Collective Bargaining: Five Best Cases that they will conclude it is in their selfinterest to participate. Rosen: There’s an expectation that if ever there was a place there’d be cooperation, it would be in the arts. After all, here is a field where board members volunteer their time because they love the music, managers get into the field often because they themselves have classical training, and professional musicians are performing the music they have studied and played since childhood. Yet relationships between us are troubled. How did we get here? Cohen: Number one, based upon my years of experience, there is virtually no such thing in the history of labor management as an initial happy relationship when a company is told that its working men and women want to be represented by a union for purposes of wages, hours, and terms and conditions of employment. The normal reaction to that is, “Oh my God, what did we do wrong?” I’m not talking about orchestras, I’m talking about virtually any employer in any industry in America since 1935. Number two, though, is once the union is there, this is the only contractual relationship that I am aware of in which at the end of a contract term, one side cannot look at the other side and say, “Thank you, but no thank you. I didn’t like your product or I’m going to go to another seller.” Or, “I didn’t like you as a purchaser, so go get another source to buy the product from.” Absent some extraordinary circumstance, the parties must continue to live with each other. So, you have a relationship that started in the “dumper.” The $64,000 question is, going forward, what is that relationship going to be? Will the parties continue a dysfunctional relationship? Of course they can. Instead, can the parties elevate it? Of course they can. You open the newspaper and all you read about is bad relationships—strikes, lockouts, wildcats. But I know for a fact that other very important companies and unions have concluded that it is in their self-interest to have constructive, mutually respectful relationships. The model is, you start with people sitting down and saying to each other, “We americanorchestras.org
need you and you need us. Tell me what’s wrong from your perspective of what we’re doing, and we’ll talk to you from our perspective about what’s wrong with what you’re doing.” That’s what we do in a relationship-building training session, forgetting about any provision of a collective bargaining agreement. If you get people to look at each other and put the problem on the table, you’re beginning to get to the heart of how to improve relationships. The world that my clients lived in as professional musicians is no different in a sense than steel workers working in a mill who say to management, “When it comes to safety, we know more about what’s going on on this floor than you do as superintendents. Give us the opportunity to recommend what needs to be done.” I believe that’s true with respect to orchestra musicians. The more they have an opportunity to informally learn about problems and an opportunity to provide their input, you’re going to advance toward something constructive. Let’s take the opposite. What’s the kiss of death in the airline industry? When management said, “We need massive bargaining concessions” on the same day they announced the CEO has been given $11 million in stock options and a new multi-million dollar salary increase. Is this a good thing for collective bargaining? No. So, with orchestras, the first thing I always would hear was, “Look what you’re paying the maestro. Look what you’re paying guest artists. We musicians are your essential asset. Without us you have no operation. Why don’t we get more respect?” Now, I’m not taking sides. I know that’s what’s being said. Conversely, management has reasons that they think are necessary to modify the way performances are taking place. Or do more outreach or go into communities to promote classical music to potential new audiences. Or take initiatives that involve getting students oriented and educated about the wonderment of this music. Those are examples that signify the potential for change. Again, when change is at issue, the likelihood of reaching agreement is enhanced manyfold where
In December 2012, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service hosted a “Salute to Collective Bargaining” honoring the parties in five high-profile “best case” collectivebargaining successes. Read about those stories here (http://1.usa. gov/18DRpUW). The YouTube videos linked below tell the stories behind those collective-bargaining sessions. Alabama Power and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (http://bit. ly/1cH5UeV) Ford Motor Company and the United Auto Workers (http://bit. ly/1dHC7pc). This video features Martin Malloy, vice president of labor affairs at the Ford Company, and James Settles Jr., vice president of United Auto Workers, who both spoke at the League of American Orchestras’ 2012 National Conference. Kaiser Permanente and the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions (http://bit.ly/1efB3aT) Major League Baseball and MLB Players Association (http://bit. ly/18sVM6n) United States Steel and the USW (http://bit.ly/1dHCi47)
informal, constructive, focused discussions take place in which the interests and concerns of both parties are fully explored. When that occurs, even the most challenging problems can be resolved. Rosen: What gives you a sense of hopefulness that we can do better? Cohen: A significant number of very important companies and unions have concluded that it’s desirable to have that type of relationship. The more individual orchestras and their unions get exposed to the model for doing it correctly—and the more doing it correctly proves that mutually satisfactory solutions are available—the more likely it is the word will spread and people will, in fact, modify their behavior and change the way they’re doing business with each other.
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