January 20, 2006
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MAJOR: Journalism 101
COURSE: Independant media
ASSIGNMENT: Find an issue in your daily life to report about. This should preferably be an issue that is of importance to a number of people. Write an article that includes both objective facts, as well as your subjective opinion. When you are finished, publish your article to an independant news agency such as indimedia, and insert a link to your article here…..
The Midori & Friends Foundation, Music Teachers, are on strike. That’s right, this very morning, January 21st, 2006, as I sit typing this at 10:18AM, about 20 music teachers are standing in front of their offices on the west side of 7th Ave. and 28th St. in New York’s Manhattan, waving signs, and chanting the traditional union chant, “What do we want?” “Contracts!” “When do we want them?” “Now!”
Why would these 20 individuals, who range in age from their mid-20s to mid 40s, make such a scene? I asked several of them this very question. “Our executive director, Judi Linden, has been giving herself 35% annual raises. She’s now making over $135,000 per year?” I asked them what their grievance was. “We make only $40 for each class we teach. Most of us teach only two classes a day. So, we make $80, and have to pay for travel to the schools.”
I wasn’t sold, so I asked more questions. “Do you receive health insurance?” “We do,” they responded, “but it’s complicated.” At the time, I didn’t follow-up on the details. I tried to paraphrase their argument, “So you’re upset that you’re only making $40/class?” They responded, “Well…we also haven’t received a raise in years. Our contract expired in June, and our executive director hasn’t been fair in negotiations. Plus, we are given no retirment benefits.”
I spent some time speaking with a gentleman who was the head of the union, (I forget the number), which reprsents musicians including those who play on Broadway. I asked, “If these people are so unhappy with their pay, and if there’s other companies that pay more, why don’t they just quit and work for those other companies?” The union rep responded, “If people did that, wages would become a race to the bottom. These people would leave, and would be replaced for the same low wages. The reason why wages are higher at other companies, is because people organized as unions and drove wages up.”
At that point, they asked me to call Judi Linden. You can too. Her number is (212) 767-1300. Using one of the strikers’ cell phones, I left a message. I’m not sure I said the smartest things…under the influence of the atmosphere, I took the side of the union and came off a bit hostile to Judi on the message. I said I believed she was treating these people unfairly, although, I added that I said it would be nice if she could come down and engage in a dialogue. I began to wonder how the chants of the union would actually play out in persuading (or pressuring?) their boss to negotiate a new contract with them.
After all was said and done, I had to leave to go to work. The members seemed happy that I stopped to learn about their cause, and that I had made a call to their boss on their behalf.
The experience left me much to reflect on. The flier handed to me by the Midori & Friends Foundation Music Teachers notes:
“When an execuvtive director of a not-for-profit agency receives lavish wages and benefits while refusing to pay a fair wage and even denying retirment benefits for its front-line teachers, something is terribly wrong.”
The truth is, very few people in this country receive retirement benefits. I work for a not-for-profit, and I’m saving for my retirement independantly. Some lucky but rare individuals receive pensions from their companies, some receive contributions to their retirement plans, but for the vast majority of Americans, saving for retirement involves investing your own money.
As for being paid a living wage, I think this also needs to be examined. To me, the amount an executive director of a not-for-profit is paid has less to do with objective fairness, than to do with the spirit of working for a not-for-profit. If you work for a company where your main objective is to make profit, I have less qualms with a CEO taking away a big paycheck, than an executive director for a company whose purpose is supposed to be bringing music education into public schools.
With that said, I think the key issue here is not what the executive director gets paid, but what the workers get paid. Are they being paid a living wage? If not, would a redistribution of wages from the executive director to the employees make the situation different?
I want to qualify this article, by noting that my interviews were incomplete, and I in no way mean to end this article as conclusive. I am hoping to gain more perspecitves. However, I think being paid $80 for teaching 2 music classes is actually a lot of money! One striker noted they had a masters and they were very dedicated to teaching kids music…and I said I’d also one day like to have a masters and want to help teach kids, but, the question is, is $40/class a living wage in NYC? It seems to me, that these teachers should still have free time to do a few other things during the day, including private lessons, that might allow them to make upwards of $100/day. Maybe not a lot of money, but certainly on par with a great number of NYC employees. And, if they wanted, they could become NYC public school teachers, where they would receive higher wages and a pension, although as a member of that union they would then have a new employer to have grievances with.
Ultimately, the lesson this bit of investigative journalism taught me, is that beyond wages, the issue of civility is most important. When people strike, this shows to me that civil communication between employers and employees has broken down. Hard feeling are created, which could spill over into the actual work being done.
