An Open Letter to the
Members of the ASO Symphony Board, and to All Donors and other Civic Leaders
Who Love the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus:
The ASO Lockout and
the Battle for Atlanta’s Soul
A Call for Moral Courage and Leadership
The lockout of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra is most often portrayed
as a conflict over the musician’s contract in the context of declining
audiences and revenue for classical music.
While there is superficial truth to this characterization, it is profoundly
misleading. The deeper truth is that the
lockout is one battle among many in an all-out war being waged by the
management and governing board of the Woodruff Arts Center to destroy the
Symphony and, by extension, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. This war has been carefully planned by the
WAC for at least 3-4 years and has been carried out to this point through two
major assaults on the Symphony, the lockout in 2012, and the current lockout in
2014. At every stage the WAC has
carefully camouflaged its actions through euphemisms (“work stoppages”),
misleading public statements, and outright mendacity about its intentions, its
actions, and its financial situation.
If the WAC succeeds in its campaign of aggression, it will
destroy the crown jewel of Atlanta’s cultural life, its world-renowned symphony
and chorus. Much has already been
written about the ASO’s astonishing record of recordings, its record number of
Grammys, its many triumphs in Carnegie Hall and on international tours. It is incomprehensible to anyone
knowledgeable about the arts and classical music that the WAC is bent on the
destruction of this treasure rather than finding the resources to protect it. But there is another, more fundamental point
to be made: By destroying the ASO, the
WAC is also defining Atlanta’s soul, permitting crass commercialism and the
narrowest possible “bottom-line” thinking.
By commercialism I mean the belief that everything has a price, neglecting
important human values and goods that cannot be given a market price. The result is the triumph of short-term
thinking and cost-cutting over the long-term nurturing and growth of the
highest artistic achievements which have had and still can have a powerful role
in shaping Atlanta’s civic life, enriching its culture, adding creativity in
our schools, opening up imaginative and creative worlds for our youth, shaping
the way Atlantans understand themselves and are perceived by the world.
By destroying the ASO the WAC is betraying the efforts and
commitments of the founders of the Woodruff Arts Center, betraying the memory
of the Atlanta arts leaders who died in the plane crash at Orly, Paris, in
1962, betraying the legacy of the great Robert Shaw, betraying the donors,
subscribers and hundreds of volunteers who have supported the WAC and the
Symphony over the last half-century, tragically limiting the future of our
younger generation. And, of course, it
is treating the fine musicians of the ASO and their years of artistic
preparation and achievement with utter contempt.
Make no mistake: The
current lockout is a brutal tactic designed to break the will of the ASO
musicians. The public statements by
management speak of “work-stoppages” and of “continuing negotiations.”
“Work-stoppage” can refer to either a strike or a lockout by
management, and the ASO and WAC management use it to mask the fact of a lockout
by them, a power move by privileged WAC management and board members, which
not only cuts off all income for the players but leaves them and their families
without healthcare and other benefits. All
the power—which is to say all of the money—is on the WAC’s side, and they have
tried their best to control how the conflict is perceived by the larger
public. To claim, as the ASO has in
emails to its subscribers, that Symphony performances have been cancelled while
negotiations take place is barely short of an outright lie: In spite of repeated attempts by the
Musicians to engage in negotiations over the last nine months, the WAC has
not once agreed to meet. What they
did was to deliver to the Musicians one “last, best, and final offer,” demanding
unconditional surrender by the Orchestra, even while Doug Hertz, Chair of the
WAC Board of Governors, has made public statements that “we want to work with
them.”
