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Iraq, Struggling to Pay Money owed and Salaries, Plunges Into Financial Disaster

Iraq, Struggling to Pay Debts and Salaries, Plunges Into Economic Crisis

BAGDAD – Ahmed Khalaf sells the smallest luxuries in a stall on a narrow, winding alley of Baghdad’s oldest market: nail polish, plastic hair clips, colored pencils.

Even during the pandemic, the stalls in the Shorja market were usually overcrowded with shoppers buying basic groceries and housewares by mid-morning. But last week the hallways were almost empty.

“Our customers are mostly government employees, but as you can see they don’t come,” said Khalaf, 34.

Its problems are an indicator of what economists say is the greatest financial threat to Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s time. Put simply, Iraq is running out of money to pay its bills and threats the country on several fronts.

The financial crisis has the potential to destabilize the government, which was overthrown a year ago after mass protests against corruption and unemployment, spark fighting between armed groups and strengthen Iraqi neighbors and longstanding rivals Iran.

Iran has in the past used the opportunity of a weak Iraqi central government to strengthen its political power and the role of its paramilitaries in Iraq.

With the economy ravaged by the pandemic and falling oil and gas prices, which account for 90 percent of government revenue, Iraq was unable to pay government employees for months last year.

Last month, Iraq devalued its currency, the dinar, for the first time in decades, and immediately raised prices for almost everything in a country that is heavily dependent on imports. And last week, Iran cut Iraq’s electricity and natural gas supplies, citing the non-payment, and left large parts of the country in the dark for hours.

“I think it’s bad,” said Ahmed Tabaqchali, an investment banker and senior fellow at the Iraqi Institute for Regional and International Studies. “The expenditures are well above Iraq’s income.”

Many Iraqis fear that there will be further devaluations despite the rejection by the Iraqi government.

“Everyone is afraid to buy or sell,” said Mr. Khalaf, who turned to business when he couldn’t find a job with a degree in sociology.

In the Jamila wholesale market, near Baghdad’s sprawling Sadr City district, 56-year-old Hassan al-Mozani was surrounded by huge piles of unsold 110-pound sacks of flour.

He imports flour from Turkey in dollars and sells flour for around $ 22 a sack, but last week he raised the price to $ 30.

“I would normally sell at least 700 to 1,000 tons a month,” he said. “But we’ve only sold 170 to 200 tons since the beginning of the crisis.”

A restaurant manager, Karam Muhammad, when asked about the new flour price, said there wasn’t much demand for it. The restaurants were mostly empty because of the pandemic and the financial crisis.

While the currency devaluation surprised most Iraqis, the economic and financial crisis had been raging for years.

Public sector salaries and pensions cost the government about $ 5 billion a month, but monthly oil revenues have only hit about $ 3.5 billion recently. Iraq has made up the deficit by burning its reserves, which some economists believe is already insufficient.

The International Monetary Fund concluded in December that the country’s economy is expected to shrink by 11 percent in 2020. He called on Iraq to improve governance and reduce corruption.

For 18 years, oil revenues have propped up a system of government support by giving ministries to political groups that have almost a free hand to create jobs. The civil service in Iraq has tripled since 2004. Economists estimate that more than 40 percent of the workforce depends on government salaries and contracts.

The financial crisis could slow down this corruption-ridden patronage system.

“Every government has managed to buy more and more, but the purchase of loyalty, the purchase of consent is over,” said Tabaqchali over the phone from London.

Updated

Jan. 4, 2021, 11:27 p.m. ET

The high public wage bill has left little expenditure on infrastructure. The Iraqi economy has also been hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and many workers in the already weak private sector have lost their jobs.

Mr Tabaqchali and other economists said the devaluation is a difficult but necessary step to help Iraqi businesses. With rising import costs, Iraqi goods such as agricultural products can compete more easily.

Iraq’s limited ability to pay Iran for electricity and natural gas contributed to the misery. Iraq is not allowed to transfer cash to Iran, but sends food and medicines in exchange for natural gas and electricity. Iran says it owes the equivalent of more than $ 5 billion.

“Iraq cannot pay all of its debt to Iran,” said Abdul Hussein al-Anbaki, an economic advisor to Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi. “Iran is also facing an economic crisis and we cannot buy gasoline without paying for it.”

Part of Iraq’s debt has been caused by its insolvency, but the lion’s share of about $ 3 billion remains frozen in an Iraqi bank while Iraq struggles to meet US sanctions on Iran, Iraqi officials said.

