several meeting times recently, which were ignored. Instead, the board canceled concerts through early April.

All those with a stake in the success of this community, and that means everyone, needs to understand that the board is intent on busting the union. The language the board wishes to eliminate will effectively make the word “union” meaningless. And with that goes cooperation, accountability, transparency and a host of other “values” the board lists on its website under “Mission and Values.”

Here are a few suggestions why this is happening.

1) A favorite saying of mine: “It’s easy to give away money; harder to do so wisely; and extremely hard to do so with humility.”

I’ve read repeatedly the complaint that players don’t appreciate the board’s “generosity.” People who qualify as the working poor, and will continue to be so over the term of the contract, can’t be expected to throw a parade for donors on the board.

They, the rich, have the money to give; it’s no sacrifice for them. Yet, apparently in the absence of said parade, they want total control.

2) Clearly, knee-jerk anti-unionism is at play here. There are even conspiracy theories afloat that outside influences are at work. Yikes.

Other orchestras are also having tough negotiations. Well, of course. They are all members of the American Federation of Musicians, which provides labor council for negotiating orchestras. I sat across from an AFM negotiator for eight contracts and all were concluded amicably, to the benefit of all, and endorsed by the board. (I should add that the present board’s negotiation tactics have been far more aggressive and hard-boiled than the players’ have been.)

I’ve watched strikes in other orchestras for decades. Invariably, once the financial package is agreed, all other side issues tend to disappear. Certainly no other orchestra has had to continue to strike simply to preserve its workplace bargaining rights from elimination.

For you board anti-unionists, this union is not going away. The AFM is a national union, and most every orchestra of any size is unionized. Even if every player in the orchestra quit tomorrow, the board would not be able to hire a new orchestra. Musicians support one another, and no player would cross a virtual or physical picket line.

All hypothetical, of course. The players aren’t going to give up this strike if it means agreeing to the board’s unnecessary demands. And they can’t be driven from Fort Wayne. This is their home, as much as it’s the home of the board.

I urge everyone who believes in the resurgence of Fort Wayne, who cares about dignity and respect for hard-working and underpaid employees, and who love music, to contact the board individually and collectively and demand an end to this.

Christopher Guerin was president of the Philharmonic from 1985 to 2005.

Philharmonic board expects only concessions from musicians

By Dennis Fick, March 8, 2023, in the Journal-Gazette.

In an op-ed published Feb. 11 (“Harmony remains goal of Philharmonic board”), Fort Wayne Philharmonic Board Chair Rick James signs on behalf of the board.

Every year, several members of the community are elected to the board as representatives of various stakeholders.

I am a member of the Philharmonic board, representing the musicians. James did not solicit my input, nor ask for my signature, nor provide me with a pre-publication copy. He does not speak for me.

As a member of the union negotiating team, I can attest to the misrepresentations and false implications that are the main content of James’ article.

He writes of a “45.8% wage increase over four years.” His calculation is based on our wage in 2022, which was a cut of 15% from our pre-pandemic wage and a concession we accepted to address the temporary challenges of the COVID emergency. The current wage offer represents an average increase of about 3.75% per year from our last raise in 2019 through 2026, less than cost of living.

James calls the Philharmonic’s wage offer “givebacks.” What exactly is given back?

James refers to “concessions” made by the Philharmonic in the course of negotiations. If the Philharmonic demands a concession from us then later modifies that demand, that is not a concession. It remains a demand for concession from us.

Examples are the 17½% pay cut in 2013; the 15% pay cut in 2021; our tentative agreement to give up our three weeks of paid vacation; and our tentative agreement to allow the Philharmonic more access to our personal time without additional compensation.

The Philharmonic has made no concessions. The entire six months of talks have been all about what the Philharmonic can extract from us.

In comparing full-time musicians’ work to a “…typical full-time job…,” James indulges in a false equivalency of the most egregious kind. Our full-time work means we are salaried and can be scheduled from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., six days a week, giving the Philharmonic the ability to provide chamber orchestra and small ensemble performances during daytime hours without additional musician cost.

That is a great advantage to the Philharmonic; it provides the flexibility and cost control to deliver many services to the community that otherwise would not be possible.

In discussing management rights, James writes it is only about “ …reserve(ing) the Philharmonic’s ability to manage operations on issues not outlined in the collective bargaining agreement.” Current language, which has been in our contract for at least 35 years, does exactly that: “Except as specifically limited by this Agreement, the management of the Philharmonic and direction of the Philharmonic’s activities and those of its employees are vested exclusively in the Philharmonic.”

No modification could enhance “vested exclusively.” Any modifications could only curtail our rights. James writes that it is about clarity and cooperation and not about control; in reality, it is only about control.

The Philharmonic demands that we agree voluntarily to give up our rights now and for the future in exchange, it would seem, for salary increases that do not even keep up with inflation.

James writes that he wants to be able to “manage operations on issues not outlined in the collective bargaining agreement.” For more than 39 years, our labor agreement has successfully provided the means to do exactly that: “In the event that a question arises the disposition of which is not otherwise provided for in this Agreement, upon demand by the Philharmonic, the Orchestra Committee or the Local, all parties hereto shall negotiate a reasonable and mutually agreeable settlement in good faith.”

That is the language of respect between partners. Now the Philharmonic demands this language be excised, silencing our voice and ending the long-standing partnership. In his article, James speaks of “…foster(ing) a culture of collaboration…” and “…cooperation in the relationship with musicians…,” yet the Philharmonic’s contract demands would result in the exact opposite.

James writes that the Philharmonic has proposed reducing attendance requirements, as if making a concession. Not so.

Instead, the Philharmonic demands another concession from us, proposing a new attendance requirement that could lead to dismissal for a leave of absence granted by the Philharmonic. The Philharmonic seeks this new path to fire us after an an isolated instance with one musician, one never addressed through their right to manage nor through any discussion with musician representatives.

It seems they want to kill a flea with a Howitzer because they don’t know any other way to handle the issue.

James’ piece mirrors the Philharmonic’s approach throughout these many months of negotiation – obfuscation, misdirection and bullying.

The way to agreement is clear. It is time for the Philharmonic to accept our concessions, abandon its shameful power grab and get back to work giving concerts and building audience and community support.

Dennis Fick is the principal bassoonist with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic.