Today at Equity’s Annual Conference members voted unanimously to pass an emergency motion supporting the chorus of the Welsh National Opera (WNO) in their continued fight against compulsory redundancies. The redundancies could be the result of proposals to change chorus contracts that would cut pay and undermine job security.
Equity has recently committed to opposing compulsory redundancies at WNO, with General Secretary Paul W Fleming commenting that we “will keep all options open to fight an attack on our members’ pay and conditions.”
Full text of motion:
EMERGENCY MOTION: Council
Conference is concerned that the continued impact of cuts to arts funding, and particularly to the substantial underfunding of opera in England and Wales, is impacting the job security of our members working full-time in the Chorus of Welsh National Opera (WNO).
As a result of these cuts, WNO management are looking to reduce the current full-time contracts of our members with an estimated cut in base salary of at least 15% a year. In addition, they are seeking to reduce and rebalance the size of the chorus with a process which can only lead to the real threat of compulsory redundancy.
The chorus of WNO was built from the communities of Wales, and it was on that strength that WNO’s reputation was founded almost 80 years ago. The many dedicated Equity members, for whom the survival of “their” company is a passion, a crusade, and a fight against sometimes daunting odds, need support in their fight against this attack on their pay and conditions.
Conference sends a message of solidarity to our members at WNO and asks Council to continue to provide whatever support is required as they seek to amplify the campaign that they, with our support, will not accept compulsory redundancies, or the desire by WNO management to have the flexibility of a full-time contract with all the precarity of an unsustainable cut to their basic earnings.
Our members’ resistance to the current proposals cannot, and will not, be contingent on the decisions of funders.
#SaveOurWNO