The sanctions, aimed at forcing Iran to accept stricter restrictions on its nuclear program and curb its support for foreign militias, have blacklisted its banking system.

“It is difficult for the Iraqis because the mechanism to pay them almost doesn’t exist, because the Americans are obviously watching the situation very closely,” said Farhad Alaaldin, chairman of the Iraq Advisory Council, an institute for political research.

Mr Alaaldin and others said the financial crisis could spark renewed protests and fighting between armed groups to control Iraq’s increasingly limited resources.

The fact that Iraq, one of the largest oil producers in the world, cannot reliably supply its citizens with electricity and has to import electricity is symptomatic of the dysfunction that led to protests against the government last year and overthrew the previous government.

Iraq’s energy infrastructure has suffered from three devastating wars that destroyed refineries and power plants since the 1980s. But since the American-led invasion of Iraq toppled Mr Hussein in 2003, corruption and incompetence have prevented the Iraqi government from fully restoring electricity.

Although Iraq is full of oil, most of its power plants run on natural gas. Iraq has enormous natural gas reserves, but has not invested much in developing it. And until the Trump administration imposed additional sanctions on Iran, importing electricity and gas from Iran was the simplest solution.

For the millions of Iraqis who cannot afford electricity from private generators, blackouts and rising prices have been a double blow.

Haifa Jadu, 55, who came to the Shorja market to buy sesame seeds and walnuts, said she and her husband, a retiree who is blind, simply went without electricity for much of the day.

“We used to pay money to a generator owner, but we haven’t bought electricity in four months because it raised the price,” she said. She said the walnuts, which she bought a month ago for about $ 3.50 a pound, are now nearly $ 5 and out of reach.

The government proposed comprehensive measures to strengthen the economy, including tax increases, in a plan before parliament. However, many politicians anticipate the prospect of oil prices rising this year to delay the adoption of much-needed reforms.

By then, unemployment is expected to rise as around 700,000 young people enter the labor market each year. With few jobs left, they are likely to join a permanent underclass of the poor and dispossessed.

Near the Shorja market, Amar Musa, wearing a black military-style mask and olive green coat, had put up artificial Christmas trees and tinsel garlands to sell to his Orthodox Christian customers on the busy main street that celebrates the January holidays to celebrate.

Mr Musa, 45, graduated from a technical college with a mechanic diploma, but said he never found work in his field. Standing next to a white Christmas tree with a deflated Mylar Santa impaled on its metal branches, he said he had a shop that was no longer in operation and that he now drives a taxi.

Like many Iraqis, he also writes poetry. When asked to recite one of his poems, he pulled a cigarette out of a packet, broke it, and threw it on the floor.

“I’m like a cigarette,” he said. “I’m on fire and like a bum I would be thrown away. Don’t talk to me about home. We are poor and our home is the grave. “

Falih Hassan contributed to the coverage.

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Business

Will You Pay to Stream Consolation Reveals? Discovery Is About to Discover Out

Will You Pay to Stream Comfort Shows? Discovery Is About to Find Out

When Disney + debuted there was a “Star Wars” blockbuster, “The Mandalorian”. When AppleTV + went online it featured a large budget original series starring Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston. Another newcomer to streaming, HBO Max, attracted subscribers with a sequel to Wonder Woman.

Discovery takes a completely different approach with the entry into streaming.

“Almost everyone in the business has chosen screenplay series and screenplay films,” said David Zaslav, managing director of Discovery, in an interview. “They went to the big stars and the red carpet. The big shiny object. “

“We’re not that shiny,” he continued, “and we don’t have a lot of red carpets.”

Discovery +, which goes live on Monday, is based on Homier tariffs – cooking shows, nature shows, home improvement shows, and various other non-written programming from HGTV, the Food Network, TLC, ID, Animal Planet, and the company’s flagship, Discovery.

Mr. Zaslav is betting that people are now ready to subscribe to a streaming service that is filled with things that you can see with one eye while you fold the laundry, pay bills, or scroll through social media. And how much is he willing to bet that people will be willing to pay for a platform that promises a more casual viewing experience?

“We bet on the company they do,” he said.

