Colorado Music Festival Achieves Union Contract

July 31, 2024

Stephen Laifer  -  

Summer festivals provide regular off-season work for many orchestra musicians. Unfortunately, they rarely provide the same union protections these musicians enjoy in their regular jobs.

Not only are summer festivals a great opportunity to work with colleagues from other orchestras, but many festivals also take place in desirable locations, where musicians can take advantage of outdoor summer activities. Colorado Music Festival (CMF) is a prime example, comprising five weeks of major orchestral repertoire and premieres of new works in the stunning surrounds of Boulder, Colorado.

The International Musician interviewed the members of the CMF orchestra committee (OC) to discuss the process of achieving their first-ever AFM collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Joining in the discussion was Mike Allen, former president of Local 20-623 (Denver, CO), who led negotiations of the orchestra’s new collective bargaining agreement under the auspices of the Denver Musicians’ Association, Local 20-623, and current Local 20-623 President Ron Bland.

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International Musician: Lou, let’s start with you as the committee chair. You took the reins, willing to chair the committee and bear the brunt of any confrontations with management. Colorado Music Festival is among few summer festivals to take the step toward unionization. Why did you feel the need to do this?

Lou DeMartino: Musicians had been steering this process long before I stepped in. For a long time, the musicians in this orchestra needed more job security, better pay, and clearly delineated work rules. For example, every summer Colorado Music Festival performs in the jurisdiction of Local 20-623, but we always played for less than the local rates. This made a lot of people uncomfortable. I’m on the board of Local 99 (Portland, OR), and the situation certainly didn’t sit well with me.

Karen Pommerich: It’s important to note that the push to organize came from the majority of the orchestra, not just the OC. Musicians were approaching the committee to ask if we could do it.

Aimee Lopez: Those of us who have been playing here for many years wanted to improve things for those who joined the orchestra after us and who will join in the future, helping foster a safer and more stable work environment.

IM: Were there specific areas of the contract that you thought should be targeted?

DeMartino: The pay scale, absolutely. Another big issue was the lack of job security. Admittedly, things used to be much worse. The music director had sole hiring and firing power. People would disappear from one summer to the next, with no explanation.

David Crowe: I wanted to see the growth in standards and pay that I had been seeing in other orchestras.

Aaron Merritt: The workload was also a big problem. It has been steadily increasing over successive summers.

Matt Heller: It was becoming unrealistic to expect musicians to travel here from all over the country to play for low wages and a heavy workload.

IM: What were the first steps?

Crowe: We interviewed every member of the orchestra to gauge interest in the organizing process. We got a huge and positive response.

Andrew Karr: It’s worth acknowledging that there was some skepticism at first, and some understandable fear about unionizing, mostly based on dire warnings from previous orchestra boards and managements. But we knew the current administration and music director wouldn’t directly oppose what we were attempting to accomplish.

IM: How did you figure out who in the OC would take on which responsibilities?

Merritt: Each of us talked to the members of our own sections, or with people we knew. We added that info to a spreadsheet listing who we contacted.

DeMartino: Ultimately, there was no formal division of labor. We all just fell into roles that needed to be filled. Everyone on the OC had skills they brought to the table, or things they were good at. It was a highly functioning committee and we all worked well together.

Michael Hosford: Meanwhile, I was Clippy, the erstwhile Microsoft Office assistant, during our Zoom sessions with Mike Allen.

IM: What was the process of notifying the CMF board and management of the orchestra’s intent to organize, and how was that received?

DeMartino: David [Crowe] and I first went to Liz McGuire, CMF’s executive director, and gave her the card count, which was 100% in favor of unionizing. She was excited to bring us in line with the vision of the board and management to move the organization forward, but she told us the music director was concerned and wanted to meet with us. We agreed to meet with him, but we made it clear that we hadn’t surveyed the orchestra yet to establish exactly what they wanted to see in a CBA, and we were not going to negotiate with the music director.

Crowe: The music director did acknowledge that it was good to see the orchestra was so united.

Heller: He also added that he would be happy to be able to advertise vacant positions in the International Musician.

Karr: There was zero musician involvement before the departure of a previous music director. When he left, we saw an opening to create an orchestra committee, back in 2013. Compared to what could have happened, the music director was in the end very positive about our intentions.

DeMartino: Following the meeting with the music director, we had a second lunch meeting with the CMF board’s executive committee. They asked the same questions as the music director: why did we want to do this, and what did we hope to achieve? We explained that we wanted a seat at the table, and more clarity in work rules and orchestra operations. We pointed out that several of the bigger summer festivals that are successful are unionized.

