New Symphony’s Agreement to Honor Union Called ‘Hollow’ : Labor: Musicians are still waiting to hear how the merged orchestra will choose its players. Many performers stand to lose their seats.

Ventura County’s new symphony has agreed to recognize the musicians’ union, but rank-and-file performers have called the guarantee in a recent letter a “hollow promise.”

A month after the county’s two symphonies announced they would merge by year’s end, the musicians are still waiting to hear how the New West Symphony will choose its players and what role the American Federation of Musicians will play.

At least half the musicians will lose their seats in the orchestra, part-time jobs that can bring a player anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 a year.

The performers from the Conejo Symphony, which has no union, fear their unionized colleagues in the Ventura County Symphony will win all the seats with the new orchestra. But the unionized players fear their labor agreement will not be honored and they will be punished for pursuing a contract last year.

Because the New West Symphony is a new, nonprofit corporation, a new labor agreement will have to be hammered out with the union, orchestra officials said. This will only occur after the musicians are picked, a distinction that will not honor the seniority system and job security won by the union for the Ventura County Symphony players.

“I think they merged in bad faith because they did not consult with the musicians,” said Steve Thiroux), a Ventura County Symphony bassoonist and union representative.

Thiroux and several other musicians spent a long and acrimonious summer negotiating the American Federation of Musicians’ first collective bargaining agreement with a Ventura County orchestra.

Symphony officials first resisted the orchestra’s attempt to unionize, and then engaged in protracted bargaining talks before finally approving a tentative contract. The musicians nearly went on strike and agreed to an interim contract at the 11th hour in October.

But now that agreement will be moot when the Ventura County Symphony folds at the end of this season. The Conejo Symphony will do the same and the New West Symphony--with a new nonprofit tax number--will rise from the ashes.

New West Symphony officials say their organization, as a new company, was not bound to the agreement signed in October.

In addition, many of the players are angered that Ventura County Symphony Conductor Boris Brott has been named to the same position in the new symphony.

“He is the reason there is a union,” said Karine Beesley, who helped hire Brott. Beesley was fired as executive director of the Ventura County Symphony in October. She recently filed a $5,000 lawsuit in small claims court seeking back wages.

Union lawyers are still reviewing the merger and have not decided a course of action, said Michael Smith, president of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 581 in Ventura.

While lawyers with the new symphony have written union officials a letter assuring them that Local 581 will be recognized, the musicians remained skeptical.

“I think it’s sort of a hollow promise,” Thiroux said. “They would have had to unionize anyway.”

Thiroux said all American symphonies with budgets in excess of $1 million use union players. The letter, Thiroux said, guaranteed no one a job.

The merger means there will be room enough for only half of the musicians.

“The orchestra is playing really well but morale is low,” Thiroux said. Longtime players are worried that their tenure will count for nothing when New West officials hold auditions later this year.

Brott said some form of preference will be given to county symphonic players, but said some outside players will also be auditioned.

“I’m going through somersaults inside to find a fair way to audition,” he said.

Since picking up the baton three years ago, Brott has rankled many with his management style. Musicians said he is brusque and harsh with his comments and has issued an inordinate amount of written criticism to musicians.

But Brott’s defenders said his management style is grating because he is trying to raise the standards of a symphony used to a kindly conductor and an amateur atmosphere.

Brott, too, said he was hired to help the symphony “grow and development.”