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Our Current Contract
Musicians' Report 2008
Musicians' Report 2006
2003 Negotiation
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Current Issues
October 2009
On August 29, 2009, in order to fulfill conditions to fund their 2008-09 back wages, the Honolulu Symphony Musicians agreed to open the second year of their 2008-2011 collective bargaining agreement and cut five weeks from the 2009-10 season. This pay cut represents a 15% reduction in salary for the 64 full-time members of the orchestra.
When the 2008-09 season ended on May 10 with full houses, rave reviews and several hundred thousand dollars in subscription ticket sales for the 2009-10 season, the Symphony's musicians were still owed 15 weeks of back pay, or more than 44% of each full-time musicians' annual salary. The pay situation was even worse than the 2007-08 season's (which saw the orchestra falling over 11 weeks behind in pay at one point), and took a tremendous financial, emotional, and physical toll on the musicians. By the end of May, several musicians had already decided they could not return for the following season, and more were contemplating leaving with each passing week.
Over the spring and summer, concerned about the loss of orchestra members and the slow pace of fundraising, musicians and their union leadership met with board and community leaders to express the concern that if the musicians were not paid their back pay quickly, there would likely not be an orchestra to perform when the 2009-10 season was scheduled to start in September. They also warned that canceling or delaying the new season (which some were advocating) would almost certainly mean the end of the Honolulu Symphony, as more musicians would leave, current and potential donors would walk away, and patrons would not return.
After hearing from the musicians and their union about the urgency of the situation, Senator Carol Fukunaga contacted the leadership of the Honolulu Symphony Foundation (the separate entity which manages the Symphony's endowment, including $6 million of state funding). She encouraged them to find ways to make use of the State's endowment funds (the principal of which cannot be touched) in order to pay musician and staff back wages and save the organization from collapse.
The HS Foundation soon decided to advance $1.8 million to the Symphony (more than enough to cover all employees' back wages) by collateralizing future earnings on the State's portion of the Symphony's endowment fund. However, it decided to put conditions on releasing the advance. It divided the money into three parts with a different requirement to release each part: $600,000 upon the creation of a 30-60-90 day action plan, $600,000 upon the hiring of a new executive director (the previous executive director's contract had not been renewed by the board), and $600,000 upon the adoption of a realistic budget for the 2009-10 season. The Foundation leadership stated that a realistic budget had to include sizable reductions in expenses, including pay concessions from musicians. In other words, in order to receive pay for the work that they had already done, musicians would have to agree to accept cuts for the upcoming season (instead of the 5% salary increase agreed to in the original contract).
With these "strings attached" to receipt of their back pay, the musicians asked to be involved in budget planning meetings already underway to try to meet the conditions. Discussion at these meetings included management proposals to not only cut musician pay but to tie musicians' salaries to the potential success (or failure) of the organization's fundraising: if fundraising exceeded expectations, musicians would get part of their pay cuts back; if fundraising fell short, musicians would have to take additional pay cuts. Such sliding scales (also known as profit-and-loss sharing) have been proposed by Symphony management in the past but have never been accepted by the musicians; nationally, in the very few cases where other orchestras have used such mechanisms, they have failed to ever yield pay increases.
While they were unwilling to consider sliding pay scales, the musicians felt they had no choice but to accept a 15% pay cut for the 2009-10 season in order to collect their back pay. Management also decided to mandate 15% pay cuts for all staff and conductors as well. The musicians also agreed to drop outstanding grievances (and thus all claims for tens of thousands of dollars in interest or penalties) for late pay from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 seasons, while Symphony management agreed to grant a leave of absence to any contracted musician who requested one by September 30, and, most importantly, to remit all back pay owed for the 2008-09 season.
On September 4, 2009, the Honolulu Symphony musicians finally received the remaining eleven weeks of pay from the 2008-09 season; all staff and conductors were caught up in pay a few days later. By that time, however, sixteen musicians (nearly one fifth of the contracted orchestra) and many staff members (including the entire education and community outreach department) had already either resigned or taken leaves of absence for the new season. In addition, nineteen weeks of union work dues from the 2008-09 season - musicians' pay withheld by the Symphony - has yet to be forwarded to the musicians' union.
The musicians and staff made extraordinary sacrifices in order to keep orchestral music alive in Hawai'i during the last two seasons. Now all hopes rest on the Symphony's board and new executive director to fulfill the commitments they have made to stabilize the organization and make sure it can fulfill its mission of bringing the highest quality music and music education to the people of Hawai'i.
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