On November 16, the part-time faculty of the New School in New York City, including the conservatory under its auspices, the Mannes School of Music, went on strike. A whopping 87 percent of the professors at the New School, which costs upwards of $60,000 per year to attend, fall under the category of part-time teachers. At Mannes, which can draw from one of the world’s richest pools of classical music freelancers, the number appears to be even higher. In The New Republic, inequality reporter Alissa Quart wrote of the strike, “We’re witnessing the black-turtleneck-worker uprising,” and while classical musicians generally prefer tuxes to turtlenecks, the labor movement sweeping the United States has clearly reached their corner of the cultural sector, too.
On Tuesday, I spoke with Mary Barto, a flutist who has performed with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. She teaches at Mannes in the Extension and Preparatory Divisions (as distinct from the conservatory for college-aged students), as well as at Columbia University, Fordham University, and Hunter College, and is a member of ACT-UAW Local 7902. We talked about her reasons for striking, the mood on the picket line, and the breaking results of the most recent union vote on the New School’s contract offer.
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