Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra have struck a tentative agreement on a new three-year labor deal. The pact, whose terms were finalized in the past few days after more than six months of talks, would, if ratified, put the base minimum salary of orchestra members at $200,008 annually by the end of the contract.<\/p>\n
Players were presented with the deal Monday and, after a mandatory 48-hour period to mull it, are slated to hold a ratification vote starting Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The old contract expired Monday at 12:01 a.m., but no interruption of performances is expected. Opening night<\/a> of the 2026-27 season is Sept. 24 \u2014 a benefit concert for the musicians\u2019 retirement fund featuring Joe Hisaishi<\/a>\u2019s Orbis and Beethoven\u2019s Symphony No. 9.<\/p>\n The musicians\u2019 negotiating committee recommended the contract \u2014 which keeps the Philadelphia Orchestra\u2019s players among a group of the best paid in the U.S. \u2014 to the full membership. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a step in the right direction,\u201d Ellen Trainer, president of local 77-274 of the American Federation of Musicians, said of the tentative deal. \u201cI think the association [management] understood our narrative and worked with us to achieve something we can all be proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a deal that commits to the artistry of the orchestra,\u201d said Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts president and CEO Ryan Fleur. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to assure short- and long-term economic stability. It does make an investment in our artists and it is a competitive deal that will keep them among their highest-paid peers.\u201d<\/p>\n The new contract follows one whose negotiations in 2023 were publicly acrimonious<\/a> and left some orchestra board members feeling bruised. Players authorized a strike<\/a>, though a strike never happened, and they filed unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board.<\/p>\n Talks this time did not bubble over in public, though musicians did make labor-solidarity statements over the summer such as wearing union T-shirts to rehearsals.<\/p>\n The new contract calls for an increase in base salary from the current $176,280 to $200,008 over the contract\u2019s three-year span. Many players earn more, and some, like principals, make much more.<\/p>\n The contract does not call for changes in healthcare coverage. It provides work-rule changes such as opening up more rehearsals to students and spells out protocols for hearing loss protections during performances using amplified sound. The third year of the contract grants supplemental payments to substitute and extra musicians for their retirement accounts. <\/p>\n The new contract increases the size of the \u201ccomplement\u201d \u2014 that is, the number of full-time members \u2014 from the current 103 to 104 by the third year. <\/p>\n The deal also enshrines for the first time a limit on the number of live-to-screen movie presentations that can be programmed to two per subscription season, with no more than three performances per movie. The contract does not restrict the number of film concerts in summer.<\/p>\n Fleur said it\u2019s not the film music itself that concerns the orchestra\u2019s musicians. But film scores are typically recorded in multiple sessions, and when an orchestra performs the entire score all at once, \u201cit\u2019s a very intense process and requires skills that are not consistent with the skills when responding to [music and artistic director] Yannick [N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin] in a Mahler symphony.\u201d<\/p>\n The new contract also provides for a process at the end of the season to review \u201cthe quality of all programs featuring a nonsymphonic work, including, but not limited to, programs featuring pops music,\u201d to discuss the income generated as well as the \u201cimpact of the programming on the artistic health of the Philadelphia Orchestra.\u201d<\/p>\n Musician dissatisfaction has been around certain concerts at which \u201cthe orchestra is playing with stand-lights and they\u2019re not really a partner on the stage but more in the background,\u201d said Trainer. \u201cThey want to be mutually featured.\u201d<\/p>\n A number of other major U.S. orchestras have been in negotiations recently. This month the National Symphony Orchestra settled a new contract, as did the Boston Symphony Orchestra last month. Players of the Cleveland Orchestra recently voted to authorize a strike. The San Francisco Opera canceled opening night of its 104th season on Sept. 12 after musicians of the orchestra went on strike.<\/p>\n Philadelphia Orchestra has also had its share of strikes, though the most serious work stoppage in past years was three decades ago \u2014 a 64-day strike in 1996.<\/p>\n Fleur said that recent talks featured a \u201ccollaborative process,\u201d and while there were times when each side got frustrated, \u201cthat\u2019s what happens when there\u2019s an open dialogue, and we worked through it.\u201d<\/p>\n Orchestra negotiating committee chairperson and violinist Dara Morales said that this time in talks she felt that \u201cthe musicians\u2019 voices and our collective knowledge of the orchestra and our industry were taken seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n The new contract runs though Sept. 9, 2029.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Musicians and management of the Philadelphia Orchestra have struck a tentative agreement on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,119251],"class_list":["post-286361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philadelphia-orchestra-musicians-contract-vote"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}