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      Met Opera Protest: Union Rallies Against Proposed Pay Cuts

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      The Metropolitan Opera hopes to reopen in September after its long pandemic closure, but simmering labor tensions have called that date into question.As New York prepares for the long-awaited reopening of its performing arts sector, with several Broadway shows putting tickets on sale for the fall, it is still unclear whether the Metropolitan Opera will be able to reach the labor agreements it needs to bring up its heavy golden curtain for the gala opening night it hopes to hold in September.There have been contrasting scenes playing out at the opera house in recent days.On the hopeful side, the Met is preparing for two concerts in Queens on Sunday — the company’s first live, in-person performances featuring members of its orchestra and chorus and its music director, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, since the start of the pandemic. And it recently reached a deal on a new contract with the union that represents its chorus, soloists, dancers and stage managers, among others.But the serious tensions that remain with the company’s other unions were put on vivid display outside Lincoln Center on Thursday, as hundreds of union members rallied in opposition to the Met’s lockout of its stagehands and management’s demands for deep and lasting pay cuts it says are needed to survive the pandemic. The workers’ message was clear: their labor makes the Met what it is, and without them, the opera can’t reopen.The Met’s stagehands have been locked out since December. James J. Claffey Jr., president of their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said that the season cannot open without them.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“That’s not the Met Opera,” said James J. Claffey Jr., president of Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents Met stagehands, pointing over to the opera house. “The greatest stage, the largest stage — it’s empty. It’s nothing without the people that are right in front of me right now.”Masked stagehands, musicians, ticket sellers, wardrobe workers and scenic artists packed the designated rally space, greeting each other with elbow bumps after more than a year of separation. They wore union T-shirts and carried signs with messages like, “We Paint the Met” and “We Dress the Met.” The same chant — “We are the Met!” — was repeated over and over throughout the rally.The protest made clear the significant labor challenges that the Met must overcome to successfully return in the fall.Although the opera season is not scheduled to begin until September, the company will need to reach agreements with Local One, which represents its stagehands, much sooner to load in sets and hold technical rehearsals over the summer. The Met has been hoping to bring a significant number of stagehands back to work beginning in June, but Claffey said union members were holding out for a labor agreement.The Met locked out its stagehands in December after contract negotiations stalled. The union has been fiercely opposed to the Met’s assertion that it needs to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, with an intention to restore half of those cuts when ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels (the Met has said the plan would cut the take-home pay of those workers by about 20 percent).“Regardless of the Met’s plans, Local One is not going to work without a contract,” Claffey said in an interview. “There’s a lockout when you didn’t need us, but when you really need us, it’s going to transition from a lockout to a strike.”Although the Met recently struck a deal with the union representing its chorus, tensions remain high with the unions representing its orchestra and stagehands.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Met said in a statement on Thursday that it had “no desire to undermine” the unions it works with but that it had lost more than $150 million in earned revenues since the pandemic forced it to close, and that it needs to cut costs to survive. The statement said the Met had “repeatedly” invited the stagehands’ union to return to the bargaining table.“In order for the Met to reopen in the fall, as scheduled,” the statement said, “the stagehands and the other highest paid Met union members need to accept the reality of these extraordinarily challenging times.”The rally was organized by Local One, which represents the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands. Speaking outside the David H. Koch Theater because metal barriers blocked the path to the Metropolitan Opera House, union leaders railed against the monthslong lockout that has prevented its workers from returning to the Met in full force.