Allegro
Negotiations Roundup
Volume CVIII, No. 6June, 2008
âCATCH ME IF YOU CAN.â The production was negotiated as a one-week pre-Broadway reading. The side musician scale is $1,515.75 for a 40-hour, six-day week and $42.60 per hour, with a minimum two-hour call. The music director earns a 50 percent premium; the associate conductor earns a premium of 30 percent. The premium for the first double is 12.5 percent and additional doubles pay 6.25 percent. Musicians are reimbursed for transporting cartage instruments. Vacation pays 6 percent, pension is 9 percent, and health pays $164 per musician per week. There are three musicians in the production. Since this was a reading, the musicians do not have identity with the product.
CHILDRENâS ORCHESTRA SOCIETY. Local 802 reached a successor agreement with the Childrenâs Orchestra Society, an educational institution in Manhasset, New York. Out of deference to the school’s inability to meet costs, teachers agreed to a $1 pay cut, with that dollar being diverted into HBP. The new agreement provides for a minimum wage rate per class or one-hour lesson of $47.21. The minimum wage per half-hour lesson is now $23.60. For each class or hour lesson a teaching artist teaches, COS will contribute $7 to the Local 802 Health Benefits Plan. For each half-hour lesson, COS will contribute $3.50. New language was inserted under the contract headings âWork Assignmentsâ and âStudent Complaints.â Pension remained steady at 8 percent.
NYC MUSIC CORPORATION. Local 802 negotiated a successor collective bargaining agreement with New York City Music Corporation, headed up by saxophonist/ leader Sam Bortka. Bortka organizes rhythm-and-blues revue units for national acts such as those of Frankie Valli, Aretha Franklin and various Motown groups. The two-year agreement provides for a significant wage hike and a 15 percent pension contribution for employees of the NYCMC.