Discovery + is a late participant in a crowded field. The service – which costs US $ 5 per month with advertising or US $ 7 without advertising – offers 55,000 hours of programming, series such as “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives”, “Deadliest Catch”, “Naked & Afraid”, “On.” the case with “Paula Zahn” and “Dr. Pimple popper. “

There will also be many new shows including the American debut of “Judi Dench’s Wild Borneo Adventure” as well as spin-offs from reality standbys such as “90 Day Fiancé”, “Say Yes to the Dress” and “Fixer Upper”. There will also be nature programs from the BBC, the producer of Planet Earth and Blue Planet. And instead of the Kidmans, Streeps, and Baby Yodas that helped create a splash in other new platforms last year, Discovery + has Chip and Joanna Gaines, Guy Fieri, Mike Rowe, and Bobby Flay.

Discovery has grown into a cable giant with this type of programming, series that are suitable for “ambient or genre-based viewing – something to watch when a viewer doesn’t want to see anything special,” said Brian Wieser, a Media analyst and global president for business intelligence at GroupM, a media investment company.

Mr. Zaslav believes that Discovery’s success in the years of channel flipping will be fit for the on-demand era. For much of television history, he noted, network plans have been built on “Passing the Day,” a programming strategy that has fallen somewhat out of favor with media and technology companies in flashy limited-edition series like HBO Max’s “The Undoing” and Netflixs “The Queen’s Gambit.”

“When you wake up and start the ‘Today’ show in the background or on the Food Network, it’s a comfort,” said Zaslav. “You don’t watch ‘The Undoing’ while you’re cooking dinner. But you attract Guy Fieri or ‘Super Soul Sunday’ or ‘Fixer Upper’ or ‘How It’s Made’ or ‘Mythbusters’. “

Mr. Wieser, the analyst, said he was skeptical that a strategy that emphasizes comfort considerations will work for a medium that inspires viewers with one binge-worthy series after another.

“People can stay and watch them randomly flip through the channels and they can enjoy it too,” he said, “but that won’t necessarily make them buy a new subscription.”

However, in the past few months there have been signs that Mr Zaslav’s bet might be on time. In October, the moderators of The Ringer’s podcast “The Watch” discussed their love for “passive television”. In November, The New Yorker noted the “rise of ambient TV” in an essay praising shows that can be seen in the background. And Netflix has broken into the old territory of Discovery with reality series like “Dream Home Makeover”, “Street Food” and “Cleaning Up With Marie Kondo”.

Mr. Zaslav apologized for the late arrival of Discovery + on the grounds that it would make sense for his company to wait for other streaming platforms to do the dirty work of conditioning viewers to pay monthly fees. (An early-stage special offer improves service. Many Verizon customers receive Discovery + free for 12 months.)

The competition will certainly be intense. In addition to Netflix’s foray into non-written programming, Disney + has numerous nature shows. Curiosity Stream, a standalone service that programs nature and nonfiction books, was a success.

Mr. Zaslav remains confident that reality fans will welcome an Old Guard appearance in the streaming group. And he argues that his way of putting shows together – with modest budgets and few big stars – is a successful one regardless of the medium.

“We’re different,” he said. “We have different economies. People see us differently. But they love us just as much. We want to prove that. “

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Business

‘I Am So Misplaced’: Black Owners Wrestle to Get Insurers to Pay Claims

‘I Am So Lost’: Black Homeowners Struggle to Get Insurers to Pay Claims

When a pipe burst and their house flooded in 2018, Deonne Burgess knew the cleanup was going to be chaotic. What she wasn’t expecting was a review by State Farm, her home insurer.

A State Farm claims adjuster tried to remove as many items as possible from a repair list of her home in Inglewood, a mostly black neighborhood in Los Angeles, Ms. Burgess said. The adjuster argued that State Farm didn’t have to pay to replace a door that was so damaged by the flood that it was no longer closed.

Ms. Burgess, the global payroll director for Wonderful Company, which makes packaged foods like pomegranate juice and pistachios, began to believe that she was treated with particular suspicion for being black. She told State Farm it was unlikely that policyholders would receive the same treatment in a white neighborhood.

“It was right after the Malibu fires and I said, ‘Nobody in Malibu would have to justify things like that,'” she said.

Ms. Burgess’ claims “are unfounded,” said Roszell Gadson, a state farm spokesman. “State Farm is committed to a diverse and inclusive environment in which all customers are treated with fairness, respect and dignity.”

