This morning I made a comment about a scheduling issue that came up this week – we had two rehearsals for a concert that takes place next Monday, with the dress rehearsal taking place on Monday morning.  No other orchestral services take place in the intervening time period.  I said that this seemed very silly to me.  Almost immediately the response from another member of the organization was “well, if you would change your rules, then we could have the rehearsals closer to the concert”.  Perhaps, but we the musicians don’t dictate the contract to management, that’s why the process of making a new contract is called negotiation.

An orchestra’s contract is often a reflection of past abuses and its attempts to prevent them from ever happening again.

I don’t really like some of the strange and seemingly arbitrary work rules that make up a large portion of our contract, but the fact is, an orchestra’s contract (or CBA – collective bargaining agreement) is often a reflection of past abuses and its attempts to prevent them from ever happening again.  We have a competent, hard-working management team in place now, with a president who has demonstrated her good faith and respect time and time again – but it wasn’t ever thus.

Scheduling issues are especially important to members of orchestras – particularly those orchestras which don’t provide sufficient compensation.  Often, musicians will teach extensive private studios to close the income gap, or teach at a local college or university, or take part-time work outside of music, or sell real estate – the list goes on and on.  Teaching privately or in a college setting requires stable periods of free time that you can count on.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you have no scheduling restrictions in your CBA.  On Monday, you get an email from your personnel manager explaining that a pops show was able to make a date in town for Wednesday and the management has hired the show.  There will be two rehearsals the day of the show and a concert Wednesday night.  You had ten students lined up for lessons on Wednesday afternoon and evening.  Now you’ve got to call them all up and reschedule them to other days – some students might not be able to reschedule and you’ve lost a substantial amount of income for that week.  If this happens more than a couple times a year, you’ll start to see your student count start to decline as their parents head for a more stable and reliable teaching environment.

As you can no doubt guess, this could quickly snowball into a disaster for the musicians.  How to resolve this?  Make sure that adequate advanced notice is given for schedule changes, and ensure that there is one inviolate day off in each work week.

The problem comes when you start adding other restrictions or conditions to the mix.  As each new CBA gets negotiated, the layers of rules start piling up like sediments on the ocean floor, and some unintended consequences can ensue.  An adage in contract negotiating circles says that what is given up is never regained, and so the work rules continue to add up – for if salaries and benefits might be lost, at least adequate workplace protections might be retained as some sort of counterbalance.