The Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which has been on strike for four and a half months, will now not play again for the remainder of the 2010-11 season. Following the failure to reach an agreement after the latest offer, the management of the DSO has cancelled all concerts in the remainder of the present season. The management has made what it describes as its final offer: the players have rejected this pointing to increased costs that they will have to occur as part of the new offer (health care, some travel expenses, reduction in the size of the ensemble, not to mention substantial pay cuts).

The players have not ruled out pay cuts but have questioned the size of the cuts (33 per cent for some of the orchestra’s longer-serving members, taking a basic salary from $104,650 to $70,200; the players had offered a 22 per cent reduction). The orchestra posted a deficit of $6.7million for the 2010 fiscal year, an increase of roughly 18 times the previous financial year.