“A lot of us stagehands have had to pivot or leave the industry entirely,” said Gillian Koch, a Local One member at the rally. “And we are showing up to say that is not OK, and we all deserve to have our careers after this pandemic.”Tensions rose even higher when the stagehands learned that the Met had outsourced some of its set construction to nonunion shops elsewhere in this country and overseas. (In a letter to the union last year, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 in 2019, including benefits; the union disputes that number, saying that when the steady extra stagehands who work at the Met regularly, and sometimes full-time, are factored in, the average pay is far lower.)The stagehand lockout has not been absolute. Claffey said that at the Met’s request, he has allowed several Local One members to work at the Met under the terms of the previous contract, particularly to help the union wardrobe staff who are on duty.But although the Met has now reached a deal with the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents its chorus, it has yet to reach one with Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, which represents the orchestra. Both groups were furloughed without pay for nearly a year after the opera house closed before they were brought back to the bargaining table with the promise of partial pay of up to $1,543 per week.Adam Krauthamer, the president of Local 802, pointed out that because of the Met’s labor divisions, other performing arts institutions were ahead of the Met in reopening.“Broadway is selling tickets; the Philharmonic is doing performances; they’re building stages right before our eyes,” Krauthamer said in a speech at the rally. “The Met is the only place that continues to try to destroy its workers’ contracts.”The rally had the backing of several local politicians who spoke, including Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, and the New York State Senators Jessica Ramos and Brad Hoylman, who had a message for the Met’s general manager: “Mr. Gelb, could you leave the drama on the stage, please?” More

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      Metropolitan Opera Reaches Deal With Union Representing Chorus

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      Labor troubles have cast the company’s planned reopening in September in doubt; two other major unions have yet to reach deals.The Metropolitan Opera, whose efforts to cut the pay of its workers to help it survive the pandemic had left it locked in a bitter dispute with its unions, threatening to derail its planned September reopening, announced Tuesday that it had reached a deal with the union representing its chorus and other workers.The union, the American Guild of Musical Artists — which also represents soloists, dancers, actors and stage managers — is the first of the three largest Met unions to reach such a deal after months of sometimes-bitter division between labor and management over how deep and lasting the pandemic pay cuts should be. The Met had been seeking to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, which it said would cut the take-home pay of those workers by around 20 percent.The terms of the deal — the culmination of 14 weeks of negotiations — were not immediately disclosed; the company said they would remain confidential until the union held a vote to ratify the agreement on May 24.In recent weeks, New York officials have taken steps to loosen the restrictions around live performance, and in recent days several major Broadway shows have announced their intention to resume performances in September and October. But whether the Met can reopen in September, after the pandemic forced the opera house to remain closed for more than a year, depends on how quickly it can resolve its remaining labor problems.Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said in a statement that he was grateful to the guild for “recognizing the extraordinary economic challenges the Met faces in the coming seasons.”Leonard Egert, the executive director of the guild, said in a statement that the new contract would “ensure the Met becomes a more equitable and better workplace.”“We are pleased to arrive at a new deal during the most trying time in performing arts’ history,” he said.The Met’s deal with the guild is just one step toward reopening. The union that represents its stagehands, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has been locked out since December, after the two sides failed to reach an agreement on pay cuts. Without its union stagehands, starting performances will likely be impossible. And the union representing the Met’s orchestra is still negotiating its contract.The opera company, the largest performing arts organization in the nation, says that it has lost $150 million in earned revenues — including ticket sales to the opera house and to its cinema simulcasts, as well as its shop and dining revenues — since the coronavirus pandemic forced it to close its doors more than a year ago. If the Met reopens in September, it will have gone 18 months without live performances in its opera house.The Met’s management has argued that such a long period of closure — and the uncertainty over the return of its audiences in an era where it could take years for New York City tourism to rebound to prepandemic levels — requires it to seek financial sacrifices from its employees. It has said that half of its proposed pay cuts would be restored once ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels. A number of major American orchestras and opera companies have already negotiated pay cuts with their workers to help them survive the pandemic.After the opera house was closed, the members of its orchestra and chorus went unpaid for nearly a year. Then the company brought them to the bargaining table with the offer of up to $1,543 a week, less than half of what they are typically paid.On Thursday, union members are planning to rally in front of Lincoln Center as a display of solidarity during tense negotiations with management. Union leaders have accused the Met’s management of using the pandemic as a reason to force concessions from labor.If approved, the agreement with the guild will take effect on Aug. 1; for now, unions members will continue to receive partial payments. More