The current process of mediation, which has just begun, will
not, in my judgment, lead to a resolution because both Hertz and Virginia
Hepner (President and CEO of the WAC) have made it clear that the budget must
be balanced; but then claim that it can only be balanced by down-sizing the
Orchestra and giving over control of the size (“complement”) of the orchestra
and decisions for filling positions to ASO management. No major symphony
orchestra has ever ceded this vital artistic decision to management. The Musicians on their part have courageously
made it clear that they cannot and will not yield control of their future, of
their artistic excellence and integrity, to management. To be clear: The most important points of conflict are in
fact not negotiable and that likely means that the mediation process
will fail. If so, the lockout could last
months or years and the damage to the ASO could be deep and irreparable.
It Is Time for Moral Courage and Leadership
The Symphony musicians (represented by the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra Players Association, ASOPA) fully understand the nature of this
frontal assault, as do their many supporters from among the Chorus, their peer
orchestras across the nation, subscribers, donors, and a far-too-small group of
concerned citizens who have been waging a grass-roots campaign to save the
symphony and expose the WAC’s planned brutality, its ineptitude, and its mendacity.
But the war cannot be won unless civic and
business leaders from the Atlanta Symphony Board, perhaps even some from the
WAC Board and from other major Atlanta institutions, have the moral courage to
break ranks with the leadership of the WAC and lead the ASO down a new path of
independent strength and excellence.
I appeal to all of you, in whatever position you occupy, to take a stand
in this battle. Failing to take a visible
and outspoken stand now, when courageous action and leadership can still make a
difference, is to permit irreparable damage to the ASO and to condone continued
mismanagement of the ASO and the WAC.
Will you want, years from now, to look back and realize that “This
happened on my watch”? Maestros Spano and
Runnicles have courageously broken with tradition, risking the anger of the WAC
management, to speak out. Will you?
Jon P. Gunnemann
Professor of Social Ethics, Emeritus, Emory University
ASO Donor for 15 years
ASO Subscriber for 32 years
ASO Chorus for 24 years
Supporting material:
What we know about the WAC’s assault on the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra:
1. On
May 11, 2011, the WAC’s Board of Trustees voted to revise its Articles of
Incorporation, eliminating the ASO from
its stated purpose. I do not know
whether the ASO Board knew about this significant change. The change was certainly not made public,
whether to donors of the ASO and the WAC, subscribers to the ASO, or to the
general public. It is not clear that the
ASO Players knew about this. But the
change means that since 2011 the WAC no longer saw the nurturing and support of
the ASO as part of its legal purpose; and that this decision was consciously made.
The original stated purpose (since 1965, I think) was: "to form a vehicle for achieving high quality artistic attainment for
the benefit and erudition of the public and for the nurturing and developing of
creative talents and performance of participants in both the visual and performing
arts; to receive capital funds required to provide Atlanta and the Southeast
with first-rate facilities for a college of the arts and a performing art
center; and to provide the management and continuing financial support for maintaining and enhancing the development
of Atlanta as a leading art center; and the arts affected shall include music,
symphony . . . . ." (Emphasis added)
The purpose in the new Articles is: "The non-profit corporation is organized pursuant to the Georgia
Nonprofit Corporation Code for the following purpose: To serve as a single legal entity which fosters, promotes and produces significant
artistic expression in a variety of arts including music theater, the visual
arts and art education for the benefit of the general public, and to
transact any activity otherwise permitted by law." (From IRS statement
Form 990, emphasis added)
In
sum: The Symphony was replaced by
“music theater” in the WAC’s statement of purpose a year before the ASO was to
renegotiate its contract with the WAC in 2012.
Even if this quotation involves a typo, a missing comma after “music,”
“symphony” no longer appears as part of the WAC’s purpose. In my mind, the most
probable interpretation of this erasure of the ASO from its legal statement of
purpose is that the WAC Board was laying groundwork for its first major battle
with the ASO Players in 2012.
