Met Opera Reaches Deal With Unions
The Metropolitan Opera reached tentative agreements early Monday morning with the unions representing its orchestra and chorus after an all-night bargaining session, and called off its threat to lock out workers a little more than a month before the new season is set to open. (The stage hands’ union must still reach a deal.) The agreements were announced shortly after 6:15 a.m. Monday by Allison Beck, the deputy director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, after talks lasted long past the deadline of midnight Sunday that the Met had set for reaching a deal. The ongoing progress is good news, and doesn’t surprise me: what choice did the unions have but to reach a deal? There’s no other organization that will hire them with such generous salaries and benefits as the Met provides.