Ms. Burgess could not prove that her experience with the state farm adjuster was racism. After all, the same insurer paid out a car insurance claim for their BMW 5 Series sedan, which was also destroyed by the flood; Another group of people took care of it and there wasn’t much to argue about. But Mark Young, the State Farm hired salesman who arranged for her walls and floors to be repaired, and Leonard Redway, the plumber Mrs. Burgess hired to fix a broken pipe, said Mrs. Burgess was treated worse than her white customers. Both are black too.

Redway said applicants in predominantly white, affluent neighborhoods would generally have a much easier time getting insurers to cover repair costs. “If I were in the year 90210, it would be almost like an open check,” he said, referring to the affluent Beverly Hills zip code. “Sometimes the adjusters don’t even come out to see it.”

Accusations of racism are often difficult to prove, but especially in homeowner insurance where insurers have a lot of discretion and don’t always provide detailed explanations as to why claims are denied. Because company representatives often review claims and assess an applicant’s credibility through home visits, face-to-face interactions, and other measures, biases can arise.

While claims disputes are hardly uncommon in the industry, many black customers say they feel they are being treated unfairly because of their race – something Jeff Major, a Manhattan-based public expert who haggles claims with insurance companies on behalf of policyholders, has testified to his work.

“You can actually tell a difference between a Caucasian family and an African-American, Hispanic, or Asian family,” Major said. “It’s kind of known. It is not talked about. It’s a culture. “

The insurers keep their policy sales and claims data firmly under control. They have long argued that the size and timing of disbursements, as well as the neighborhoods in which claims are registered and addressed, are proprietary information and disclosure of this data would affect their competitiveness. They guard it so eagerly that even most regulators do not have detailed information on how insurers evaluate individual claims.

Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group, said claims data is private because payouts are viewed as “losses” and disclosing them would “put insurers at a competitive disadvantage”.

Where data is publicly available, such as auto insurance, researchers have found that policies discriminate against black drivers by charging them higher premiums. But homeowner insurance was opaque.

Economy & Economy

Updated

Dec. Dec. 23, 2020 at 8:59 p.m. ET

Forcing insurers to segregate data can be difficult, in part because it is regulated by states, not the federal government. For example, federal laws that banned redlining for banks after the civil rights movement don’t apply equally to insurers. And by 2014, 17 states had no bans on racial discrimination by insurers, according to a group of university researchers.

In late September, the Federal Insurance Advisory Board, which includes top executives from the country’s largest insurers, voted against a proposal to investigate racist bias in the industry, fearing that the study would tarnish the distinction between the legitimate discretionary insurers’ claims Claimant and unfair bias.

To assess the veracity of their clients’ claims, insurers send adjusters to meet with claimants in person. This gives companies a wide range of discretion in determining the extent of the damage and what information should be classified as potentially fraudulent.

“Whenever there is a lot of discretion, that discretion can be influenced by implicit or explicit bias,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who studied insurance payouts to victims of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Latino applicants have had significantly longer delays in receiving funds from insurers than white applicants.

Lisa Thompson, a black homeowner in Toledo, Ohio, had been living with her daughter while the roof of her home was being repaired when thieves broke into that home, stripped it and tore down her water heater, appliances, and part of her roof. Ms. Thompson filed a lawsuit with her insurer, Allstate.

A adjuster posted by the company accused them of orchestrating the theft, Ms. Thompson said. In order to pursue their claim, Allstate representatives would have to come to the offices of a law firm hired by the company to make a deposit. On December 9, 2019, Ms. Thompson spent nearly four hours answering questions about her employment history, family, and time at the home.

Allstate sent her a letter on June 8, saying that her claim is still being investigated and asked for an additional 180 days to complete the process. Shortly thereafter, she canceled her policy, saying her investigator found that Ms. Thompson did not qualify as a “resident” of her home because she lived with her daughter. But Ms. Thompson didn’t find out her claim had been denied when the New York Times contacted Allstate in November to inquire about her case. The insurer had sent the letter informing her of the denied claim to the address where Mrs. Thompson had not lived.

“We apologize for the failure of your client to receive this correspondence,” an Allstate representative later wrote to an attorney assisting Ms. Thompson with her claim. Your house will remain uninhabitable. She files a discrimination lawsuit against Allstate with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.

Nicholas Nottoli, an Allstate spokesman, said the claim was denied “on the basis of facts after thorough investigation”. He added that the company had no record of its appraisal accusing Ms. Thompson of helping the thieves and that “race is not a factor in pricing, underwriting or claims settlement”.

