Orchestra 101: Leave

While I know some of the topics in this series have pointed to negative things you may find in an orchestra, this one is about potentially one of the best things you may find if you win a full time job in an orchestra in the United States. The leave policies can be fairly generous. They are, like everything else, something hammered out in years of negotiations and in this case for sure it pays off to have a union involved. Leave policies are a very important quality of life issue for players.

In Nashville I benefited most from their Paternity Leave policy. I purposely posted on this topic today as both of my children were born in Nashville and when both of them were born there were complications with the deliveries. It helped us so much for me to have that extra, paid time off to regroup and recover, for example sixteen years ago today when my son was born with Down syndrome. That day in reflection was one of the most pivotal moments of my life. He was born on a day off and as I wrote in a prior post on this topic,

I called the Personnel Manager and Principal Horn that night so they would know what was up for me and that I would not be back for a while. One great thing about playing in Nashville was paternity leave. I was able between weeks off, sick leave, and paternity leave to take off nearly three months. We did need that extra time, as anyone who has had children can tell you!

Sick leave policies seem to vary quite a bit from orchestra to orchestra. I have never seen the contract terms here in Phoenix but I believe they must be rather more liberal than what we had in Nashville when I was there. As I believe it is rather contract specific I will just say in our case sick leave accumulated a certain number of days a year up to a maximum number and if you were not in the orchestra very long the number was small enough that you wanted to manage it carefully. Our policy back then to be more specific was not quite as generous as the policy cited by Julia Rose for the Columbus Symphony in her recent post on sick leave.

Sick Leave is but one of a group of types of leaves described in the contract. The first one specifically mentioned in the contract section on this topic is Leave-of-Absence. I actually was granted one of these and took a year off the orchestra to teach full time in Taiwan (thank you Nashville Symphony! Rest in Peace Kenneth Schermerhorn). That is another story but one thing guaranteed was “no loss of seniority, status, leadership or continuity should a Musician be granted a Leave-of-Absence.”

Next we have Personal Leave.

Such days are intended to be used for, but not limited to such purposes as auditions, study, and religious holidays. Personal Leave shall be granted on a “first come, first serve” basis when there are multiple requests for the same day.”

I don’t recall using any Personal Leave but on reflection I must have use a little of it at some point. We only had a maximum of four days of it a year so you had to be very careful with when it was used. This is why professional hornists rarely attend horn workshops; they can’t take off weeks of work without exceeding their available Personal Leave days and being people with families and real lives to live they choose to use them for other reasons.

Next we have in the contract Maternity Leave, Paternity Leave, and Adoption Leave. There is specific contract language that probably varies somewhat orchestra to orchestra that involved the weeks being contiguous with formulas that involved weeks with pay and accumulated Sick Leave. Suffice to say I felt like what I was able to use in Nashville was a huge blessing to me and my family that I thank God for to this day. College professors are classified as exempt employees that basically work as many hours as they need to in a week to complete the tasks required of them in their job. Many weeks during the school year I am sure I work in excess of sixty hours a week and if I were teaching college full time then I would just have had to somehow keep working full time. It would have been extremely difficult for us to manage when our children were born.

The final type of leave addressed in the contract was a type of personal leave but with a twist, that “On certain occasions a Musician may request an excuse from a service for personal and confidential reasons” known only to the individual musician and management. I believe there must be a story behind that specific clause that related to some specific personal situation in years past. Some feelings must have been hurt badly enough to get a clause negotiated into the contract so that the situation was not repeated.

It is easy to bash the AFM but in the case of leave policies we do especially have something to thank them for as players. I am especially grateful that I could be there for my family with the Paternity Leave policy I benefited from.

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