In Friday’s (10/12) Pioneer Press (Saint Paul, Minnesota), Ross Raihala reports, “Contract talks between the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra management and musicians resumed Thursday, Oct. 11, with the sides once again stuck at an impasse. Management failed to convince the musicians to continue to ‘play and talk,’ but only under the terms of management’s most recent proposal, which cuts the orchestra’s pay by 15 percent. The musicians countered with an offer that management deemed unacceptable because it did not cut salaries enough. ‘Each day that we continue to operate under the terms of our expired contract, we add to our deficit,’ SPCO president Dobson West said in a statement. ‘We would be abdicating our fiduciary responsibility to continue operating this way much longer.’ Negotiations are scheduled to resume Friday, Oct. 12. The SPCO musicians’ contract expired Sept. 30, the same day as the Minnesota Orchestra, which has since locked out its musicians and canceled several weeks of performances.”
Posted October 12, 2012