Lopez: It’s important to point out that we had been enjoying good relations with our management. Their ultimate goal was to increase the organization’s artistry. We saw this as our moment to match their aims with professionalism and help them raise the bar.

IM: At what point in the process was the local brought in, and what did that look like?

Mike Allen: I had my first conversations with Karen [Pommerich] in 2015 after I became president of Local 20-623. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and derailed the momentum. Late fall of 2022 we started the process in earnest with Zoom meetings with the committee. The union authorization card count by musicians took place in July 2023, in pouring rain, in a parking lot.

Hosford: It was a dark and stormy night, but there were sandwiches.

Allen: Lou [DeMartino] and David [Crowe] presented Liz [McGuire] with the request for voluntary recognition, and she asked them to wait for the next board meeting. We decided, as a group, to go forward with the election process. Time was a valuable tool. At the end of August, the board voluntarily decided to recognize us, but we decided to wait for our official election. A National Labor Relations Board election provides certain protections voluntary recognition does not. Ninety percent of the orchestra responded to the election, which is a much higher figure than typical among orchestras.

IM: So now we’re into the negotiation process. What were some of the biggest challenges?

Lopez: We had so many concerns, because our working conditions are so different from our home gigs. Our negotiations had to include things like housing. But Mike [Allen] reassured us that we had the freedom to look at our own specific parameters. We didn’t need to compare ourselves with other organizations.

Karr: Some musicians were worried that unionizing would be detrimental, afraid that we might be asking the orchestra for things that they couldn’t deliver. Mike [Allen] helped us to understand that what’s happening elsewhere in other orchestras is not necessarily relevant.

Allen: One thing that was unusual is that we built a completed CBA before we even sat down at the table. Much of the language was taken verbatim from the orchestra’s existing handbook Orchestra Policies, just organized in a logical manner, removing contradictions and repetitions, and formatting it into language for a CBA. So, a lot of the work was really just codifying things already in place, which left very few things to actually bargain on.

DeMartino: Mike [Allen] color-coded the draft to help the other side see that it was mostly things we were already doing. It was also their first time negotiating, so it was a lot for them to get used to. And since we were all back home at our regular jobs, we were negotiating across every time zone in the country, from the east coast to Hawaii. We would have Zoom negotiating meetings that stretched across an entire day, with people eating, driving, and going about their daily lives.

Hosford: In one session, Lou [DeMartino] was on a treadmill.

Lopez: One positive thing is that we didn’t encounter much from the typical “Union Busting Playbook” that we could check off on our bingo cards.

IM: In a press release, Liz McGuire openly thanked the orchestra committee for their “incredible commitment of time and industry knowledge that led to our organization’s first successful CBA agreement. Those conversations reinforced what I already know and appreciate about this orchestra: our sense of community and kinship is key.” Can you give some examples of how having a union CBA will be beneficial to management?

Karr: One, we desperately needed a framework of rules to help everyone understand the structure of the organization, rather than a freeform way of doing business. Two, better communication. We now have a clean way of communicating musician issues.

Heller: We know issues will come up, but now we have a system in place to resolve them. In a system of rules and conditions, you know when things fall outside of what was agreed to. And that works both ways.

Allen: We initially kicked around the idea of a multi-year agreement, but we thought one year to start would be a good test-drive. Management is beginning to understand why having a CBA is a good thing, and now they are pushing for multi-year agreements with more ambitious wage increases. They understand that this is something they can use in their forward planning. From our side, we’ve determined that any issues will be solved at the table next time around. This confirmed our decision to only do a one-year agreement at the outset. There will be a list from both sides.

IM: What are the biggest achievements under the new CBA?

DeMartino: A starting place for increasing wages over successive contracts, along with formalized peer review.

Pommerich: More clarity about procedures.

Crowe: Increasing our standing among other orchestras.

Heller: Recognition from management that we are professionals, and we are respected for what we do.

Hosford: It’s hard to overstate the psychological impact of having a seat at the table. Now we are treated like equals.

IM: What advice would you give to musicians in other festivals wanting to advocate for union membership?

Crowe: I’d stress the importance of talking to every member of the orchestra to understand their feelings and any ideas they have.

Lopez: Any organization works better when everyone knows, not just their rights, but also their roles. Having that knowledge is freedom.

Allen: Many musicians don’t realize that they have a federally guaranteed right to organize.

DeMartino: The fact that we achieved 100% unanimity among the CMF musicians speaks volumes. It’s also worth noting that younger musicians are interested in the union. Often people don’t want to unionize because of their fears of jobs going away. But I don’t think those fears are real. I think they’re imposed. Education on the realities of unionism can clear up those fears. That’s an enormously positive thing to realize.

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