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      The Met Opera’s Musicians, Unpaid Since April, Are Struggling

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      About 40 percent of the players have left the New York area, and a tenth have retired. Now the Met is seeking long-term pay cuts, and offering them partial pay if they come to the bargaining table.As the months without a paycheck wore on, Joel Noyes, a 41-year-old cellist with the Metropolitan Opera, realized that in order to keep making his mortgage payments he would have to sell one of his most valuable possessions: his 19th-century Russian bow. He reluctantly switched back to the inferior one he had used as a child.“It’s kind of like if you were a racecar driver and you drove Ferraris on the Formula One circuit,” Mr. Noyes said, “and suddenly you had to get on the track in a Toyota Camry.”The Metropolitan Opera House has been dark for a year, and its musicians have gone unpaid for almost as long. The players in one of the finest orchestras in the world suddenly found themselves relying on unemployment benefits, scrambling for virtual teaching gigs, selling the tools of their trade and looking for cheaper housing. About 40 percent left the New York area. More than a tenth retired.After the musicians had been furloughed for months, the Met offered them reduced pay in the short term if they agreed to long-term cuts that the company, which estimates that it has lost $150 million in earned revenues, says it will need to survive. When the musicians resisted, the Met offered to begin temporarily paying them up to $1,534 a week — less than half their old pay, but something — if they simply returned to the bargaining table, a proposal the musicians are weighing.Now the Met’s increasingly rancorous labor battles — it has locked out its stagehands, and outsourced some set construction to Wales — are adding more uncertainty to the question of when the opera house can reopen after its long pandemic shutdown.Joel Noyes, a cellist in the orchestra, reluctantly sold his treasured 19th-century bow so he could continue to make his mortgage payments. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesThe toll on the players has been steep.Benjamin Bowman, 41, is one of the orchestra’s two concertmasters — a leader of the first violin section who serves as a conduit between players and maestros. He and his family moved to Stuttgart, Germany, where he took a temporary job with the state orchestra. Daniel Khalikov, 37, a violinist, has been struggling to make the $2,600-a-month loan payments for his two fine violins. Angela Qianwen Shen, 30, a violinist who is not able to collect unemployment because she is in the United States on a visa, picked up some translation work to make ends meet.And Evan Epifanio, 32, the orchestra’s principal bassoonist, put his belongings in storage in June and left the city for the Midwest, where he said he and his husband have been dividing their time between the homes of his parents and his in-laws.“I’m living in my in-laws’ basement at the peak of my career,” Mr. Epifanio said. “I’m a one-trick pony, and now I can’t even do that.”Over the past year, 10 of the orchestra’s 97 members have retired, a stark increase from the two to three who retire in an average year, said Brad Gemeinhardt, the chairman of the orchestra committee, which negotiates labor issues on behalf of the musicians. Prominent figures in the music world are sounding warnings about the peril the orchestra faces: Riccardo Muti, the revered conductor, said in a statement earlier this year that the “artistic world is in disbelief that the very existence of a great orchestra like the Met’s could be in danger and even at risk of disappearing.”The Met, which was financially fragile even before the virus, was forced to shut its doors on March 12, 2020, and it furloughed most of its workers, including those in its orchestra and chorus, in April. (It continued to pay for their health coverage.) In the fall, the Met presented an offer to its employees: it would resume partial payments in exchange for significant long-term pay cuts and concessions. The unions resisted. By the end of the year the Met orchestra was the only major ensemble without a deal to receive pandemic pay, according to the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians.Then, in December, the company locked out its roughly 300 stagehands after their union, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, rejected the Met’s proposed pay cuts. (In a letter to the union last year, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 in 2019, including benefits; the union disputes that number, saying that when the steady extra stage hands who work at the Met regularly, and sometimes full-time, are factored in, the average pay is far lower.)Mr. Gelb said that the company had no choice but to seek cuts when the pandemic left it in a perilous financial situation.“Suddenly we had no revenue, we had shut our doors and we had to do immediate triage so that the company would not fall apart and fold,” Mr. Gelb said. “We are doing the best we can in terms of keeping the company viable so that they will have jobs to return to.”At the end of last year, the Met offered the unions that represent the orchestra and chorus an olive branch: reduced paychecks for simply coming to the bargaining table. The American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents choristers, dancers and others, accepted the arrangement in January, and its members are receiving paychecks. