Photo credit: Scott Jarvie

As we head into another CBA expiration season, I want to bring our attention back to some of the important issues that continue to trouble our industry.

Too often, we treat these problems as separate from bargaining, as though they belong to some other conversation. They do not. Bargaining is where our values become policy and where our aspirations are tested against what we are actually willing to fight for.

For that reason, this is the right moment to revisit several areas where our orchestras still need serious work.

Misconduct policies and procedures must be clear, understood, and enforced. It is not enough to have language on paper that few people understand or procedures that are applied inconsistently. Musicians need to know what happens when harm is reported, what protections exist, and what standards govern the process. A policy that is vague, inaccessible, or ignored is not a real safeguard.

Audition procedures also deserve continued scrutiny. If we care about fairness, then we must continue working to make auditions more transparent and accessible. We should ask whether our procedures create genuine opportunity, whether they serve the artistic goals we claim to value, and whether we are willing to track outcomes honestly enough to learn from them.

Tenure is another area where ambiguity too often substitutes for fairness. Expectations should be clear. Feedback should be timely, specific, and actionable. Candidates should understand the process they are moving through and have a meaningful voice in it. A fair tenure process does not weaken standards; it strengthens them by making them understandable and consistently applied.

And beneath all of this lies the larger question of orchestra culture. We still struggle with serious power and economic imbalances along lines of race, gender, and position. We still tolerate uneven enforcement of rules depending on who is involved, and we still struggle with the gap between our stated values and our daily practice. Our union means very little if some voices carry more weight than others, or if the same rules do not apply equally to everyone.

At the same time, we should be honest about the challenge of change. There is a temptation to demand that everything be fixed at once, and there is an equal temptation to study every problem so long that nothing changes at all. Neither path is sufficient. The better path is the middle one: serious, steady progress.

This also means resisting apathy, burnout, and complacency. As time passes and as the urgency of one incident fades, it becomes easier to tell ourselves that these issues can wait. They cannot. If we act only when a crisis is upon us, we have already waited too long.

So here is my suggestion as we enter this next round of negotiations: In each of these areas, identify one thing that needs to change. One meaningful improvement in misconduct procedures. One meaningful improvement in auditions. One meaningful improvement in tenure. One meaningful improvement in culture and accountability.

Then do the work—speak to your colleagues, raise the issue in meetings, put it in surveys, lobby your negotiation committee, build support carefully and persistently.

This is not an all-or-nothing approach. A top-to-bottom rewrite may sound bold, but it can also overwhelm people, consume too much time, and invite dismissal of the entire effort because of disagreement with one piece of it. Real progress often depends on choosing the most consequential step, winning it, and building from there. Don’t let perfection disrupt progress. 

We cannot let this bargaining season pass us by. If we do, then when the next failure of policy, procedure, or culture confronts us, we will once again be left asking why we did nothing when we had the chance.