L.A. and Baltimore Orchestras Strike Deals with Players

The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s musicians ratified a new four-year contract Monday that provides only slight salary increases but improves housing, pension, and other benefits for players, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Meanwhile, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra musicians agreed Friday to a new three-year contract that restores most of a pay cut implemented in the aftermath of the economic downturn, writes The Baltimore Sun.

The Los Angeles deal raises minimum wages for the musicians by 3.8 percent to $154,336 by 2017. Base pay rose by 17 percent under the previous four-year pact. The philharmonic has avoided the labor strife and the budget straits that have hit many major U.S. symphonies since the downturn, posting a cumulative $28.8-million surplus in the last three years for which records are available.

In 2011, the philharmonic boosted conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s pay by 44.6 percent to $1.425-million and gave its president and CEO Deborah Borda a 9.3-percent raise to $1.75-million, according to an earlier Los Angeles Times analysis of the organization’s latest tax return. The orchestra, the country’s largest as ranked by expenditures, ended the 2011-12 fiscal year $5.9-million in the black, its 10th surplus in 11 years.

Under the Baltimore agreement, tenured players’ base salary will reach $75,024 by the 2105-16 season—an 11 percent boost from the last contract, which expired Sept. 8, but still below the pre-recession peak of around $78,000. The symphony will increase its contribution to players’ health-insurance and pension plans. “We are working our way back, but doing it responsibly,” said Paul Meecham, the orchestra’s president and CEO.