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians has not yet accepted the offer, Adam Krauthamer, the union’s president, said, but it is in the final stages of reaching a deal that the orchestra is voting on.Jeremy McCoy, who rose to assistant principal double bass while playing in the orchestra for 35 years, retired in May. Mr. McCoy, 57, said that he had been contemplating an early retirement, but not quite this early. When he realized that the Met’s furlough could last a long time, he said, he put in his papers, a decision that would allow him to begin collecting his pension rather than having his expenses eat into his savings indefinitely.Mr. McCoy said he was repelled by the idea of returning to an adversarial relationship between the musicians and management.“I don’t want to go back to big concessions and to a toxic environment,” he said.The opera house has been closed for more than a year, and the orchestra pit empty. Victor Llorente for The New York TimesThe Met said it was seeking to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent — the change in take-home pay would be approximately 20 percent, it said — and that when ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels, it would restore half of what had been cut. The Met declined to disclose the current average pay of its musicians, but during the run-up to contentious labor negotiations in 2014, officials said that the players had been paid an average of around $202,000 the prior year.Lincoln Center, with the Met in the middle, has been eerily empty. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMany orchestras have reached agreements for substantial, lasting pay cuts, including the New York Philharmonic, whose musicians agreed to 25 percent cuts to their base pay through August 2023. Mr. Krauthamer said that the Met Orchestra’s union had put forward its own proposal, which would cut pay but preserve work rules that the Met was seeking to change.Some orchestra members have said that they felt betrayed that the opera was not using its musicians in “Met Stars Live in Concert,” the pay-per-view recitals it has been producing from opulent settings in Europe. Most feature only piano accompaniment. A Met official with knowledge of the situation said that for the other performances, members of the company’s orchestra were not included because of the difficulties of travel during the pandemic and because of ongoing labor negotiations.The Met Orchestra has started staging its own virtual concerts and collecting donations to distribute to musicians in need. The most recent, starring the soprano Angela Gheorghiu, singing from Romania, began by clarifying that the performance was “not affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera.”Tanya Thompson, a carpenter who has worked at the Met for 15 years, says she will be back, but during the pandemic she has become an overnight home health aide. Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesBetween stagehands and management, the temperature is even higher.Since the lockout, the work of preparing sets for the coming season has gone to nonunion shops elsewhere in this country and overseas. The Met regularly commissions set-building outside the institution, but these jobs had been slated to be done internally.Sets for two operas scheduled to premiere at the Met next winter, “Rigoletto” and “Don Carlos,” are being built by Bay Productions, a company in Cardiff, Wales; the set for “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” will be built in California. With the sets being built elsewhere, the Met’s scenic painters are losing work even though they have not been locked out because there is nothing for them to paint, so they remain on furlough, said Cecilia Friederichs, a national business agent for the United Scenic Artists union.But the company will still need stagehands if it wants the show to go on this fall, said James J. Claffey Jr., the president of Local One.“You don’t even get to an opening night without us,” he said.The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees has launched a lobbying effort urging lawmakers to support a measure that would block stimulus funds from going to arts organizations that, like the Met, have locked out union employees.Mr. Gelb said that the effort seemed “self destructive” and that “any attempt to damage the institution will only make it harder for the employees once we return.”Tanya Thompson, a union carpenter who has worked at the Met for 15 years, had planned to return to work there in December. When Local One was locked out, she decided to continue in the new job she had taken over the summer to make ends meet: as an overnight home health aide for elderly patients.Ms. Thompson, 52, said she plans to go back to the opera house as soon as there’s a deal.“I’m a lifer,” she said. “We care about what we do and we want the Met to succeed.” More

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      Even When the Music Returns, Pandemic Pay Cuts Will Linger

