The reactions here so far are ridiculous.

These are professional musicians with real skills, each of them with many years of training. They walked because the best case scenario was their already meagre salaries being cut.

They weren't making dev salaries after a few months of a boot camp.

After years of dedicated study, the average salary for a symphony musician is about $70,000.[1] The San Antonio musicians already only made about half that to begin with[2] and then management cut that in half - base pay of a little over $17,000 a year.

And for the people claiming this was bargaining failure, no, this ended the failures. The bargaining failures happened over many years. Many years of accepting wage and benefit cuts over and over without making management offer something in return. They didn't bargain in the past. They just rolled over and showed their bellies.

[1] First link that popped out at me, but similar numbers in other places:

https://work.chron.com/pay-scale-average-member-orchestra-52...

[2] https://www.expressnews.com/entertainment/arts-culture/artic...

I fully agree with drewcoo's comment.

I cannot believe the discussions occurring here surrounding professional musicians, people who have trained for years to hone their skills. I cannot believe that the attitude towards a union -"wouldn't they all be better now since they'd still be employed"? These are statements made by someone who never had to face the reality of the fact that sometimes a job offers so little money that you are BETTER off not working. The reality in many poor countries is that you could work for 5-10$ a day, but people choose not to work jobs but rather to engage in subsistence farming as that offers them at least food to survive, whereas the 5-10$ a day wouldn't. I cannot believe the narrow mindedness of such statements...

I found it offensive that I used to make more than someone playing in a symphony as someone working in retail. I found it offensive that I made more money in a week than they did in a month and all I did was peddle more garbage for people to buy to make themselves feel better about their empty pointless and gluttonous lives...

I feel sad that at this point this is where art is headed. Its shocking to see that art is potentially returning to the same dynamic that we saw in the Middle Ages - where some wealthy benefactor is needed to allow artists to continue their activity. Each time something like this happens we lose big chunks of what and who we are as a species. We're normalizing the death of art, of imagination and of beauty and assume that everything needs to have a monetary value attached to it, that everything needs to yield ROI. It's repulsive...

Here's management's final offer:[1]

The Symphony Society, which governs the local symphony through a board of trustees and management, made a “Last, Best and Final” offer on September 13.

That offer would:

- Cut the number of full-time symphony musicians from 72 to 42.

- Reduce the symphony season length from 31 weeks to 26 weeks.

- Slash the salaries of full-time musicians from roughly $36,000 a year to $24,000.

- Hire some musicians part-time with an $11,000 salary.

The proposed pay cuts follow two years of little-to-no income for many of the musicians who were furloughed in 2020 during the pandemic and returned in January of 2021 with reduced salaries and fewer performances due to safety protocols that limited the number of performers who could be on stage. The changes meant some musicians made just 20% of their typical symphony salary.

The union, represented by a select group of symphony musicians and representatives of the American Federation of Musicians Local 23, did not accept the Symphony Society’s offer.

[1] https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022/03/28/why-is-the-san-an...

Classical music and symphonic orchestras have always been expensive endeavours requiring a healthy influx of money. Before the 20th century that support was coming almost exclusively from patronage. With the advent of the recording industry, a large influx of money from record sales allowed to develop a large industry around western classical music supporting many performers and orchestras.

The subscription model that has replaced album purchase has now destroyed the revenue stream for the classical industry. To make matter worse, most recordings from the last 50 years were recorded with great qualities making it hard for new recordings to stand out: you are effectively competing with huge catalog of high quality music available for next to nothing on the mainstream streaming services.

The end result is that orchestral formation are now back to be being dependant on donated money (individual donation, corporate patronage and public funds).

Genre requiring a single or few performers will probably be fine, but orchestras are so expensive due to the number of people involved they have no chance to make enough money just performing.

We should not be surprised to see more of lower tiers orchestra disappearing in the coming years.

Some important context here: The AFM is quite militant, and in its bylaws stipulates that individual locals cannot ratify a collective agreement without the approval of the AFM. Eight years ago, when the Vancouver Musicians Association (AFM local 145) negotiated a contract the AFM didn't like, their response was to fire the VMA board, fine the the board members personally $50,000 each, and rip up the contract which the membership had ratified.

It's entirely possibly that the musicians of the San Antonio Symphony are willing to negotiate a contract but the AFM won't let them.

Seems to be some background here: https://sanantonioreport.org/san-antonio-symphony-2021-2022-...

It's important to remember that this is a statement made by one party to a dispute, not a neutral statement of facts. It's unclear whether any of the claims made in the statement are true, or whether this is an intentionally destructive response to hard bargaining by the musicians.

These salaries were not tenable at all. What about endowments or other longer-term sourced of funding? There must have been long-running mismanagement..

Years ago, I had a partner that was a highly trained symphony musician (studied musicology and performance at a major university, PhD etc). After all these years of training and having incredible skills, she was unable to support herself.

The fundamental problem is that there are maybe 30 symphony jobs in North America for her instrument that pay enough, and there is a world of new players being churned out by Fine Arts departments all competing for the one or two spots where someone is retiring. The university departments know there are no good jobs for these students they produce, but like other university departments they compete for funds by enticing students to peruse almost useless degrees.

If San Antonio can maintain a symphony a new one will emerge. If not, it won’t.

If the musicians weren't unionized, wouldn't they all be better off right now since they'd still be employed?

Playing music shouldn't be this complicated. This is bordering on absurdist comedy.