HARMONY REIGNS IN SYMPHONY CONTRACT SETTLEMENT
By Janos Gereben
Post Arts Editor

In a landmark turnaround in the history of collective bargaining, the
San Francisco Symphony has negotiated an unprecedented six-year contract
with the orchestra's 104 musicians.  Participants and those assisting
the talks are now preparing documentation "to serve as a model for other
institutions." By that, they don't mean only other orchestras; the process
is being applied to civil litigation, family law, arms control, and other
non-musical areas.

Without a word leaking out during 15 months of secret negotiations and some
major conflict-resolution efforts, the administration and the musicians
agreed on, signed, voted on, and ratified a contract 10 months before the
expiration of the current agreement.

The existing contract was reached two years ago after a protracted and
bitter dispute -- fought in press releases and culminating in a 10-week
strike.

Today, in a virtual love-fest of a press conference in Davies Hall,
outgoing executive director Peter Pastreich exulted:  "Michael Jordan
and I are both leaving at the top of our game."

During what he now terms "a painful chapter in our history," Pastreich was
both the originator and the target of many a hostile word.

"This time," he said, "we agreed not to use union bargaining as an
opportunity to express the frustrations that come from working in a
demanding, high-pressure field."

Pastreich, Symphony board president Nancy H. Bechtle, and the musicians'
representatives all credit Harvard law professor Robert H. Mnookin and
Gary Friedman of the Mill Valley Center for Mediation and the Law for their
conflict-resolution workshops and participation in the negotiations to
"build a new foundation of mutual trust and respect."

The Symphony, with an annual budget around $40 million, employs 104
musicians, and about 100 "substitutes," 50 of them working regularly enough
to be covered by the contract.

The minimum weekly pay goes up incrementally from $1,600 to $2,000 in 2005.
Pension benefits increase from $42,000 to $53,000 over the life of the
contract, and a new benefit fund is established for all previously retired
musicians.

While the increases in the cost of contract average 4.2 percent per year,
the current plan is to increase ticket prices only by 3.8 percent.  Special
arrangements are being made to lighten the work load of string players who
have the highest rate of injury.

==========

SETTLING LABOR DISPUTES BY BEHAVING WELL

A distinguished expert on child custody has helped to bring peace and the
likelihood of prosperity to the San Francisco Symphony by bringing the
warring members of that "family" together in a surprising, unprecedented
contract agreement.

Harvard law professor Robert H.  Mnookin -- able to resolve conflict well
enough to have taught at both Berkeley and Stanford -- is the award-winning
co-author of "Dividing the Child:  Social and Legal Dilemmas of Custody."
Since that 1993 work, he has published other works on conflict resolution,
and participated some major labor-management dispute settlements.

When the San Francisco orchestra underwent a traumatic upheaval at the last
contract negotions, the Hewlett Foundation gave a large (but unspecified)
grant to Mnookin to help bring administration and musicians together.  With
Gary Friedman, of the Mill Valley Center for Mediation and the Law, and
members of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiations (which Mnookin
headed before going to Harvard), he began the long, difficult process of
creating some trust where there was none before.

Through off-site workshops, individual and group counseling, and eventually
-- against their usual mode of operation -- with direct involvement in the
talks, Mnookin and Friedman succeeded after some 15 months of work.  "They
helped us to a fuller understanding of each other's interest," said Chris
Gilbert, head of the musicians' negotiating committee.  "Prof.  Mnookin and
his colleagues did much to help us recognize that we have much more to gain
by working together as a team and by resolving our differences,"
acknowledged Symphony executive director Peter Pastreich.

Asked after the triumphant press conference where all participants heaped
praise on the former "opposition," what his approach was, Mnookin said:

"The most important thing was to help people develop the skill to put
themselves in the other guy's shoes, to demonstrate an understanding of
the other person's perspective, but not letting go of their own interest
and perspective."

(At one retreat, musicians acted as management negotiators, and the
administration played the role of union officials in a fictional school
contract settlement.)

"What goes a long way is when people can learn both to demonstrate an
understanding of the other side, and still assert, uphold, articulate
and advocate their own interests," Mnookin said.

"A key piece Gary and I and our team tried to do was to help people manage
what we call `attenion between empathy and assertiveness.' Many people --
for example, lawyers -- are terrific at assertion, but they are not very
good demonstrating to the other side an understanding."

Friedman said the first challenge at the beginning was to "use
understanding instead attack and defense.  The intention must be there
to try, otherwise you start defending yourself, you're off and running,
and hate each other."

"Our purpose -- and now success -- is in demolishing the myth that there
cannot be change, Mnookin said.

The SFS Miracle Settlement

After 15 months of secret negotiations and a foundation-sponsored
conflict-resolution effort, the San Francisco Symphony reached an
unprecedented six-year settlement with the musicians, one year before
the expiration of the current contract.

The existing contract was signed two years ago, after a spectacularly
destructive 10-week strike, and a bitter war of both words and deeds
between the Symphony Society and the Musicians' Union.

So complete is the turnaround that even the names of the previously
conflicting entities were abolished, and now it is just SFS, with a
contract between the administration and the musicians *of the same
organization*.

This is still too new and sudden to figure out exactly what happened, but
participants all credit Harvard law professor Robert Mnookin and Stanford's
(?) Gary Friedman for their conflict-resolution workshops and participation
in the negotiations (which pretty much goes against their normal mode of
operation) to `build a new foundation of mutual trust and respect.'

The minimum weekly pay goes up from $1,600 to $2,000 in 2005.  Pension
benefits increase from $42,000 to $53,000 over the life of the contract,
and a new benefit fund is established for all previously retired musicians.
While the increases in the cost of contract average 4.2 percent per year,
the current plan is to increase ticket prices only by 3.8 percent.  Special
arrangements are being made to lighten the work load of string players who
have the highest rate of injury.

Quote of the day from outgoing Symphony executive director Peter Pastreich:
`Michael Jordan and I are both leaving at the top of our game.'

More later.

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