The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra settled a 55-day strike on Wednesday, just in time for Thanksgiving. The strike was resolved after its musicians agreed to freeze their defined benefit pensions and management settled for an initial 7.5 percent wage cut, half of what it had been seeking.
The five-year contract, which was ratified on Wednesday, paves the way for the orchestra — a major ensemble that is scheduled to perform this summer at the prestigious Salzburg and Lucerne festivals in Europe — to return to work next week. The orchestra will play a pair of free “The Music Has Returned!” concerts on Dec. 2 and 4 with its music director, Manfred Honeck.
The Pittsburgh strike on Sept. 30 sent shock waves through the classical music world. The smaller Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas had gone on strike earlier that month (and remains out of work), and, also on Sept. 30, the storied Philadelphia Orchestra began a strike that lasted 48 hours, raising new questions about how symphony orchestras are adapting to their 21st-century challenges.
Pittsburgh’s management, warning that the orchestra was running out of cash, called for freezing the musicians’ pensions, cutting their pay by 15 percent in the first year and temporarily reducing the size of the ensemble. The union expressed openness to moving from a defined benefit pension plan to a defined contribution plan, provided there were provisions to help those most adversely affected — but they balked at the large pay cut. They went on strike.
The new contract calls for a 7.5 percent cut in the first year, which the orchestra said would have been 10.5 percent had an anonymous donor not stepped in. The contract calls for the players to be restored to their current base salary — approximately $107,000 — in the fifth year. The orchestra accepted a new defined contribution retirement plan, and management agreed to additional contributions to the musicians who would suffer the most. And the ensemble, which has a current complement of 99 musicians and two librarians, will retain that size but keep three open positions unfilled.
“These were painful and substantial concessions,” said Micah Howard, the chairman of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Committee. “But we agreed to work with management to face our financial challenges head-on.”

(Story courtesy of New York Times)