Despite the picketers outside Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and the complaint filed this week with the National Labor Relations Board, Peter Kjome, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s president and CEO, couldn’t stop hoping the musicians would show up for the first rehearsal of the 2019-20 season.
That rehearsal, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Wednesday, was intended to prepare for a free public concert on Saturday night. Kjome said he kept glancing up at the monitor in his office that shows him what’s happening on stage.
“This morning was very difficult,” Kjome said Wednesday night during a telephone interview.
“The stage was set up and ready. The lights were on. We were hoping to welcome our musicians back to work. Seeing that empty stage after 10 o’clock had come and gone was really just devastating.”
Music lovers’ hopes were dashed Monday after two marathon bargaining sessions brought the BSO and its musicians tantalizingly close to an agreement — but then fell apart.
Both sides issued news releases Monday announcing they had failed to obtain a new contract. The main sticking point is management’s demand to shorten the season from 52 weeks to 40 weeks, accompanied by a hefty pay cut for the performers. Kjome has said a reduced season is necessary because the BSO has suffered deficits totaling $16 million during the past decade.
On Tuesday, the musicians’ union raised the stakes by filing an unfair labor practice complaint against the BSO with the labor board. The complaint alleges that management failed to bargain in good faith (as federal law requires) when it locked the players out of the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for the summer.
The union announced Wednesday that the BSO’s 77 musicians had voted overwhelmingly to reject what they described as a “take it or leave it” offer by management.
No further negotiation sessions have been planned, but as of 4 p.m. Thursday, the BSO had not canceled the season opening concert scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday.
"If we were to make progress in bargaining no later than Friday morning, we could still go forward with the concert,” Kjome said. “We remain willing to meet and continue our talks.”
Technically, that’s still not impossible.
But Brian Prechtl, co-chairman of the Baltimore Symphony Musicians Players Committee, said Wednesday that the union would need at least 24 hours after a tentative agreement is reached before the performers could return to the stage. That’s how long it would take for union members to vote on whether to accept or reject management’s proposal and for the ballots to be tabulated.
The longer the deadlock continues, the greater the negative financial impact it will have on the BSO, “not just in terms of ticket sales but also in terms of contributed revenues,” Kjome said. “It’s much better for everyone if the Meyerhoff and Strathmore Hall are open and filled with music.”
He said that the rejected proposals contained at least one provision requested by the players — that violinists, percussionists, horn players and other musicians be given a greater role in the decision-making process.
Option 1 of the rejected proposal called for the creation of a vision committee with a mandate to plan for the BSO’s future. That committee would have included several musicians, Kjome said.
”We have heard our musicians’ concerns that they aren’t involved enough in decision-making and we have tried to respond to those concerns,” Kjome said. ”Our musicians bring very important institutional memory to the process, and we agree it’s important to have them involved.”
He is optimistic that a task force created by the Maryland General Assembly to analyze the symphony’s finances will make useful recommendations for restoring the organization to solvency.
The task force was created as part of legislation adopted this spring allocating $3.2 million in state funding to the BSO over two years. Gov. Hogan later decided not to release the first year’s allotment of $1.6 million.
The task force has scheduled its second meeting for Sept. 20, Kjome said.
”I think it will be really helpful in charting a course for the BSO that will secure our long-term future,” he said.