“The Metropolitan Opera reached tentative agreements early Monday morning with the unions representing its orchestra and chorus after an all-night bargaining session, and called off its threat to lock out workers,” writes Michael Cooper in Monday’s (8/18) New York Times. “The agreements were announced shortly after 6:15 a.m. by Allison Beck, the deputy director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, after talks lasted long past the deadline of midnight Sunday that the Met had set for reaching a deal or locking out its workers…. The terms of the agreement were not immediately disclosed. The federal mediators stepped in late last month to help broker a deal between the Met’s management and two of its biggest unions: Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra, and the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the chorus, singers and stage managers, among others…. The Met must still reach an agreement with the third major union at the house, Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents stage hands, carpenters and electricians, and which did not participate in talks with the mediator…. The contract deadline for Local 1 and the other unions without contracts had been extended through midnight on Tuesday.”
Posted August 18, 2014