2. The
2012 Lockout: The contract negotiations
scheduled for 2012 never in fact materialized as negotiations. The WAC leadership repeatedly called
attention to the many years in which the ASO had operated a deficit; they noted
that the WAC’s credit rating had been downgraded, and they insisted that the
ASOPA make deep concessions in salaries and benefits, the length of the season,
and the number of funded players (from 95 to 88). The WAC spoke publicly of negotiating a
new contract with the Players but in fact there were no negotiations. In spite of repeated attempts by the ASOPA to
meet with management, they were denied any meetings with the WAC Governing
Board or leadership. The Players were
presented a “take-our-offer-or-leave it” from the WAC and, after being
additionally threatened with the prospect of having their Fall engagement at
Carnegie Hall cancelled, finally gave in to the draconian cuts in pay and
orchestra complement.
Those are the bare-bones facts. But around this battle the WAC was weaving a
public narrative that was deceptive on almost all fronts. The down-grading of the WAC’s credit rating
was consistently cited as a major reason for demanding concessions from the ASO
in spite of the fact that the down-grading was chiefly a result of the debt
incurred by the WAC in building the Verizon Amphitheater. Publicly the WAC
referred to ongoing negotiations when they in fact rebuffed every ASOPA effort
at negotiation. Requests by the ASOPA
and others for financial disclosure from the WAC were rebuffed. The President and CEO of the ASO at the time,
Stanley Romanstein, came to speak to the ASO Chorus at its second rehearsal
that Fall and told us that there were many rumors circulating about the
contract process; that rumors were dangerous; and that if anyone asked us about
the process, we should answer, “The negotiations are on-going,” asking us
several times to repeat this as a chant.
Two days later the WAC and ASO management locked out the players. No negotiations had taken place. The players finally relented and made ALL the
concessions demanded of them in part because they were promised, by the WAC
through Stanley Romanstein, that these concessions would be a “one-time” event,
giving the ASO two years to do major fund-raising and get back on its financial
feet, after which, in 2014, a more generous contract could be negotiated.
In sum: The WAC had launched its first public attack
on the ASO disguising it as “negotiations”; justifying its actions by
appealing to a debt for which it was itself primarily responsible; further
cloaking all of the substantive issues with a complete lack of financial or
decision-making transparency; and making a promise to the Players that turned
out to be either false or a lie. It won
this first battle.
3. Between
2012 and 2014: A few markers with omens
for the next public battle in 2014:
a. Stanley
Romanstein received a reported $45,000 bonus from the WAC for his good work the
preceding year. Others at the WAC also
received substantial bonuses.
b. On
the promise to raise funds for the ASO:
We have heard that some significant gifts were made to the ASO,
including from members of the WAC and ASO boards. But:
- No
major fund-raising campaign, no capital campaign asking for a broad base of
support was publicly announced.
- Letters
to subscribers and donors asking for donations at various levels, ceased to go
out. My wife and I became donors when we
first received such a letter about 15 or more years ago, and every year after
we renewed our gift upon receiving another letter. About three years ago, these letters
stopped. When I called the ASO
development office and asked why, I was simply told that this was not done
anymore. My request that the ASO
management reinstate the practice was met with silence. Conversations with numerous friends and acquaintances
confirmed that they too no longer received such letters.
-
In late summer of 2013, some of us learned
that the ASO Development Department had failed to meet its fundraising goal by
two-thirds. The Delta Airlines initiative, led by Richard Anderson, had
been put in place to stimulate corporate donations; the original plan was that
ASO Management would raise a substantial amount, the total of which would be enough to close
the deficit. However, to raise these funds, ASO Development
Department went, unaccountably, to these same corporate donors asking for
money. The ASO was told “we have already given our share.” This
epic blunder, to my knowledge, was never adequately addressed in public, but
had serious repercussions later in 2013.
c. During
this time, the administrative staff of the ASO grew steadily. We (some of us who have been working in
support of the ASO Players) have learned that, on average, 40% of the total
budget of U.S. symphony orchestras goes to players salaries and benefits. The figure last year for the ASO was
25%. Clearly the ASO has become
administratively top-heavy with no measurable benefit from the standpoint of
the financial health of the Symphony itself.