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEven When the Music Returns, Pandemic Pay Cuts Will LingerThe coronavirus crisis is leading many performing arts unions to agree to concessions, but some fear it could change the balance of power between labor and management.The Metropolitan Opera says that it will need long-term pay cuts if it is to survive after the pandemic, but its workers, many of whom have gone unpaid since April, are resisting.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesDec. 17, 2020Updated 7:22 p.m. ETWhen the coronavirus outbreak brought performances across the United States to a screeching halt, many of the nation’s leading orchestras, dance companies and opera houses temporarily cut the pay of their workers, and some stopped paying them at all.Now, hopes that vaccines will allow performances to resume next fall are being tempered by fears that it could take years for hibernating box offices to rebound, and many battered institutions are turning to their unions to negotiate longer-term cuts that they say are necessary to survive.The crisis is posing a major challenge to performing arts unions, which in recent decades have been among the strongest in the nation. While musicians at some major ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, have agreed to steep cuts that would have been unthinkable in normal times, others are resisting. Some unions fear that the concessions being sought could outlast the pandemic, and reset the balance of power between management and labor.“Historically, labor agreements in the performing arts have been moving toward more money and better conditions,” said Thomas W. Morris, who led major orchestras in the United States for more than three decades. “And all of a sudden that isn’t an option. It’s a fundamental change in the pattern.”Nowhere is the tension between labor and management more acute than at the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts organization in the nation. Its artists and other workers, many of whom have been furloughed without pay since April, are resisting an offer by management to begin receiving reduced wages of up to $1,500 a week again in exchange for long-term pay cuts and changes in work rules. After failing to reach an agreement with its stagehands, the company locked them out last week, shortly before more were scheduled to return to work to begin building sets for next season.But musicians in a growing number of orchestras are agreeing to long-term cuts, recognizing that it could take years for audiences and philanthropy to bounce back after this extended period of darkened concert halls and theaters.The New York Philharmonic announced a new contract last week that will cut the base pay of musicians by 25 percent through mid-2023, to $115,128 a year from $153,504. Then some pay will be restored, but the players will still earn less than they did before the pandemic struck when the contract expires in 2024. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, one of the richest ensembles in the nation, agreed to a new three-year contract reducing pay by an average of 37 percent in the first year, gradually increasing in the following years but only recovering fully if the orchestra meets at least one of three financial benchmarks. The San Francisco Opera agreed to a new deal that halves the orchestra’s salary this season, but later makes up some ground.Unions play a major role behind the scenes at many arts organizations. The contracts they negotiate not only set pay, but also help establish a wide range of working conditions, from how many permanent members an orchestra should have to how many stagehands are needed backstage for each performance to whether Sunday performances require extra pay. It is not uncommon to see major orchestras abruptly end rehearsals mid-phrase — even when a famous maestro is conducting — when the digital rehearsal clock shows that they are about to go into overtime.Workers and artists say that many of these rules have improved health and safety and raised the quality of performances; management has often chafed at the expense.Many nonprofit performing arts organizations, including the Met, faced real financial challenges even before the pandemic struck. Now, they say, they are fighting for their survival, furloughing or laying off administrative staff and seeking relief from unions.After stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera rejected calls for a new contract with long-term cuts, management locked them out.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York Times“Unions are very reluctant to make concessions; it goes against everything trade union strategy has told them for 100-plus years,” said Susan J. Schurman, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University. “But clearly they understand that this is an unprecedented situation.”But at some institutions, including at the Met and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, workers are accusing management of trying to take advantage of the crisis to push for changes to their union contracts that they have long sought.Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, wants to cut the pay of workers by 30 percent, and restore only half of those cuts when box office revenues recover. He hopes to achieve most of the cuts by changing work rules. In a letter last month to the union representing the Met’s roughly 300 stagehands, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, he wrote that “the health crisis has compounded the Met’s previous financial fragility, threatening our very existence.” He also wrote that the average full-time stagehand cost the Met $260,000 last year, including benefits.