I’ve not blogged about this, mostly because I’ve just not been good at blogging this past year. I do apologize.

The Minnesota Orchestra musicians have been locked out for far too long. Now they have to deal with this:

The Minnesota Orchestra board has made a move that will reverberate — for better or worse – into the future.

Faced with negotiating crunch time, the board seemingly ignored a confidential mediation process and came out with an offer that’s loaded with positive public-relations strokes for the board but may only be seen as insult to locked-out musicians.

As usual, it’s hard to get a sense of what the other players on both sides think of Thursday’s surprising contract offer. Other than officially designated talkers, most members of the board and the orchestra have stayed silently on the sideline.

But on the surface, the Orchestra Board’s offer seems more like another ultimatum than a genuine effort at resolution. After all, if this were a sincere effort to settle, why wouldn’t the board have made the offer through Mitchell’s mediation office instead of sending news releases to newspapers, television and radio stations?

‘Time is running out’
“We are offended that they unilaterally left the mediators’ confidential process,’’ said musicians’ spokesman Blois Olson. “The musicians will continue to work through the mediator.’’

In the news release produced by the Orchestra board, Richard Davis, the chairman of the board’s negotiating committee, didn’t mention the mediator.

“We are offering it publicly because this is truly an offer from our community,” Davis said in the statement. “We are offering it today because time is running out.”

RTWT

Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra
Minnesota Orchestra Website
Drew McManus on Minnesota Orchestra
Lisa Hirsch has thoughts and links