75% is a MASSIVE overhead and it needs to be asked whether reducing the
size of the administrative staff would free up sufficient funds to help pay
musicians salaries and benefits.
d. In
the Spring of 2014, the WAC and the ASO management moved to cancel the Carnegie
Hall performance of the ASO/ASOC because of financial shortfall. The story of Robert Spano’s courageous and
dramatic intervention is now well-known to those who have been following the
story, and has been reported in the national press: Maestro Spano put $50,000 of his own funds on
the table, then worked with a few others, telephoning across the nation, to
raise the money needed. Two things stand
out from this story: One is that Maestro
Spano had to make the case to management and the Board about the importance of
this performance not only for the ASO but for the City of Atlanta. The second is that the money was raised in a
short period of time, underscoring the weakness of the efforts of the WAC and
the ASO to raise money.
e. Here,
a judgment more than a fact, but a judgment based on extensive conversations
with other patrons and subscribers: The
marketing for the ASO the last years has been an embarrassment, packaging
performance of classical music in terms of what seem to be assumed needs and
drives of the public (sex, wine, and hedonism generally). Why not talk about the way in which classical
music differs from these human drives? There
has been no evidence that the people who are in positions of marketing and
development at the ASO have any experience in the arts or any real interest in
the music itself.
In sum: The events between
2012 and 2014 showed a) large financial rewards for administrators whose chief
work had been to cripple the ASO; b) no broad-based public efforts to raise
funds for the ASO or to raise public awareness about the problems; c) a
substantial growth of administrative staff and administrative overhead, likely
to the detriment of the ASO musicians; d) inept and/or misguided fund-raising
and marketing. All of these were indicators that the promise
made to the players in 2012 could not, and would not, be kept, something the
players feared during this interim period.
4. The
current 2014 Lockout:
The promise to the ASOPA in 2012—that that
the deep cuts, both financial and with regard to orchestra complement, made then
was a “one-time” correction—was broken at the beginning of the period for
contract negation. As in 2012, the ASOPA
was again presented with an aggressive take-it-or-leave-it package
requiring de facto cuts in pay because of higher medical costs; a further cut
in the number of players from 88 to 78; and, most crucial, conceding future
control of complement to the President of the ASO which meant, de facto, to the
WAC Governing Board. The tactics used in
this second public battle were similar to those used in 2012: Public statements that regularly obscured and
misled by referring to “work-stoppage” rather than a “lockout”; to negotiations
which were in fact not taking place; claims by Doug Hertz in public
interviews that “we want to work with them” when in fact the WAC and top ASO
management had refused even to met with them.
I have detailed most of this in the body of the letter.
As I write, mediation is underway. It is not at all clear that the WAC genuinely
intends to engage the mediating process.
Having first made public statements welcoming the mediation as a solution,
we have learned from several sources (including an email from the ASOPA to the
ASO Board and others) that after the first meeting with the mediators, Virginia
Hepner and her colleagues left the table indicating that she and her team had
no proposals to offer and did not have the authority to negotiate a deal. There has now been a prolonged pause in the
negotiations, with no explanation from the WAC.
So, questions abound: Was the WAC
serious about mediation? Or was this
another attempt to create a public impression of being ready to negotiate, then
not doing so? Was the WAC so in the dark
that it did not know what was expected in the first sessions of a mediating
session? If Virginia Hepner does not
have the authority to negotiate a settlement, who does? And why was she there? What game is being played?
It is not possible to know the outcome if
the mediation does continue. But if the
WAC gains the concessions it is demanding, or if the WAC simply lets the
lockout continue without entering into mediation, it will be a catastrophic
blow to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and its Chorus.
We can not let that happen!
In the above “Supporting Material” for my letter, I have
tried to rely on factual reports from many sources. It is possible that I have erred in places
and I welcome corrections. The interpretations
of the facts are, of course, mine.
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