Honestly from this article nobody comes off looking great: there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side, and management acting in bad faith and firing the conductor out of spite on the other.

Pity.

I don't think the musicians come off looking bad.

They were skilled employees at a business. The business decided to substantially cut half the employees' salaries from $36,000 to $24,000 and demote the other half to part time workers making only about $10k per year. The employees did not accept this. Nothing about that speaks ill of the employees.

The musicians are keenly aware of fiscal reality, namely their ability to pay rent and bills if they had accepted the offer.

> there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side

Maybe the "fiscal reality" is that they can use this time to do better things which maybe are also paid better.

What constitutes a "better thing"? Anything that pays better? Is working in ad tech somehow "better" than being a musician? I think it shows the priorities of our society, and I think that's part of the problem (if you can't make money, you don't deserve to exist)

> there are musicians refusing to accept fiscal reality on one side

In what way? The article specifically cites Lubbock (a significantly smaller city) as managing to handle paying their musicians and being fiscally solvent.

This doesn't seem to be an unsolvable problem yet the current Board of Directors can't seem to pull it off.

Let it go bankrupt. Surely someone will want to put a symphony together and they can avoid all the baggage.

Or not. And that will say something as well, no?

> refusing to accept fiscal reality

How far will you accept fiscal reality ?