Mr. Young, the salesman hired by State Farm to arrange repairs to Ms. Burgess’ house, saw insurers knock down other black customers and lobby on their behalf – even though his Los Angeles company, Valley Green, which specializes in the repair of damaged houses, depends on insurers for companies.

He fought on behalf of Langston Phillips, who nearly lost his house during a fight with his insurer Pacific Specialty. Three years ago, Mr. Phillips’s kitchen had been flooded in a burst pipe and ruined parts of his three-bedroom house in Inglewood. A Pacific Specialty appraiser found that the company owed Mr. Phillips to repair costs of just over $ 11,000. Mr. Phillips’ contractor said his house needs far more extensive repairs.

Pacific Specialty asked Mr. Young to take a look. Mr. Young decided the repairs would cost more than $ 33,000. A battle ensued in which Mr. Young sided with Mr. Phillips despite being hired by Pacific Specialty.

Because of the dispute, the amount Pacific Specialty was willing to pay to pay Mr. Phillips even reached him, forcing him to move into a single hotel room with his two children while he waited for his kitchen to be rebuilt. On a particularly bad day, he emailed a Pacific Specialty representative asking for clarification on when some of that money would arrive. “I’m so lost,” he wrote.

“We strive to pay claims as quickly and fairly as possible in order to bring the insured back to their pre-loss standard of living,” said Kara Holzwarth, Pacific Specialty General Counsel. “We find that water leakage can be fraught with disagreement.” She said Pacific Specialty’s treatment of Mr. Phillips had nothing to do with his race.

After two years of fighting, Mr. Phillips gave up. Concerned about the loss of the house, he moved back in and started working on weekends to pay for the repairs – replacing the cabinets, floors, and plumbing – that he was doing himself. “I’m bone tired,” he said.

Mr. Young has since realized that most insurers are unwilling to work with him. He is currently suing 17 insurance companies in succession for discrimination after the companies refused to include him on their supplier lists. He has reached a confidential settlement in his lawsuit against travelers and has pending complaints against others.

“I’m the only one who rattles the cages,” he said, “and says why don’t you give minority sellers work?”

Niraj Chokshi contributed to the coverage.

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Entertainment

Even When the Music Returns, Pandemic Pay Cuts Will Linger

Even When the Music Returns, Pandemic Pay Cuts Will Linger

When the coronavirus outbreak stalled performances in the United States, many of the country’s leading orchestras, dance companies, and opera houses temporarily lowered their workers’ pay, and some stopped paying them altogether.

Hopes that vaccines will allow services to resume next fall are tempered by fears it could take years for hibernating coffers to recover, and many troubled institutions are turning to their unions to negotiate longer-term cuts that consider them necessary to survive.

The crisis poses major challenges for the performing arts unions, which have been among the strongest in the country over the past few decades. While musicians from a few large ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, have agreed to steep cuts that would have been unthinkable in normal times, others resist. Some unions fear that the requested concessions could outlast the pandemic and restore the balance of power between management and work.

“In the past, working arrangements in the performing arts have turned into more money and better terms,” ​​said Thomas W. Morris, who directed major orchestras in the United States for more than three decades. “And suddenly that’s no longer an option. It’s a fundamental change in the pattern. “

Nowhere is the tension between work and management as great as at the Metropolitan Opera, the largest organization for the performing arts in the country. The artists and other workers, many of whom have been on leave without pay since April, are resisting an offer from management to receive reduced wages of up to $ 1,500 a week in exchange for long-term wage cuts and changes in work rules. After failing to reach an agreement with its stage workers, the company locked them out last week just before more were due to return to work to begin building sets for the next season.

But musicians in a growing number of orchestras are agreeing to long-term cuts, recognizing that it may take years for audiences and philanthropy to recover from this lengthy period of darkened concert halls and theaters.

The New York Philharmonic announced a new deal last week that will cut musicians’ base pay by 25 percent through mid-2023 and make players earn less than they did before the pandemic broke out in 2024. The Boston Symphony Orchestra, one of the richest Ensembles of the Country, agreed to a new three-year contract that cut pay by an average of 37 percent in the first year and gradually increased it over the following years, but only fully recovered when the orchestra hit at least one of their three financial benchmarks. The San Francisco Opera agreed to a new deal that will cut the orchestra’s salaries in half this season but gain some ground later.