“For the Met to get back on its feet, we’re all going to have to make financial concessions and sacrifices,” Mr. Gelb told employees in a video call last month.There are 15 unions at the Met, and while the leaders of several of the biggest have said that they are willing to agree to some cuts, they are pushing back on changes that would outlast the pandemic and redefine work rules that they have long fought for — especially after so many workers, including the orchestra, chorus and legions of backstage workers, have endured many months without pay. The Met’s orchestra, which is represented by Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, said in a statement that management was “exploiting this temporary situation to permanently gut contracts of the very workers who create the performances on their global stage.”Leonard Egert, the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents members of the chorus, soloists, dancers, stage managers and others at the Met, said that unions recognized the difficult reality and were willing to compromise. “It’s just that no one wants to sell out the future,” he said.Musicians at the New York Philharmonic, and at other orchestras, have agreed to lasting pay cuts to help their institutions recover after the pandemic. Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesIn Washington, the stagehands at the Kennedy Center are fighting a similar battle. David McIntyre, president of Local 22 of the alliance, said he had been in contentious negotiations with the Kennedy Center for months over its demand for a 25 percent pay cut, something that is hard for the union members to stomach after many of them have gone without pay since March.Management is also asking for concessions such as an elimination of time-and-a-half pay on Sundays, he said, a change that would be permanent rather than limited to the pandemic. The union stagehands are particularly indignant because the Kennedy Center received $25 million from the federal stimulus bill passed in March.“They’re just trying to get concessions out of us by leveraging a pandemic when none of us are working,” Mr. McIntyre said.A spokeswoman for the Kennedy Center, Eileen Andrews, said that several of the unions that it works with already accepted pay cuts, including the musicians with the National Symphony Orchestra, and that the recovery from the pandemic needed to be accomplished through “shared sacrifices.”Organizations have lost tens of millions of dollars in ticket revenue, and the outlook for the philanthropy that they rely on for their survival remains uncertain. As union negotiations proceed within the grids of video calls rather than around the typical stuffy board room tables, both sides recognize the financial fragility.In some respects the pandemic has altered the negotiating landscape. Unions, which normally have tremendous leverage because strikes halt performances, have less at the moment, when there are no performances to halt. Management’s leverage has changed as well. While the Met’s threat that it would lock out its stagehands unless they agreed to cuts carried less menace at a moment when most employees were not working anyway, its offer to begin paying workers who have gone without paychecks since April in exchange for long-term agreements may be hard to resist.At some institutions, memories of the destructiveness of recent labor disputes have helped foster cooperation during this crisis. At the Minnesota Orchestra, where a bitter lockout kept the concert hall dark for 16 months starting in 2012, management and the musicians agreed on a 25 percent pay cut through August. Some orchestras that have recently experienced labor strife, including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, where the players were locked out in 2019, came together during the pandemic.Credit…Shawn Hubbard for The New York TimesAnd the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which had its own hard-fought labor dispute last year, managed to reach agreement on a five-year contract this summer, cutting the pay of players sharply at first before gradually increasing it again.The last time a national crisis of this magnitude affected every performing arts organization in the country was during the Great Recession, when organizations sought cuts to offset the decline in philanthropy and ticket sales, triggering strikes, lockouts and bitter disputes.Meredith Snow, the chair of International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, which represents players, said that labor and management mostly appeared to be working together more amicably than they did then — at least for now.“There is more of a recognition that we need to be a unified face to the community,” said Ms. Snow, a violist for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “and that we can’t be squabbling or we’re both going to go down.”“You come together,” she said, “or you sink.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Metropolitan Opera to Lock Out Stagehands as Contract Talks Stall

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMetropolitan Opera to Lock Out Stagehands as Contract Talks StallAfter reaching a bargaining impasse, the shuttered opera company said it would lock out the workers needed to build sets for next season’s productions.The Metropolitan Opera, which has been shut by the pandemic since March, says that it needs to cut labor costs significantly if it is to survive until and after it reopens.Credit…Victor Llorente for The New York TimesBy More