In Friday’s (12/17) Detroit Free Press, Mark Stryker writes, “In an effort to broker a deal in the 10½-week Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and Gov. Jennifer Granholm today publicly outlined a broad framework for a compromise that essentially splits the financial difference between the two parties with a $36 million package over three years. The DSO musicians embraced the proposed framework, as did a committee of community, business and labor leaders that had been working alongside Levin and a Granholm representative to help find a settlement. DSO management reacted with more reserve to the proposal. In a jointly issued letter, Levin and Granholm also recommend that: New players be brought into the orchestra at lower starting pay in a way that doesn’t create a permanent two-tier wage scale; Contentious community service rules be resolved in a way that is voluntary for the musicians and funded within the overall financial package and allows management time to plan. … ‘We believe that we can find something satisfactory within that $36-million figure,’ said cellist Haden McKay, a musicians’ spokesman. … In a statement, DSO board chair Stanley Frankel said that management was taking the recommendations ‘very seriously.’ However, he also said that the board’s current $34-million proposal already pushed revenue expectations beyond advisors’ recommendations and would result in deficits.”
Posted December 17, 2010
