Met Opera seeks 30% pay cuts in exchange for pandemic salaries

New York

THE Metropolitan Opera has offered to start paying many employees who have been furloughed without pay since April up to US$1,500 a week in exchange for new union contracts that include long-term pay cuts, the company's general manager said in a meeting with staff.

Two months after announcing that the curtains would not part again until fall 2021, the Met's general manager, Peter Gelb, said in a video call with Met employees that the company was willing to cut a deal with unions that would mean their members would receive partial paycheques for the duration of the pandemic. The catch: Employees would have to agree to a 30 per cent cut in pay, half of which would be restored once the Met's box office returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Mr Gelb predicted that even after the pandemic subsided, ticket sales would be depressed for several years, citing a recent study that said New York City was not likely to reach its pre-pandemic tourism levels until 2025. Another factor that he cited is that as the Met's audience are mainly elderly folks, manynof them may be more reluctant to return to the 3,800-seat opera house.

"For the Met to get back on its feet, we're all going to have to make financial concessions and sacrifices," Mr Gelb said in the Zoom call, which was viewed live by more than 500 people.

Roughly 1,000 full-time Met employees, including members of the orchestra and chorus, have been furloughed without pay since April. For many, it will be tempting to start receiving paycheques again, which would amount to 70 per cent of their base salaries and would be capped at US$1,500 a week.

But the unions would have to agree to new contracts that would reduce their workers' take-home pay, which is often significantly more than their base salaries, by 30 per cent, mostly through a series of changes to work rules.

Unions against significant concessions

The unions that work with the Met are against making such significant concessions that could affect workers long after the most severe impacts of the pandemic subside, and have accused management of taking advantage of the outbreak in order to get them to agree to cost-cutting measures.

"The Met's opportunistic approach seeks to permanently gut our contract way beyond the end of this crisis," Len Egert, the executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents the company's choristers, stage directors and dancers, said in a statement. Mr Egert said that his union members "have no interest in selling out their future for short-term relief".

The pandemic has severely strained arts institutions across the country, and even the Met, America's largest performing arts organisation, has not been spared. The Met's finances were perilous even before the virus struck: Its annual budget is US$300 million, and it earns less than a third of that through box-office sales, leaving it heavily reliant on donors. The company has lost more than US$150 million because of the shutdown, and its announcement in September that it was cancelling its entire 2020-21 season signalled that the losses were only just beginning.

A Met spokeswoman declined to say what kind of changes to work rules were under discussion because the company is in the middle of union negotiations. Part of union opposition to the requested concessions is that half of the salary cuts will be restored only when the box office recovers, which could easily take years.

The Met's box office was projected to make US$88 million in the 2019-20 season before it was cut short by the pandemic, Mr Gelb said, and the company projects that its next season starting in the fall of 2021 will take in only about US$49 million. Under his proposal, even when the box-office sales recover, employees would still be paid 15 per cent less than they were before the pandemic struck. NYTIMES