TRANSFORMATIONS IN THREE AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS

150 Pages·2017·1.81 MB·English

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THREE AMERICAN ORCHESTRAS: AN ANALYSIS
OF LABOR, AGENCY, AND CHANGE
By

Jacqueline Heinzen

A Thesis Presented to
The Faculty of Humboldt State Universit y
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degre e
Master of Arts in Applied Anthropology

Committee Membership
Rebecca Robertson, Committee Chai r
Dr. Marissa Ramsier, Committee Membe r
Dr. Mary Scoggin, Committee Membe r
Rebecca Robertson, Program Graduate Coordinato r

May 2017
ABSTRACT
A NEW FRONTIER: POLITICS, LIFE AND LABOR IN THREE AMERICAN
ORCHESTRAS

Jacqueline Heinzen

Orchestras across the United States depend on philanthropists and public funds
and struggle to maintain balanced budgets as nonprofits. Consequently, it is common for
orchestra musicians to struggle with job insecurity and financial uncertainty to some
degree. While the industry is no stranger to labor disputes, the last decade marked a
notable shift in the character of labor negotiations that caused an unprecedented trend of
lockouts – the ban of employees to the workplace until a contract is reached. The
orchestras that successfully reached a contract did not come out the other side unchanged;
there was significant upheaval in the organizations both ideologically and structurally.
My research explored the musicians' experience with lockouts and restructuring in the
Minnesota Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The
findings from this research detail the common experience of locked out orchestra
musicians, how orchestra musicians have effectively influenced changes to the
organizational structure, and the nature of these structural and ideological changes.
Methods included qualitative interviews and survey. This research contributes to the gap
in the literature around the experience of the workforce in this industry, and to broader
conversations of art performance as labor and the future of American orchestras. The
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findings will be made available to select members of orchestra boards and
administrations with musicians’ consent in the spirit of improving understanding,
communication, and operations in the orchestra.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi
List of Appendices ............................................................................................................ vii
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1
Background ......................................................................................................................... 4
Literature Review ........................................................................................................... 9
The life of the orchestra musician ............................................................................. 10
Complexities of labor relations in symphony orchestras .......................................... 13
Coping with financial instability ............................................................................... 17
RESEARCH DESIGN ...................................................................................................... 21
Participants and Recruitment ........................................................................................ 21
Qualitative Interviews ................................................................................................... 22
Survey ........................................................................................................................... 24
Data Analysis ................................................................................................................ 25
Coding and grounded theory generation ................................................................... 25
Other theoretical perspectives ................................................................................... 27
Limitations and Potential Biases ................................................................................... 28
Demographics ............................................................................................................... 30
An Overview of the Lockouts ........................................................................................... 32
The Louisville Orchestra .............................................................................................. 32
The Minnesota Orchestra .............................................................................................. 37
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra ................................................................................. 41
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A Pattern Emerges ........................................................................................................ 45
RESULTS ......................................................................................................................... 48
An Effective Ensemble ................................................................................................. 49
Preparation is key ...................................................................................................... 57
Staying together ........................................................................................................ 60
Playing the field ........................................................................................................ 62
"A New Frontier" .......................................................................................................... 64
What more can a symphony orchestra be?................................................................ 64
Closer to harmonious ................................................................................................ 69
The Toll of the Lockouts .............................................................................................. 74
Making ends meet ..................................................................................................... 76
The impact of union-busting tactics .......................................................................... 79
Overworked and underpaid ....................................................................................... 84
DISCUSSION ................................................................................................................... 88
Closing the gap on ideological difference .................................................................... 88
"Not a panacea": Finding the balance ........................................................................... 92
The broader context of modern labor ........................................................................... 96
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 100
APPENDICES ................................................................................................................ 106

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Comparison of appropriations to the arts on federal and state levels 1970-2012.
............................................................................................................................................. 5
Figure 2: How many years have you worked with your current orchestra? ..................... 31
Figure 3: During the lockout, what did you do to make ends meet? ................................ 78
Figure 4: Were you active in organizing and/or advocacy during the labor dispute? ...... 51
Figure 5: Rating of organizational communication. ......................................................... 70

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LIST OF APPENDICES

Appendix A: Louisville Orchestra Musicians Association (LOMA) Timeline of Labor
Dispute ............................................................................................................................ 106
Appendix B: Letter from Louisville Orchestra CEO circumventing the collective
bargaining process .......................................................................................................... 116
Appendix C: Letter to ASO from Robert Spano and Donald Runnicles ........................ 121
Appendix D: Letter from Minnesota Lawmakers to MOA ........................................... 124
Appendix E: Recruitment Protocol ................................................................................. 129
Appendix F: Informed Consent form for interviews ...................................................... 131
Appendix G: Interview Protocol ..................................................................................... 133
Appendix H: Electronic consent form for survey ........................................................... 135
Appendix I: Online survey .............................................................................................. 138
Appendix J: Sample of coded data.................................................................................. 143

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INTRODUCTION
Recent years have seen American orchestras engage in bitter labor disputes.
Union-busting strategies have garnered national attention, sparking a deeper level of
cultural discourse around the value of orchestras, and the dollar worth of the musicians’
labor. The context of these lockouts can be traced from the 1960s, when the National
Endowment for the Arts was created to generate public support for orchestras, through
the 1980s and the end of the Cold War when that funding diminished. In the late 1990s
the managements of these orchestras – who typically come from a corporate background
– sought to cultivate a conservative business model characterized by demanding hyper-
productivity from fewer workers, creating obstacles to tenure, and undermining the
union. Contract proposals by management became more extreme through the 2000s,
slashing benefits, cutting wages, and shrinking the player base for the orchestra. This
intensified existing rifts between management and musicians, and resulted in a trend of
lockouts nationwide.
The Minnesota Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Louisville
Orchestra experienced the most notorious of these lockouts. When compared, the
timelines of the three lockouts have striking similarities, giving weight to the musicians'
perception that the lockouts were employed as a complex union-busting strategy. This
research is a descriptive ethnographic endeavor that explores the experience and
perspective of the musicians in these three orchestras during and after their lockouts.
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Methods included qualitative interviews with the musicians from the three orchestras, as
well as an online survey designed to substantiate the data collected from interviews.
This research utilized a grounded theory approach, which occurs when data is
systematically analyzed with constant comparison, starting with an inductive and
exploratory approach and slowly building theoretical statements with new data. Through
this process, the findings reveal that the musicians formed a uniquely cohesive and
effective grassroots labor movement that mobilized political and cultural support, and
ultimately affected the structure of their organizations. The musicians’ agency in the
organizations increased, with more influence in governance, and the structural barriers to
communication that contributed to the lockouts were addressed with the institutionalized
facilitation of dialogue.
The opening of dialogue between different facets of the organizations affected
ideology, bringing the historically opposed sides of musicians and management closer
together in vision. While the new structural paradigm is seen as generally positive as it
gives the musicians more power in the workplace, musicians still feel financial,
emotional, and physical impacts from the lockout and from the recent structural changes.
Some musicians are skeptical about volunteering their labor for the organization, and
others simply feel overworked.
In the current political and economic moment, as the National Endowment for the
Arts is under threat of being dismantled completely, American orchestras need to carve a
new path forward. Lockouts are still occurring, or are under threat of occurring in
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orchestras today. There is potential for the application of the results of this research in
helping organizations to become aware of structural issues and pre-empt their solutions
before a major labor dispute becomes inevitable.