Portland Symphony Orchestra Musicians Fight for & Win Record 18% Wage Increases in New Contract
Musicians with the Boston Musicians Association Local 9-535 are celebrating record raises in their new three-year contract with the Portland Symphony Orchestra (PSO). Musicians say it was a hard fought contract that required direct action and a pressure campaign to urge the organization to come back to the table with meaningful wage increases.
“We got 18 percent wage increases over three years. Typically we get two or three percent a year,” said PSO percussionist Richard Kelly. “It's the best contract we’ve ever had.”
The 72-member local is part of the Regional Orchestra Players’ Association (ROPA), a conference of the American Federation of Musicians. ROPA represents musicians in smaller orchestras with budgets between $1 and $14 million.
Kelly, who recently moved from Massachusetts to New Mexico, has been playing with the Portland Symphony since 1994 and was part of the effort to unionize his workplace in 2010. He began playing percussion in middle school and couldn’t wait to leave New Mexico and head to the East Coast when it was time to go to college. He attended Boston University in 1979 and went on to a career as a middle school math teacher by day and a musician by night. He says about 90 percent of the members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra are not from Maine.
They typically hail New Hampshire and Massachusetts, where the majority of them live. They are part of a small group of musicians who cobble together a living by playing in a number of different orchestras. Many of them also teach.
“It's a tight-knit group. Everybody knows what's going on everywhere and when a new slot is opening up,” Kelly said. “You get seven to eight grand out of each of those orchestras. Then you do some teaching and marry somebody who's a got real job — then you have a living!”
The union has a union security clause which requires all PSO musicians except for temporary guests to pay dues for the cost of collective bargaining. After a musician plays either ten rehearsals or ten concerts and rehearsals combined, they have to join the union.
Not everyone plays every gig with the PSO, but they have had to play a majority of concerts in previous contracts. Kelly said if he did play every gig he would earn maybe $8,000-$9,000 a year, but it was too difficult to commute from Massachusetts to Maine for every concert when he lived back East. Typically he would attend rehearsal, drive back to Massachusetts to teach and then return that night for the concert. The organization provides reduced hotel rates and per diems for musicians.
Forming the Union
Before the PSO musicians had a union, they had to regularly hire attorneys whenever they had an issue with management. Eventually the musicians, who already played in other unionized orchestras, decided to form their union with PSO in 2010.
“We’d go to the members and say, can you kick in $10 or $20 for a lawyer? And we were paying out of pocket for the lawyers,” said Kelly. “And then finally we thought, you know, the union now has a pension fund and we could get their lawyers and we can have more protections. Let's just unionize and get it over with.”
Kelly says it was “horrible” going into the latest round of negotiations with PSO last spring. While he appreciates everything management has done to grow the organization by raising a lot of money to expand PSO’s offerings and get exposure, he said the rank and file members who make the music were not benefitting. This time, the union had an accounting of the employer's finances conducted and found two large pots of money.
“They had a $1 million endowment that was restricted, but there was a $3.1 million endowment that wasn't restricted,” said Kelly. “So when they said, ‘How are we going to pay [for raises]?’ We said, ‘Right from this account.”
The PSO Board attempted to restrict that money too, but it wasn’t legally protected - the board was just saving the money for another project. The union also pointed out that while workers were only being offered 2 percent raises, management was receiving 30 percent salary increases. PSO members have a “no strike” clause in their contract, but they maximized what leverage they had through a public pressure campaign.
They put up posters in the hallways of the Merrill Auditorium highlighting the pay disparities in raises between musicians and management. They also had T-shirts made to draw attention to their struggle. Once the stage crew, who are members of IATSE Local 114, saw the T-shirts, they asked if they could wear them. Soon patrons were walking up to union members and asking for more information about the contract negations and how they could support them.
“People started saying, ‘Come on, give musicians fair wages, what are you waiting for?’ And it blew up in 24 hours,” said Kelly. “I think that was making [management] nervous."
The contract was settled within two weeks of the action. In addition to the 18 percent raise over three years, the contract includes the first mileage reimbursement increase in 20 years and more flexibility in terms of how many concerts that members must perform. Management backed off its request to increase the members service commitment. That means Kelly only has to commit to traveling to 50 percent of PSO gigs from New Mexico to stay a part of the orchestra. For most orchestras, members have to take 80 percent of the work that’s offered.
"It was a win all the way around,” said Kelly.
Kelly said the victory taught him the importance of building solidarity with other unions and understanding the employer’s financials before going into negotiations.
“Now I learned my lesson. I'll go support other workers and go march with them somewhere else on a day off just to return the favor,” he said.
Kelly added that unions need to work hard to get their message out to the public. “The public usually only gets management's narrative because they can be more PR ready,” he said. “Post flyers, talk to people on the street, contact the local paper etc. Our public campaign really helped our cause.”