(New York) Several hundred protesters gathered outside the Metropolitan Opera in New York on Thursday, accusing opera management of making its employees pay the price for the pandemic by lowering their wages.
Posted on May 13, 2021 at 5:53 p.m.
–
–
The Met has been deprived of a show since March 11, 2020 and, faced with an unprecedented budget crisis, its leaders have engaged in negotiations with each profession to reduce its payroll.
Opera is the largest performing arts employer in the United States, with more than 3,000 employees.
This week, the management reached an agreement in this direction with the singers, choristers and soloists, but continues its discussions with the musicians, who obtained to be paid while awaiting the outcome of the negotiations.
Thursday, it was the stagehands who went to the front, on the Lincoln Center esplanade, opposite the opera house, to draw attention to their situation.
Unlike other trades, they are locked out, meaning the Met prevents them from working for it until an agreement is reached. The blockage has been going on since December and negotiations have stalled.
“It is to take advantage of a health crisis that has decimated our industries,” said Matthew Loeb, international president of the Alliance des métiers de la scene (IATSE), the main union in the profession, who affirms that the management of the Met offers a 30% wage cut, made permanent after the resumption of shows.
The officials of the institution argue that the cuts would not be as important or as durable for the greatest number of employees.
The stagehands also criticize the opera for having used the services of non-unionized providers to prepare its future productions, in Wales and Los Angeles.
“It’s a slap,” says Peter Tudor, an electrician employed by the Met for 25 years.
The Met Orchestra is due to give its first concert in 430 days on Sunday, but outside the walls, in the New York neighborhood of Queens, without the participation of the stagehands.
And the start of the 2021-22 season is already on the horizon, with a kick-off scheduled for September 27. Time is running out, but discussions have not resumed.
The management of the Met assures to have “no desire to weaken” the unions, but says to have “lost more than 150 million dollars of income in the last 14 months and (to face) the most serious financial crisis of (its) 137 years of history ”.
“We have to reduce our costs to survive,” she says.
“We all want to get back to work,” says Kathryn Bloss, an opera painter for three decades. “We’re the Met… It’s family. ”
–
