Pay the orchestra, dammit!NYCB hits sour notes with elected officials

New York City Ballet has always depended on taxpayers to fund it. Most recently as the result of the COVID crisis, NYCB received a federal grant of $10 million and also will share in the $20 million gift that Lincoln Center received. And still, the company which sits atop a cash pile of $200+ million in its endowment refuses to pay the orchestra what it promised to pay during the pandemic. Well, now the representatives of the taxpayers have spoken.

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer
NYS Senator Brian Benjamin --aka Lt. Governor Benjamin
NYS Assemblymember Dick Gottfried
NYS Senator Brad Hoylman
NYS Senator Robert Jackson
NYS Assemblymember Latoya Joyner
NYC Councilmember Mark Levine
NYS Assemblymember Daniel O'Donnell
NYC Councilmember Keith Powers
NYC Councilmember Carlina Rivera
NYC Councilmember Helen Rosenthal
NYS Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal
NYS Senator Julia Salazar
NYS Senator José Serrano
NYC Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer

These New York State and New York City elected officials have sent a letter to NYCB which says:

As elected officials who care about arts workers, we're saddened and angered to learn that the musicians of the New York City Ballet Orchestra have been denied any pay for over a year.

Across the country, almost every other orchestra found a way to sustain their musicians during the pandemic. It's unacceptable that New York City Ballet decided not to support its own artists, who suffered through the worst economic conditions they've ever experienced.

We're aware that an arbitrator recently allowed you to proceed with this unethical course of action, but that certainly doesn't justify doing so. As a flagship nonprofit arts institution that receives many advantages from NYC taxpayers, we expect you to act better than this. We urge you not to use legal loopholes to hurt these hardworking ballet musicians.

You can undoubtedly afford to pay your musicians: your endowment is worth $198 million. You also won a $10 million federal Shuttered Venue Operators Grant from taxpayer-funded pandemic aid and you will likely share in the $20 million gift to Lincoln Center that was recently reported in the New York Times. Despite this, you still refuse to negotiate fairly with the orchestra.

We urge you to settle quickly on a fair contract with the NYCB orchestra and their union that takes into account payment for the last season. We're committed to ensuring that the pandemic is not misused as a way to destroy the lives of our cherished arts workers, who make New York City the arts capital of the world.

The letter was also signed and presumably drafted by AFM Local 802 President Adam Krauthamer and NYC Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez.

Just because NYCB can afford to pay big corporate lawyers to screw the artists doesn't mean that it's good policy to do so. When they screw the artists, they screw the audience, too. Surely, NYCB is shaking in its boots over whether it will have to pay everyone else if it pays the orchestra. Yes, dammit, they should pay everyone who they promised to pay.

Pay the orchestra, dammit!

 

Comments

[MoMo]

I am so glad the local politicians wrote this letter. NYCB should be ashamed. In an old slang, they “welched”. I hope this letter does some good.

[Haglund]

I hope so, too, MoMo.

[Jeannette]

I’m still hoping to take the Amtrak to NY for the big opening on 21 September! If not...momma’s gonna be really angry!!! 😠

Pay the orchestra, dammit!

[Haglund]

So much damage is being done by NYCB. Maybe it's time for ED Katherine Brown to step down and allow the company to install someone who actually appreciates what the City of New York, the State of New York, and the residents of New York do for NYCB. This is a rich, rich organization that has perfected its cries of "poor" in donor appeals. Then, instead of spending donated money on its premiere quality orchestra, it throws away hundreds of thousands of dollars on crap choreography commissions that embarrass the company with adolescent self-indulgence.

Pay the orchestra, dammit!

[Diana]

The local pols didn't just decide to write this letter - there musta been a lotta phone calls! What would be the modern version of burning up the phone lines?

PTOD!

[Shawn]

Glad to hear there's been a little progress. But this shit is almost too stupid and callous to believe. Maybe the long-term plan is to replace the orchestra with a jazz band. Or a DJ. That'd certainly be more woke.

Pay the orchestra, dammit!

[Haglund]

As was reported in the media earlier this week, NYCB's brand new board chair is Diana Taylor, a well-respected financial professional and partner-in-life to former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While Bloomberg did a lot of great things for NYC, he was not known as being friendly to unions. On the other hand, he seemed to become more solution-oriented in later years. Artists & stagehands should be nervous about Taylor's appointment.

Pay the orchestra, dammit!

[Diana]

I do not at all like Taylor's appointment but it has nothing to do with the problem at hand. I'm just tired of the whole financial oligarchy even as I realize that there's probably not alternative to them as patrons of the arts. They are our version of 19th century Russian nobility.

That said, Bloomberg is, above all, a realist, and he's exquisitely sensitive to public relations. This is a PR disaster. Let's keep it up:

PtOD!

[Solor]

There would be no non-commercial performing arts in NYC without private financial support which overwhelmingly comes from people with millions of dollars to spare. How they obtained those dollarst is another story, but the "financial oligarchy" isn't going anywhere anytime soon (except, hopefully, to Lincoln Center). And it's fairly remarkable that those dollars appear to come with far fewer pursestrings attached than political contributions do. And let's not insult Diana Taylor by implying that she will do everything that Bloomberg would do. Let's wait and see if and how she addresses this issue.

[Haglund]

I wasn't insulting Diana Taylor, but let's face it: Would she even have ever been on NYCB's radar for the Board - let alone for the chair - were she not connected to Bloomberg? Four years as superintendent of banks in the run-up to the 2008 recession isn't, like, a ballet board credential. But then, I guess Maria Bartiromo wasn't a great pick, either. Live and learn...

[Diana]

Nor was I implying that the "financial oligarchy" was going anywhere, anytime soon. They'll be with us for longer than the Russian nobility survived 1917.

I think.

"Apres moi, le board." - George Balanchine