For example, while I worked at Outward Bound, I felt as though I was underpaid. Making about $65/day, working 24hour days! Sure, I took the job because I loved the work, but talk about exploited labor! However, my concern was less that I was being exploited, and had much more to do with the effect of wages on the ability to carry out our not-for-profit mission of improving the lives of people. With wages that low, Outward Bound is unable to attract and retain many potentially talented and lifelong instructors. As a result, turnover and burnout is high, and this has an effect on the overall product.
Paying workers high wages is as much a moral/living wage issue, as it is an economic growth issue and community development issue. When workers don’t have love for their employers or their company, business suffers. When workers and employers don’t trust each other, well…trust amongst people suffers. Yesturday, our exec. director called a pub break at 4pm. Drinks on the boss. Talk about boosting worker moral!
I appreciate you reading my first attempt as an independant reporter, and as always…
your thoughts?
Comments (10)
$20k a year (a high estimate from: $80 bucks a day X five days a week X fifty working weeks per year) seems like a pittance, but two classes per day seems like a light workload.
I can’t say I agree with the union leader’s assesment of “a race to the bottom”. If anything, it seems the prospect of higher wages (at any place of employment) would be a spur to self-improvement. You know, be at the top of the heap, professionally speaking.
Further, I think workers should be paid what their JOB is worth, not some arbitraty sum to which they feel entitled. It is the marketplace that puts a value on a job, not the worker. If workers were given the task of setting their own pay rates, salaries would spiral upward (and the value of a dollar would dive).
In our capitalistic nation, the worth of teaching music (or most “arts”) is admittedly undervalued. The effects of fine arts education can’t be quantified, but rather only speculated. You cannot walk into an accounting department of a company and view the spreadsheet balance reflecting Renaissance Art Education returns. Well, maybe at a college accounting department.
Let me illustrate another way. Say, for example, I truly loved seashells and eagle feathers. I was so passionate about them that I set up a kiosk, selling shells and feathers to the public. Now, while I could argue that my seashells and eagle feathers brought spirituallity and inner peace to anyone interested (and justly so), those qualities don’t inflate the value of my product or the ceiling of my pay. The market sets the value, not the industry.
Like any other institution, not-for-profit entities are bound by a system of monetary income and outflow. An increase in pay for these teachers would have to come from somewhere, and most likely that cost would get passed on to the end user: the students. If the cost escalated high enough, fewer students will be able to afford the class. Theoretically, at some point the teachers could “raise” themselves out of a job (although that would have to be pretty extreme).
I guess you don’t have any recovering alcoholics at your work, eh?
i’m posting here more for myself…because i don’t want to keep adding posts too quickly:
1) I want to write a post about Civil Discourse…somewhat of a play on MLK’s civil disobedience, but adding another dimension to it. For example, after writing about unions and striking today, which are an acceptable form of civil disobedience, i wonder if a different method of communicating between workers and employers might be possible. Maybe extend this to the way politicians, who supposedly work toegether to create budgets and laws, talk to each other as well. How can 100 senators be doing the best possible job for Americans if they spend 1/2 their time heaving insults at one another through the media?
2) The Marketplace. There’s 2 kinds of marketplaces…one between buyers and sellers, and another market between employers and employees. In the first one, the buyer/seller marketplace, the idea is that one person/company, has a product, they set a price for it, and they try to find a buyer for their product. What may seem like a “rip-off” to some people, for example, spending $5 for a Starbucks coffee, is actually not a rip-off, because the buyer has accepted the seller’s price. Getting ripped-off implies you entered into an agreement to buy something that you shouldn’t have.
In the same light, “getting taken advantage of” applies in the workplace as well. When you take a job, you take a job knowing what you’re going to be paid. If you’re not happy with what a company is willing to pay you, you’re free to look at other jobs.
But…what happens when the free-market doesn’t allow a person with limited funds to buy basic necessities like food, housing, and medical care? What happens when a free-market doesn’t have enough well-paying jobs with health benefits to meet the needs of the population? Something needs to be done to ensure those w/out funds have access to “necessities,” and something needs to be done to ensure workers “have enough.”
more thought on this to come…
From your comments on my page:
“also…what do you think of the idea that going on strike and calling your boss all sorts of nasty things, to show disapproval of your pay, is similar to if I went to a store and made a scene because they sold things at too high a price?”
I don’t see that the two situations are similar enough. If I called my boss a slew of insulting names, I’d still have to go and face him/her after and if the strike were peaceably resolved. And if I were a boss, and an employee called me “dickbreath” or “Baby raper” or something, well…while I wouldn’t do anything illegal, I think I could still find ways to make that employee’s tenure miserable. Saying nasty things to your own boss is unwise. Discarding that issue, I still don’t see the similarites. Going on strike usually puts some economic sting (from lost productivity) into organized protest, a double-whammy for the target company. Making a scene in a store is just a temporary problem, solved as soon as you leave. Plus it costs you some dignity. If you don’t like what a store is charging, don’t shop there. Between the store’s overhead of rent, electricity, insurance, payroll, etc…they want, nay they NEED your money. Take your $ somewhere else.
