PRESS RELEASE by Local 58, American Federation of Musicians on September 25, 2013

PHILHARMONIC MUSICIANS VOTE STRIKE AUTHORITY

The Musicians of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic have voted unanimously to give their bargaining team the authority to call a strike, if necessary.

The negotiating committees will reconvene on September 26th at 9:00am. The Fort Wayne Philharmonic Inc.’s current proposal would reduce the base salary from $27,221 to $16,408 and reduce the number of full time musicians from 44 to 27. This would significantly reduce the presence of the orchestra in the community.

Over the past 10 years, the Philharmonic has accumulated debts of $2.5 million and exhausted their credit among backers and financers. Since 2001, base pay for full-time Musicians has increased an average of about 2% per year! In the same period of time, the Philharmonic endowment has risen over 40%, to $14.5 million. Just last fall the Musicians offered the Philharmonic a series of concessions that would have saved the organization as much as $150K.

“All we asked was that the Philharmonic develop a plan for the future, and that they begin a public fund raising campaign. The Philharmonic Board of Directors responded that they did not think that they would be successful raising money at that time, as so they passed up the opportunity to receive a valuable gift from the Musicians. Even now, we have offered to help them eliminate the budget deficit. We have offered concessions that would save the Philharmonic $250K by cutting musicians income 12 ½%, and we have offered to join with them to raise money. We ask only that all employees and all departments join in the effort to save the Philharmonic by making equal sacrifice with the musicians,” says Union Negotiating Committee Chairman Dennis Fick.