Unions play an important role behind the scenes in many arts organizations. The contracts they negotiate not only set out pay, but also help create a wide range of working conditions, from the number of permanent members of an orchestra to the number of stagehands required behind the scenes for each performance up to the question of whether additional payment is required for Sunday performances. It is not uncommon for large orchestras to end rehearsals abruptly in the middle of the phrase – even when a famous maestro is conducting – when the digital rehearsal clock indicates that they are about to work overtime.

Workers and artists say many of these rules have improved health and safety and increased the quality of performances; Management has often come at a cost.

Many performing arts nonprofits, including the Met, faced real financial challenges even before the pandemic. Now, they say, they are struggling to survive, taking leave or laying off administrative staff and seeking relief from the unions.

“Unions are very reluctant to make concessions. It goes against everything union strategy has told them for over 100 years, ”said Susan J. Schurman, professor of labor studies and industrial relations at Rutgers University. “But they clearly understand that this is an unprecedented situation.”

At some institutions, including the Met and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, workers are accusing management of taking advantage of the crisis to push for changes to their long-standing union agreements.

Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, wants to cut workers’ wages by 30 percent and restore only half of those cuts when box office revenues recover. He hopes to get most of the cuts by changing the work rules. In a letter to the union that represents the Met’s 300 or so stagehands, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, he wrote last month: “The health crisis has exacerbated the Met’s previous financial fragility and threatened our very existence.” He also wrote that the average full-time stage worker cost the Met $ 260,000 including services over the past year.

“In order for the Met to get back on its feet, we must all make financial concessions and sacrifices,” Gelb told staff in a video call last month.

There are 15 unions at the Met, and while the leaders of some of the largest unions have said they are ready to agree to some cuts, they are pushing for changes that would outlast the pandemic and redefine the rules of work they long fought for – especially after so many workers, including the orchestra, choir, and legions of backstage workers, endured many months without pay. The Met Orchestra, represented by Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, said in a statement that management “is taking advantage of this temporary situation to permanently invalidate the contracts of the workers who manage the performances on their global stage.” .

Leonard Egert, the national executive director of the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents choir members, soloists, dancers, stage managers and other representatives of the Met, said the unions saw the difficult reality and were willing to compromise. “It’s just that nobody wants to sell out the future,” he said.

In Washington, the stagehands at the Kennedy Center are waging a similar battle. David McIntyre, president of Alliance Local 22, said he had been negotiating with the Kennedy Center for months to demand a 25 percent wage cut, which union members find hard to take after many of them have left without pay since March.

Management is also calling for concessions like the elimination of the hour and a half on Sundays, a change that is more permanent than limited to the pandemic. Union members are particularly outraged that the Kennedy Center received $ 25 million from the federal stimulus bill passed in March.

“They’re just trying to get concessions from us by taking advantage of a pandemic when neither of us is working,” McIntyre said.

A Kennedy Center spokeswoman Eileen Andrews said that some of the unions working with already accepted wage cuts, including the musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra, and that recovery from the pandemic must be achieved through “shared sacrifice”. ”

Corporations have lost tens of millions of dollars in ticket revenue, and the prospects for the philanthropy they rely on for survival remain uncertain. While union negotiations take place over video calls rather than the typical stuffy meeting tables, both sides recognize the financial fragility.

In some ways, the pandemic has changed the negotiating landscape. Unions, which usually have tremendous leverage because strikes stop benefits, have less at the moment when there are no benefits to stop. Management leverage has also changed. While the Met’s threat to lock out its stagehands if they didn’t agree on cuts was less of a threat at a moment when most employees were already out of work, its offer was to pay workers who haven’t had paychecks since April , in exchange for long-term agreements can be hard to resist.

In some institutions, memories of the devastating power of recent labor disputes have helped foster collaboration in this crisis. In the Minnesota Orchestra, where a bitter lockout kept the concert hall dark for 16 months from 2012, management and musicians agreed on a 25 percent wage cut until August.

And the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, which had its own hard-fought labor dispute last year, was able to agree on a five-year contract this summer that initially cut player pay before gradually increasing it again.

The last time a national crisis of this magnitude affected any performing arts organization in the country was during the Great Recession, when organizations sought cuts to offset declines in philanthropy and ticket sales, sparking strikes, lockouts, and bitter disputes.

Meredith Snow, chairman of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians, which represents the players, said work and management seemed – for the time being, at least – for the most part more friendly than they did then.

“Rather, there is the realization that we have to be a unified face for the community,” said Ms. Snow, a violist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, “and that we cannot argue or both will go.” Low.”

“They come together,” she said, “or you sink.”