From your comment above:
“In the first one, the buyer/seller marketplace, the idea is that one person/company, has a product, they set a price for it, and they try to find a buyer for their product.”
A company only has the luxury of setting the price if no competition exists. And with Wall Street’s invention of a thing called “futures speculation”, even some monopolized industries cannot set their own prices. Economies of scale also effect the price of goods. A local produce farmer can’t price his tomatoes at the same low price as AgroTitanMegaCon. (Although he could always market them as “Organic” or something to justify the price difference).
But in summary, the market, not the company or individual dictates the cost/price of goods.
And:
“Something needs to be done to ensure those w/out funds have access to “necessities,” and something needs to be done to ensure workers ‘have enough.’ “
It is called welfare and the free clinic. It isn’t the best cure for the ailment, but it beats starving or dying of measles.
Keep up the idealism. It is refreshing.
Random props! Very interesting and well written.
That’s about what I make, and let me tell you, it is like eating crackers while staring at the buffet table.
I think their problem is less about what they make and more about what their executive director makes. You have to question why the executive director is in her job in the first place-to promote music education or make a lot of money. On the other hand, might she not look for another job that rewarded her abilities with better pay if she didn’t make what she thought she deserved? It’d be a shame to lose a qualified director and have the program slip in quality because the music teachers fought what seems to me to be a pretty good deal. 80 bucks a day to teach for a few hours? Doesn’t sound so bad to me-because as someone said above, couldn’t they use the extra hours in their day to work elsewhere, whether teaching private lessons or something else?
I find it hard to be terribly sympathetic when there are so many people out there working long days for about as much money as those teachers make in a couple hours, people who don’t have nearly as many options. Then again, all I know about the teachers’ strike is based on what you told me, so there may be extenuating circumstances that I don’t know about.
Very thought-provoking article. Thanks for sharing.
~Bethany
damn the man!
Dan,
As a Midori and Friends teaching artist, I have to give props to you for helping us to create a dialogue about our situation. It is thought provoking, and I can assure you that all involved are learning oodles about labor, greed, communication, etc.
I think Bethany is asking some very good questions that reach to the heart of our struggle right now.
I would like to give some facts from our side of the equation. The issues are many, but here are some key points to start things…
Teaching artists for this organization make less than we did in 1998. We took a 20% pay cut that year, and have remained at that starting salary for seven years.
Judi Linden, our executive director’s salary is currently $135,000 a year. This is up from $100,000 a year ago, that was up from $75,000 two years ago. While she has recieved a pay increase of 33% and 35% respectively, our starting salary remained stagnant. She also receives over $19,000 a year in benefits. Bethany is right that our requested raise must come from somewhere…but it seems hard for Midori and Friends to argue that it doesn’t have the funds.
Regarding the work we do, it’s little more complex and time-consuming than most would think. We actually commute to underpriveleged schools in outlying districts to teach classes (depending on what we teach, the class sizes range from 12 to a full grade school class with more than 30 kids). Last year my school was over an hour away. So by putting in a 4 1/2 hour afternoon, I came away with a little more than $80 (I’ve been around for a couple of years, so my pay is fractionally above the starting wage of $40 a class).
In New York City, $80 doesn’t take you very far.
You’re right though, that, for most of us, this is a part of our puzzle. I don’t expect to pay my (absurdly high) rent with that $80. But as someone with conservatory training, and a Masters Degree in education, I do expect to be paid fairly for the work I do.
I have much more to say about the strike, but I imagine you may have some questions…
~micah
Micah,
I have to say, first of all, how very excited I am to get a comment from you. This suddenly makes what was simply an exercise for me, into something a bit more, “real.” Now, let me reflect on your comments…
First of all, I’m curious to hear more about your experience with being a union member, dealing with negotiations for higher pay, and the experience of being on strike. The one thing I enjoy most is getting beneath the surface to see how ultimately, we’re dealing with real people. In my opinion, people sometimes fail to realize that union members are simply workers with varying amounts of knowledge, and when it comes to knowledge of labor law, labor economics, labor struggle, and a wide range of other labor issues, it’s important to recognize that very few people really grasp the complexities behind them. Myself included.
The biggest questions I have for yourself, the union, and Judi Linden, is how has the situation has come to be this way. Why is it that the 20 or so music teachers are left standing on the sidewalk, rather than all sitting down with Judi herself? Have you guys ever had a relationship with Judi? I ask this, because that’s still the side of the story I haven’t been able to hear from yet. And while we can sit here and call her greedy, we at least need to have her in the conversation. I have no problem with the union passing judgements, but it’s important for me to know exactly why she’s been given (or given herself) these raises, while your starting pay has been frozen since 1998.
