The musicians, board and management of the San Francisco Symphony have bought themselves a little time with theirrecent agreementon a short-term labor contract that was ratified Sunday, Oct. 1.

But like the45-day budget bill passed by the U.S. Congressthe day before, this new contract seems likely to serve as little more than a stopgap designed to tide both parties over toward a more decisive reckoning.

The new two-year contract is retroactive to Nov. 27, 2022, when the previous contract expired, and runs through Nov. 18, 2024. The orchestra’s musicians, represented by Musicians Union Local 6 of the American Federation of Musicians, had been working without a contract for nearly a year while negotiations continued.

The new contract mandates a minimum weekly salary of $3,313 ($172,276 annually), rising by the end of the term to $3,450 ($179,400). That represents a pay increase compared to the current minimum of $3,277 ($170,404), but it falls short of where players’ compensation would have been if not for the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020-21, when players and management took pay cuts.

The agreement allowsconcerts to proceedfor the remainder of this season and beyond. But it does little to address the underlying issue: the financial constraints the orchestra is facing, and the musicians’ conviction that they are being asked to shoulder too much of the burden.

That much was evident in statements issued by both sides in the wake of the agreement.

“This short agreement is designed to allow the organization time for introspection and reflection,” the musicians’ statement reads in part. “Decisions will need to be made by our Board as to whether the S.F. Symphony will remain a top tier orchestra.”

In his statement, Symphony CEO Matthew Spivey wrote, “This has been a particularly difficult negotiation given the challenging financial pressures on the organization.”

Spivey didn’t specify what those financial pressures are, but they’re evidently not enough to preclude the possibility of an ambitious makeover to the orchestra’s home in Davies Symphony Hall at some point down the road.

9月20日,交响乐采取措施启动the entitlement process that would allow it to undertake significant expansions to the concert hall, which opened in 1980.

The proposal, according todocumentsfiled with the San Francisco Planning Department, would entail adding 55,000 square feet to the hall’s existing 210,000 square feet through an expansion of the street-level lobby, the addition of new performance spaces and renovations to the main concert hall.

At the same time, seating capacity in the main concert hall would decrease from 2,700 seats to approximately 2,100, according to the filing.

Among the potential additions to the complex would be a new 400-seat recital hall at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Hayes Street, as well as an outdoor performance park at the corner of Franklin and Grove streets, currently the site of a parking lot used by Symphony employees.

Those plans, Symphony spokesperson Taryn Lott emphasized in a statement, are “still in an early, exploratory stage.” The entitlement process, a necessary first step for any renovation, is expected to take as much as two years.

Meanwhile, the orchestra’s musicians are still feeling the financial repercussions from the COVID-19 shutdown.

InNovember 2020, eight months into the shutdown, union members took a 30% pay cut. They’re still waiting to recoup those losses.

“When everyone started going back to work, it seemed like other orchestras were committed to getting musicians back to where they had been financially,” violist David Gaudry, co-chair of the player’s committee, told me. “We haven’t heard that from our board.”

为其他顶级美国orche工资数据stras have moved past those of the San Francisco Symphony. By the end of the 2023-24 season, musicians at the Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic will have annual base pay $5,000-$15,000 higher than that of San Francisco musicians.

Many members of an orchestra earn salaries above the minimum because of seniority or because they hold positions of responsibility. But the contractual minimum serves as a benchmark for any such comparisons.

The Bay Area’s high cost of living continues to be a matter of concern in the negotiations.

“If you live in any other orchestra city, it’s possible to buy a house based on what you’re getting paid,” Gaudry said. “But the prices in the Bay Area are something else.”

At various points during the past year, the musicians have taken steps to enlist public support. At oneFebruary concert, the musicians distributed one-page informational leaflets to arriving patrons, then raised the distinctively green-hued sheets in the air before the second half of the program.

Support for the musicians’ demands lingered through the summer, at least among some members of the public, and more recently, during the orchestra’sseason-opening concerton Sept. 22, a lone voice in the audience cried out, “Give them raises!” But overall, the emotional temperature surrounding the orchestra’s labor negotiations has remained at a relatively low simmer — certainly compared to some more explosive episodes in the Symphony’s history.

The most obvious contrast is to the long and bittermusicians’ strikeof 1996-97, which was fought out in public — on the streets around Davies Symphony Hall, in the press and even in the office of then-MayorWillie Brown.

That stoppage remains a traumatic landmark in the orchestra’s recent history. It lasted an astonishing 67 days, caused the cancellation of 43 concerts and other Symphony-sponsored events, and left a turbulent blot on the early tenure of Music DirectorMichael Tilson Thomas, who had taken the reins of the orchestra just a year and half before.

But that struggle was about far more than pay scales. It was a conflict fought on a dizzying array of contractual fronts — scheduling, health coverage, pension benefits and more — behind which lay a battle of wills between fierce combatants on either side.

Many observers,myself among them, thought we detected elements of a personal power struggle that went beyond the search for a mutually agreeable contract.

The current conflict doesn’t display anything approaching that level of vitriol or ferocity. But it may be masking a more fundamental, even existential question: Does the Symphony still have both the financial wherewithal and the ambition to keep its place at the top level of American orchestras?

当前合同约定告诉我们小abo血型ut the answer to that question. The conversations that play out over the coming year, in preparation for yet another round of negotiations, promise to hold the key.

Reach Joshua Kosman:jkosman@sfchronicle.com