Posted by Rick Denney on September 12, 2000 at 10:18:44:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Strike Votes _vs_ mgmt -vs- union-bustin posted by Tim Erdman on September 12, 2000 at 07:58:08:
As much as I like Jay and the others who feel the union protects them, I have a few misgivings on the subject. Mr. Erdman above talks about the ability of management to hire and fire on a whim as being without recourse. But he neglects to mention that musicians could also leave on a whim but for those contracts. That my employees can leave on a whim causes me huge concern, because I can't replace them easily. So, why aren't conductors and orchestra managers worried about non-unionized musicians voting with their feet?
The problem in the music business is that there are too many musicians for too few jobs. Every other problem stems from that. In my industry, there are too few of us and too many jobs. An employer is profoundly punished for being whimsical and treating employees badly (or should I say "poorly"): nobody will work for him. When that happens, he can't meet his commercial objectives and he goes out of business, or changes his approach to a better one.
One objective of a union is to try to make more jobs than might otherwise exist (increase demand) through work rules. In the long run, it seems to me, this is like holding back the tide with a sand castle. The forces that decide the demand for live music are too big for the union to influence. Requiring an orchestra to hire this or that musician in this or that situation will not put one more person in the audience.
Another objective of a union is to eliminate low-priced competition (decrease supply) using the closed shop. In a closed shop, non-union employees are legally precluded from working a particular gig. There were many stories involving the inability of musicians to move from one orchestra to another because the local had another player (usually unacceptable to the person doing the hiring) who was locally available. Thus, a good player who should be able to name his own ticket is unable to accept the best jobs because he would not be accepted by the local, even though he is a member of the same union.
If there were a shortage of acceptable musicians, then conductors would be a bit more careful about running off the ones they have. If there were a shortage of musicians, managers would take steps, as they do in other professional situations, to provide a good enough work environment to keep people there.
Orchestras are created by visionaries who want the best for their city, and full-time orchestras are created when those visionaries understand what it takes to have superior quality. But, along the way, there will be hired some few non-visionaries in management who can only count pennies, and that will be followed by years marked by conflict with the musicians (not that the musicians aren't capable of causing the conflict themselves--Doug Yeo has a good article on that subject). In other industries, the best employees would start to say, "I'm outta here." But not so in orchestras. Why? Because there are too many musicians, and too few jobs.
But we musicians do it to ourselves. If a musician can't get the big gig, many will become college professors, and spend all their time looking for students for their studio. So we are actively seeking ways to compete with ourselves (I say "we" because the supply is great enough so that someone of my limited ability is driven out of the market entirely, except for a few happy accidents of good fortune). Contrast that with doctors, who go to the opposite extreme and protect their monopoly by sharply limiting the number of AMA-accredited medical schools, and who use 100-hour weeks and extreme memorization torture to eliminate all be the most committed students (but not necessarily all but the best doctors). Or with engineers, who chose for themselves a subject area that plausibly requires understanding of advanced mathematics, physics, and all sorts of other subjects rarely used by practicing engineers. Or lawyers, who are given memorization tasks beyond the ability of many, but which skill has been largely obviated by the availability of computer-searchable law libraries. These are not done to ensure quality, though that is the stated excuse, but to limit supply.
The problem is that the supply is too great, and the demand is too small. Can unions solve that problem? I wish I knew how.
Rick "Peeing upwind" Denney