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oxleyk
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John Mohan
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
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 Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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| During a recent five year period the Lyric's yearly budget increased from 60 million dollars to 84 million dollars, a 24% increase. During the same period the orchestra pay increased less than 5% (not even keeping up with inflation). Clearly from the management's point of view there are far more important things then the orchestra. Wow. |
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HERMOKIWI
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| Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2018 9:04 pm Post subject: |
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| John Mohan wrote: | | During a recent five year period the Lyric's yearly budget increased from 60 million dollars to 84 million dollars, a 24% increase. During the same period the orchestra pay increased less than 5% (not even keeping up with inflation). Clearly from the management's point of view there are far more important things then the orchestra. Wow. |
An increase in the annual budget from 60 million dollars to 84 million dollars is a 40% increase. Whether they're actually taking in that amount of money in donations and operational revenue (as opposed to just "budgeting" for it) isn't verified in the article nor is any mention made of whether and to what extent the "budget" includes borrowed funds which would have to be repaid later. Be that as it may, to fund an annual budget of 84 million dollars requires that they take in an average of $230,136 per day 365 days per year. It's a mind boggling number. How do they do that?
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alexwill
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tmensch
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Location: Chicago - North Suburbs
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 3:58 am Post subject: |
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I love the Lyric. The musicians are first rate and should be paid properly and get raises that reflect their outstanding work. C'mon we can at the very least keep up with inflation.
Can someone tell me why we have cut back so drastically the number of performances? This season we have only 56, not so long ago we had 80 performances a season and sadly I remember late last century when we had 90+ performances a season.
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HERMOKIWI
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 4:39 am Post subject: |
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| tmensch wrote: | I love the Lyric. The musicians are first rate and should be paid properly and get raises that reflect their outstanding work. C'mon we can at the very least keep up with inflation.
Can someone tell me why we have cut back so drastically the number of performances? This season we have only 56, not so long ago we had 80 performances a season and sadly I remember late last century when we had 90+ performances a season. |
An 84 million dollar budget to fund 56 performances comes out to an average cost of $1,500,000 per performance!! Assuming they're actually raising that much in donations and operating revenue it seems like there's a lot of money to be spread around.
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Speed
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Location: Mississippi
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| Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 4:53 am Post subject: |
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I thought the article left open a lot of questions.
As for the cutback in performances, reading between the lines a bit led me to believe that management wants to be able to increase the rental income. Is the demand higher for the use of the facility than for performances? If so, that's scary.
Sometimes references to "salary" don't tell the whole story. What sort of benefits are provided under the present contract? Health insurance costs are going through the roof. Do they still have a traditional (but very expensive) pension plan, or have they gone to a less expensive (for management) 401(k) plan? Benefits like that can still cost a lot of money, and certainly provide something worthwhile for the musicians, but they don't show up in "salary." They do increase the budget, though. I'm not saying that's what has happened, but it's a question that is relevant.
The article said that real wages have gone down 5% since 2011 considering inflation. Inflation - at least on a national level - is very low today, to the point of being inconsequential. I have no idea what inflation is in Chicago, and that is what matters in this case.
I think we are going to continue to see this problem all over the country. From what I read, attendance is down everywhere. In an ideal world, there would be a line at the door of patrons buying tickets for every performance, providing plenty of money to pay the musicians what they are worth. |
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