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2020 — 2026
The hardest years, then a door of its own: The Philharmonic's eighth decade opened with its worst labor troubles. Musicians had taken a 17.5 percent salary cut in 2013; in the pandemic they agreed to further cuts that brought base salary to just over $22,000, and the orchestra furloughed its players in August 2020. In February 2021 the National Labor Relations Board's Region 25 issued a formal complaint alleging the Philharmonic had bargained regressively and in bad faith — the musicians' association reported that the orchestra was, at that point, the only full-time orchestra in North America on the American Federation of Musicians' International Unfair List. The contract expired on September 1, 2022; after nine bargaining sessions, the musicians of AFM Local 58 struck on December 8, 2022, over pay and management's proposals to reduce full-time positions and change work rules. Concerts were canceled through February 2023. The two sides reached agreement on March 8, 2023 — the musicians had already accepted management's wage package, an average of 3.75 percent a year over 2019 wages through 2026, with scheduling and health-care concessions — and performances resumed on March 24, 2023, fittingly with Swan Lake, in partnership with the Fort Wayne Ballet. The sequel was construction, not conflict: in June 2024, preparing its eighty-second season, the Philharmonic announced the purchase of a permanent home of its own at 826 Ewing Street, downtown, in the city's expanding arts corridor — the first building the orchestra has owned as its home in eighty years of playing in other people's halls.
Sources:
- Fort Wayne Philharmonic Players' Association / Musicians of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic (fwpmusicians.com and press releases of December 8, 2022, and February 25, 2021) — the 2013 and 2021 cuts, the August 2020 furlough, the NLRB Region 25 complaint of February 24, 2021, the expired contract, and the wage terms accepted.
- Adams Radio Group (US 93.3), "Fort Wayne Philharmonic cancels shows through February" (updated January 12, 2023) — the December 8, 2022 strike, the unfair-labor-practice suit, and the cancellations.
- Musicians of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, strike-end reports (March 2023) — the March 8, 2023 agreement and the March 24, 2023 resumption with Swan Lake alongside the Fort Wayne Ballet.
- Fort Wayne Philharmonic announcement (June 24, 2024), via ACGSI's places file — the purchase of 826 Ewing Street as the orchestra's new downtown home, announced as it prepared its 82nd season.