Negotiations

Dear Virtual Panel Participants and Observers,

Inasmuch as this is the final day of posting, I have tried to digest all that has been written, and come to some final thoughts. I must say that I do find this exchange valuable, and look forward to future discussion.

As I read the original question, it did not specifically ask for a comparison between IBB and “traditional bargaining,” therefore I sought to answer the question as written. So I would like to share some thoughts about IBB vs. “traditional bargaining,” having had experience in both.

There is a most unfortunate misconception that “traditional bargaining” means entrenchment in positions, table pounding, Godzilla routines, etc., and that IBB is tantamount to a love-in.
Not true in either case. I have seen jihad occur in BOTH IBB AND TRADITIONAL BARGAINING (by both management and union).

As my mentor Lew Waldeck said so many times, negotiations are about “POWAH (power).” The major difference between IBB and traditional bargaining is that power is a component in traditional bargaining, and it is not a component in IBB, by its very structure. As our Distinguished AFM SSD Counsel Leibowitz has said so many times, IBB will yield an orchestra “any settlement,” and traditional bargaining will yield the “best possible settlement.”

The minute that word “power” is mentioned, I know that many people cringe with visions of strikes, lockouts, etc., and while those are some of the ultimate “power” tools, “power” can be as simple as an orchestra or committee saying “no.” Power does not mean that management and union cannot engage in civil, productive, problem solving dialogue. We do so in practically all of our traditional negotiations. How and when “power” is used is absolutely critical, and we in SSD painstaking work with unions and committees in its application, in view of all factors.

IBB does provide a very organized, methodical means to solving contract issues, but it takes an enormous amount of time to do so. Notwithstanding, no one to my knowledge has found a successful means to effectively negotiate financials in a not-for-profit organization through the pure IBB process. In the IBB processes I have been involved with, each time both management and union have diverted negotiation of financial issues to traditional bargaining. The time required to complete pure IBB negotiations can be enormous; it took the Omaha Symphony 18 months to complete negotiations through the IBB process, and then they still had to negotiate financials through traditional bargaining.

As Chris Durham stated IBB has been around for years; it is not something new. It is my view that certain people in this industry have been proponents of IBB for less than noble reasons.
Those reasons include seeking to weaken the power of musicians and their union, as well as enrich the bank accounts of certain facilitators who stood to gain financially if IBB process became more commonplace. There have been some isolated, contentious negotiations where IBB was appropriate to settle the contract. But overall, I have not encountered any negotiation where I felt the situation was better served through the IBB process than traditional bargaining.

There seems to be some level of agreement amongst us that strategic long range planning is valuable, as long as musician input is taken seriously, and does not constitute tokenism. I will continue to advocate for such in my work.

Recently there was a superb article in the Denver Post about the major positive turnaround in the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in regards to ticket sales and fund raising. I for one would like to know how and why this is working so well in Denver, and why these successes cannot be applied elsewhere.

It has been a pleasure serving on this panel with all of my distinguished colleagues.