{"id":3197,"date":"2009-10-03T16:15:18","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T23:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2009-10-03T16:15:18","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T23:15:18","slug":"third-rail-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/10\/03\/third-rail-indeed\/","title":{"rendered":"third rail, indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iStock_000009896620XSmall\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a>.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He also puts his finger on why this is so:<\/p>\n

So that was the \u201caha\u201d: this wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

What we had taken away was not any real prospect of overscale raises for three years; what we had taken away was their specialness<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 It can get very ugly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.\u00a0 He calls over scale (individually negotiated wages for members, usually principals, of the orchestra that are greater than the contractually specified […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1783,186,2],"tags":[359],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administration-the-orchestra-world-music","category-labor-issues","category-the-orchestra-world","tag-robert-levine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-Pz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":872,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/22\/levine-on-flanagan-and-orchestral-costs\/","url_meta":{"origin":3197,"position":0},"title":"levine on flanagan and orchestral costs","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Levine has been burning the midnight oil analyzing the recent Flanagan report [available here] and musing about the best method of determining the future of a given orchestra.\u00c2\u00a0 Highly recommended reading. - Baumol was wrong - First take on Flanagan, Part I","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":897,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/03\/31\/slatkin-and-dudamel-start-to-make-marks\/","url_meta":{"origin":3197,"position":1},"title":"slatkin and dudamel start to make marks","author":"Charles Noble","date":"March 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Some random orchestrally-themed news that I recommend to you: First, the Detroit Free Press published a wonderfully comprehensive article on the activities of Leonard Slatkin as he prepares to officially take the reins of the Detroit Symphony this Fall. Next, the Orange County Register reports on the first appearance in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1526,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/11\/orchestral-hustle\/","url_meta":{"origin":3197,"position":2},"title":"orchestral hustle","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Levine writes a great response (as usual) to Holly Mulcahy's article on how to alienate your audience, and address in particular the issue of musicians not smiling during performances. Here's what he says: But two of her points were not as well taken, I thought. 1) Never smile. You\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1488,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/05\/the-sky-isnt-falling-the-sky-isnt-falling\/","url_meta":{"origin":3197,"position":3},"title":"the sky isn’t falling, the sky isn’t falling","author":"Charles Noble","date":"December 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Levine has an excellent post today that goes along very well with my post of a couple days ago.\u00c2\u00a0 It's a response to a recent posting by Greg Sandow, which you can find here. Here's the first two paragraphs of Robert's excellent response: Greg Sandow recently wrote a typically\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "bloggers"","block_context":{"text":"bloggers","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/bloggers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2927,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2009\/07\/31\/odds-and-ends-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":3197,"position":4},"title":"odds and ends","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Some news from the orchestral front this week: The Baltimore Symphony continues to shrink its budget, the musicians are cutting their wages from the 5.7% already conceded to 12.5% for the 2009-2010 season. [Washington Post] Peter Dobrin writes about African-American orchestral musicians in Philadelphia. [Philadelphia Inquirer] The Indianapolis Symphony declines\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "conducting"","block_context":{"text":"conducting","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/conducting\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":675,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/19\/more-columbus-analysis\/","url_meta":{"origin":3197,"position":5},"title":"more columbus analysis","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Levine*, at his blog Abu Bratsche (best blog name I've seen in a long, long time!), points out that the problems that are coming to a head in Columbus are not financial in origin. The management and board of the Columbus Symphony have released a document with the Orwellian\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "labor issues"","block_context":{"text":"labor issues","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/labor-issues\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}