Tuesday (8/28) on the Minnesota Public Radio news site, Euan Kerr reports, “People passing the AFL CIO building on the State Fairgrounds in Falcon Heights got a treat today as eight members of the SPCO played a half-hour concert. You had to look closely, but it was also a labor rally of sorts. Supporters passed out leaflets outlining musicians’ concerns as the music rose above the crowds … ‘We are just trying to remind people what we do, that we do sweet music,’ said Carole Mason Smith. … Smith is chair of the musicians’ contract negotiating committee. She and the others at the fair were also trying to raise awareness of what they feel is an unfair proposal coming from management. The hand-outs claim the latest proposal includes a 57% and 67% salary cut for musicians in the first year of a new contract. … The Fair event represents a ramping up by the SPCO musicians as they approach the September 30th deadline when their current contract runs out. … ‘I don’t know how they arrived at those numbers,’ said SPCO Interim President Dobson West, ‘but they are not correct numbers. We have never proposed that kind of a magnitude of a cut. … While we still need to bring the expenses in line with our sustainable revenues, there are a variety of ways we can do this,’ West said, ‘and we will bring an entirely different form of proposal to the musicians.’ ”
Posted August 31, 2012
