In These Tough Times, Orchestra Hits a Sour Note

Cleveland Orchestra musicians are world-renowned for the magic they produce, but when it came to presenting their side in a recent labor dispute, they were remarkably tone-deaf.

Through blog posts, leafleting and a YouTube video, the musicians' union took their fight to the people. Sort of. They argued that it was unfair to cut their pay but failed to acknowledge the millions of Americans who have seen their wages and benefits slashed in the past year.

They also failed to mention that even with the proposed 5 percent pay cut, which would be restored the following year and raised by 2.5 percent in the third year, their standard of living still would bear little resemblance to the lives of most Americans in these troubled times. The median salary for Cleveland Orchestra musicians is $140,200; principal players can earn two and three times that amount. Many of the musicians make additional income, and all of them get 10 weeks of paid vacation time a year.

I am not suggesting these musicians aren't worth every cent they are paid. Nor am I letting orchestra management off the hook. For one thing, publicizing that music director Franz Welser-Most took a 20 percent cut in his $1.3 million salary sounded like a joke with no punch line. And depicting the musicians as a bunch of whiners who work only 20 hours a week was a shameful attempt to devalue the mandatory hours of practice, not to mention the physical toll of repetitive injuries all too common to full-time musicians.

A stellar orchestra brings honor to whatever city it calls home. The Cleveland Orchestra brings a bright light to a region too often derided as the Rust Belt, as if our only legacy were a string of abandoned factories. I feel such pride whenever I'm traveling and meet someone who immediately exclaims, "Oh, your orchestra!"

But tone and tenor matter offstage, too. It would have cost the musicians nothing and earned them traction with the general public if they had summoned a little humility and shown an awareness for how fortunate they are to make a generous living doing what they love. Ten percent of the country is unemployed; millions more are scared they will be; and the Cleveland Orchestra hails from a city with one of the highest home foreclosure rates in the country.

The musicians trumpeted their reputation as one of the nation's best orchestras and lamented the reduced quality of those who might replace them for less pay.

Some painted a bleak picture of what would happen to our beleaguered city if they chose to dump us for Boston, Philadelphia or New York. The salaries are higher there, they said. So is the cost of living, they failed to mention.

On Tuesday, just hours before an agreement was announced, one of the orchestra's biggest boosters, social critic Charles Michener, said in an interview on Cleveland public radio that a principal player making $300,000 a year once likened his job to that of a "highly skilled factory worker."

As someone who comes from a long line of factory workers, I suspect that neither Michener nor that unnamed musician has spent much time with people who labor in the bowels of manufacturing, let alone toiled next to them. An orchestra member's hardest day never will rival the regular grind of a factory worker's life.

As a union member who joined fellow Guild employees in taking a 12 percent pay cut to save colleagues' jobs, I find it hard to hear orchestra members down the street insist that any pay cut would reduce their worth. I look around the newsroom and see people whose value has only grown with their willingness to sacrifice. But for all of us, none of us would have the certainty of a year's employment.

Like newspapers, orchestras are wrestling with changing times. Concert attendance is down here — and across the country — and Cleveland's is not the only orchestra whose budget is running a deficit. Interest in classical music is on the decline. Other orchestras are downsizing seasons, canceling tours and cutting administrative staff.

So far, members of the Cleveland Orchestra have kept their jobs. They had every right to fight for pay and benefits, and I'm glad they reached an accord.

Their message is loud and clear: We're lucky to keep them.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House, "Life Happens" and "... and His Lovely Wife." She is a featured contributor in a recently released book by Bloomsbury, "The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union.'" To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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