The Met will save more than $2 million by moving guild members off its health insurance plan and onto the union’s plan, guild officials said. While this deal is a hopeful sign, the Met remains involved in tense negotiations with the union that represents the orchestra, and it has yet to restart formal negotiations with the union representing stagehands, who have been locked out since late last year.

“Considering what the Met was originally seeking in concessions, I think this tentative agreement was really the fairest resolution for our members,” said Leonard Egert, the national executive director of the guild.Īs Broadway shows put tickets back on sale and performing arts groups across New York City plan their comebacks, the Met’s plan to return to its stage in September has been threatened by contentious labor disputes. There are no provisions in the deal that make the salary restoration contingent on box office numbers or donations. For soloists who get paid per performance, the cuts are deeper, with the highest-paid soloists seeing a 12.7 percent cut that will be fully restored in three years.

Most categories of employees the union represents, including choristers, will see 3.7 percent cuts to their pay, most of which will be restored after three years. (The union declined to specify the total value of the cuts it agreed to, and the Met declined to provide details.) It said that half of its proposed pay cuts would be restored once ticket revenues and core donations returned to prepandemic levels.īut the tentative four-year contract the guild agreed to includes cost savings that appear to fall short of that goal, according to an outline of the deal provided by the union. Its members - who also include soloists, dancers, actors and stage managers - are currently learning about the specifics of the deal and are still voting on whether to ratify it.įor months, the Met’s management has said it was seeking to cut the payroll costs for its highest-paid unions by 30 percent, which it said would effectively cut their take-home pay by around 20 percent. The American Guild of Musical Artists was the first of the Met’s major unions to strike a deal with the company over pandemic pay cuts. But the contract it tentatively agreed to will save the Met millions by modestly cutting pay, moving members to the union’s health insurance plan and reducing the size of the regular chorus. The union representing the Metropolitan Opera’s chorus staved off calls for a 30-percent reduction in payroll costs that the company had said it needed to survive the pandemic.

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