I think your situation is one I can relate to. The work you do is good work. I, along with many, would agree that you don’t get paid what you deserve. This brings us to other questions, such as, should you be paid based upon the “importance” of your work, the knowledge and experience that you bring to the job, or how much money your work helps produce? For example, it seems outrageous that a baseball player should make millions of dollars for playing a game, while a teacher with a masters, or even a college professor with a PhD, could make only $50,000 a year. I think this doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of “fairness,” but, the reality is that when we choose a career, we do so without being able to choose how much that field pays. I think it’s fair to ask, or even to demand better pay for your job, or for a group of workers such as teachers, police, and the transit union do, but it’s also valuable to attempt to view things through the eyes of management/owners (a topic for further exploration).
One last thought I’d like to say, is that I think that as workers, you ultimately all need to decide whether it’s worth being paid $80 for 4 1/2 hours of work (2 classes plus the commute). If it’s not, you can demand higher pay, which you guys are doing by striking. But, if you’re unsatisfied with the pay, you need to consider leaving this company for another. I would think that with all of your qualifications, you could find another company where you could teach music, and for better pay, better working conditions, and hopefully, with an administrative staff that you got along with better than the current one.
So…I hope your strike brings you higher wages. But if it doesn’t, I would hope that you don’t feel committed to this organization that obviously isn’t committed to your well-being. It would be sad to see this organization struggle, but as I wrote earlier, it’s to a company’s own detriment to ignore the needs of its workers.
let’s keep the conversation doing…
-dan
Dan
My experience as a union member isn’t comprised of much. I’m 25, and, although I play in music groups that have union contracts (I’m not sure if you know how the musician’s union works…I can clarify later if you’d like), as a member of the bargaining comittee for the Midori and Friends teaching artists, this felt like jumping in the deep end.
I’ll try and give you my truncated, subjective viewpoint as concisely as I can.
Our three-year contract with Midori and Friends ended at the end of the last school year. We began negotiating with Judi Linden prior to that date. Not sitting across the table or anything like that, but by sending numbers via lawyers.
As a comittee, we polled our bargaining unit, and decided what we needed in a new contract.
We proposed raises in wages, health contribution, and pension among other things.
The administration, of course, didn’t agree with our proposal. They actually proposed cuts in what we were already making under the previous contract.
We went back and forth a couple of times over the months that followed, and two sticking points seemed to remain…wages and pension.
The teaching artists all agreed that working without a contract was not in our best interests, so, in January, sitting across the table from Judi Linden, we made a final offer to the administration, and set a strike deadline. If they couldn’t come back with a reasonable counter-offer by that date, we would stop working. They didn’t, and still haven’t come back with any offer at all…so we are striking.
As far as what is going through Judi’s mind at this point…it’s anyone’s guess. It seems to me, that it’s simply a matter of principle. She doesn’t think that it’s her (or the organization’s) responsibility to take care of her employees. Maybe she thinks that we’re already rich off of our $80? Who knows. She may feel like she’s being taken advantage of. That if we ask for decent wages now, maybe we’ll soon start asking for $100, or even $1000 a class?
But, obviously, we’re musicians. We’ve gone into this profession without the expectation of riches. Of course, as you’re trying to discover, the market influences are many. In the free market economy, can I reasonably expect there to be a balance of supply and demand in music education?
If we can take Judi’s salary as exhibit #1, I think that there’s significant evidence that there is a demand for what we do. As a non-profit, the administration is supposedly seeking funding from private sources for music education. They apparently do this very well. There must be money around for this sort of thing, or Judi wouldn’t have the freedom to raise her salary as much as she has. There is demand, and there is supply. What isn’t figured into this, is greed. It’s the kink in the hose, and that’s why we’re not working right now.
Foundations, individuals, and the public schools where we teach, have all contributed money to the organization with the understanding that quality music education would be brought to children who would otherwise not have acccess to it. They, I hope, didn’t contribute money to Midori and Friends so Judi can continually raise her salary. It’s supposed to be a non-profit, not a one-profit.
That having been said, each teaching artist on the picket line believes strongly in the work we do. We each believe in the mission of Midori and Friends. We want to work for them because they provide a beautiful idea. Of course we’re all considering other options if Judi doesn’t ever come back with a fair offer, but personally, I’m willing to hold out for this job. I love each and every one of my students, and I miss them dearly. I don’t want to go to another school with another organization…I want to get back to the kids that I’ve already taught. But I want to go back making a fair wage…
~micah