Atlanta: lots of commotion but little motion

While Atlanta burns, the fiddles are silent...

Depending on who or how one reads the situation, Stanley Romanstein, CEO of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra resigned or was let go from his position.  While his tenure has been the source of much of the friction between management and the players (two lock outs in two years), it does not readily appear as though his pending departure has changed anything.

Meanwhile, former Coca Cola executive and ASO board member Terry Neal has been named interim chief. Apparently, Neal will have no role in the current negotiations.  Acting Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Services, Alison Beck, who successfully brokered the agreement between the Metropolitan Opera and its unions, is attempting to bring both sides back to the table and reach some kind of consensus.  Unfortunately, this may be of little consequence for the true culprit behind this gutting of the ASO is the "parent" organization, the Woodruff Arts Center (WAC).

As previously reported the WAC manages the symphony, the High Art Museum, and other arts entities.  Its own honcho, Virginia Hepner, is a former banker with Wachovia.  Her most recent statement notes,

The protracted financial challenges at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra are very serious and threaten the health of the entire Woodruff Arts Center…The ASO has had 12 years of accumulated deficits, a severe reduction in its endowment and an annual operating gap that we cannot afford to continue. Over the last eight months, our team has proposed many potential scenarios to the musicians in an attempt to find a solution to the problem. We continue to ask the musicians for constructive ideas to help us address these challenges and we are frustrated that they have turned a deaf ear to the situation.

WAC chief Virginia Hepner

From the outside, there seem to have been considerably less than "many" potential scenarios.  Rather, management has entrenched itself in the same old "we need a new model" ideology that it employed in 2012, when the players sacrificed $5.2 million in salary cuts over the past two years.

Worse yet, ASO Board of Governors Chair, Douglas Hertz (whose non-profit expertise extends to his position as CEO of a beverage distributorship), offered a lengthy and rambling interview to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  From one who has had absolutely no role in the current negotiations, Hertz is certainly a man of weighty (and inflammatory) opinions.  The entire interview can be found here, while Drew McManus offers a very concise overview.

Booze seller and union buster Douglas Hertz
Who's crazy?

1. He believes the musicians and conductors are “a bunch of crazy people” for failing to appreciate contributors and understanding the WAC’s bargaining position.

2. He doesn’t think very many people in Atlanta care about the ASO and the orchestra’s artistic employees are not doing enough to reverse this perception.

3. The WAC is only interested in zero-sum bargaining and their financial terms are intractable.

4. The WAC would be willing to amend proposed terms that afford the employer with final say on numbers of musicians employed and how positions are potentially filled, but only if the musicians agree to their financial terms.

5. He thinks ASO music director Robert Spano and Principal Guest Conductor Donald Runnicles are a pair of populist carpetbaggers who only support the musicians because they feel guilty about getting paid while the musicians are locked out.

6. Spano and Runnicles are hyperbolic when speaking about degrading artistic accomplishment.  Instead, Hertz believes they should not be talking about artist matters at all but they should be proposing solutions for “developing a more sustainable model.”

7. The ASO should operate via a commercial model and never run a deficit.

8. The ASO is a financial anchor that drags down the entire WAC.

9. He holds culture bloggers in low regard.

10. He doesn’t believe the deluge of social media vitriol against the WAC indicates the public sides with the musicians; instead, he feels that the general public, corporate community, and large donors support the WAC’s strategy.

Obviously, Mr. Hertz has no idea how musical organizations, or non-profits in general, really work.  This is the kind of rhetoric that will do little more than galvanize the musicians even further.  And it has had that effect.  A recent statement by the Players Association indicates that this is not Hertz's first attempt to "break the backs" of employees.

Douglas Hertz was serving on the Tulane University Board of Administrators when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005. In response to the financial problems the hurricane caused, Tulane then-President Scott Cowan proposed to eliminate tenured faculty at the university, and replace existing faculty members with less expensive, non-tenured new hires. This action was supported by the Tulane Board of Administrators, including Douglas Hertz, and the despite numerous lawsuits that ensued, notifications of release were issued to approximately 200 faculty members in December 2005. This action led to the immediate censure of Tulane University by the American Association of University Professors.

One can only hope that Ms. Beck is able to rein in the entrenched ASO/WAC Board and get all sides working to get the Grammy-winning orchestra back on stage in Orchestra Hall.