Prom 62: Israel Phil, Shaham, Mehta.... and others

[Selva Oscura]

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is entirely untrue and exaggerated

It didn't come into my mind as a way of strengthening whatever arguments I may have, but as a hypothetical possibility. I don't agree that it's so exaggerated to imagine that if the signatories hadn't given the name of their orchestra and someone had outed them, the management might have been put under pressure to "do something", although of course it would have been difficult for them to have taken the kind of drastic action they did.

It is a breach of most employment contracts to use your employer's name without permission or to speak in that name in a way which may affect their reputation, and I think the argument in defence of these players has to be that (a) a newspaper letter is a special kind of context and (b) the punishment is both unnecessary and excessive.

Absolutely. Although technically they aren't "employees" in the usual sense.

[JSC]

Maybe it's just me, but I think this is entirely untrue and exaggerated

It didn't come into my mind as a way of strengthening whatever arguments I may have, but as a hypothetical possibility.

Well, I don't agree with the "possibly (probably?) leading to exactly the same result" bit of your original post, but I guess we're disagreeing about two different hypothetical outcomes of a hypothetical scenario, as you say. I do think though that it's possible in this case to assume the "If they hadn't written LPO we wouldn't have taken this action" line is not a lie, and make a case against what has actually been done (no doubt by a management acting under its own perceived pressures, which needs to be convinced that it should have acted differently, not told that we believe it would have acted in worse faith than it already has done in a different set of circumstances).

I don't really think it's productive to talk about "reasons why orchestral musicians might take a more mainstream political position", after all one could invoke such reasons about university professors and all sorts of other people too but they wouldn't always be true.

[strinasacchi]

It is a breach of most employment contracts to use your employer's name without permission or to speak in that name in a way which may affect their reputation, and I think the argument in defence of these players has to be that (a) a newspaper letter is a special kind of context and (b) the punishment is both unnecessary and excessive.

Absolutely. Although technically they aren't "employees" in the usual sense.

I seriously doubt they had written contracts.  I could probably find this out if you want to know.

[simon howard]

[I do think though that it's possible in this case to assume the "If they hadn't written LPO we wouldn't have taken this action" line is not a lie, and make a case against what has actually been done (no doubt by a management acting under its own perceived pressures, which needs to be convinced that it should have acted differently, not told that we believe it would have acted in worse faith than it already has done in a different set of circumstances).

I don't disagree with that, but what I was suggesting (perhaps not very clearly) is that with this precedent there's a not so remote chance that if in future someone signed a similar letter as 'X - London orchestral violinist' the supporters & their supporters would 'make their views known' on the basis that it's easy enough to find out that X plays for so-&-so Philharmonic Orchestra. As for using that to criticise this decision by the LPO, no that wasn't what I had in mind.

[ahinton]

It is a breach of most employment contracts to use your employer's name without permission or to speak in that name in a way which may affect their reputation, and I think the argument in defence of these players has to be that (a) a newspaper letter is a special kind of context and (b) the punishment is both unnecessary and excessive

Whilst that's true about most employment contracts (although, as Selva has observed, the musicians were almost certainly not actually employed under contracts of service, it would seem unlikely that an "employer" (in whatever sense of the term) would wish to object to any "employee" publishing the fact of his/her "employment", even in a national newspaper unless the intended purpose or the unwitting outcome might have been a negative effect upon the "employer"'s reputation - and I simply can no more imagine that the musicians added their professional affiliations with any thought of potential embarrassment to LPO than I can that LPO had any need to act as though its reputation might in any sense risk being impugned by those declarations of affiliation; mindful of that, I wonder what the academics who've long been accustomed to publishing theirs along with their signatures to letters to the editor without fear of attracting accusations would think about all of this? If the four had indeed intended to bring LPO into disrepute by their actions and if a court of law or employment tribunal or equivalent might reasonably endorse an argument that they did so wilfully, that would be quite a different matter.

[autoharp]

The first legal challenge to the suspension of four players by the London Philharmonic has apparently been instigated by violinist Sarah Streatfeild.

http://orpheuscomplex.blogspot.com/2012/01/lpo4-case-goes-to-employment-tribunal.html

An article will appear in tomorrow's Guardian.

[ahinton]

The first legal challenge to the suspension of four players by the London Philharmonic has apparently been instigated by violinist Sarah Streatfeild.

http://orpheuscomplex.blogspot.com/2012/01/lpo4-case-goes-to-employment-tribunal.html

An article will appear in tomorrow's Guardian.

Gosh! That's taken long enough, has it not? But then these kinds of things have a habit of taking a long time...

[autoharp]

Here's the Guardian article.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/13/violinist-israel-proms-protest-tribunal

[autoharp]

Here's a letter (30th March) to the Guardian signed by members of the acting profession objecting to the planned visit of the Israeli National Theatre Company Habima

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/dismay-globe-invitation-israeli-theatre

The Guardian has since chosen to publish various letters opposing that view, including one from Thomas Ades

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/08/israel-gunter-grass-artistic-licence (scroll to bottom)