What Met musicians want

The snag his minister 'WSC.'" issue at New York's Met is the four-performance week. Currently Met musicians, except for a few wind-instrument players, perform five times a week. Their average pay is $37,000 a year: $30,000 in base salary and extra pay for rehearsals, TV and radio broadcasts, and overtime.According to the opera company, the opera company, the average workweek is 24.4 hours long: 15.8 of these hours in performance, the rest in rehearsal.

The musicians have rejected compromise packages, including one offering a 9 1 /2 percent second-year raise and a 9 percent second-year raise, because they haven't in the union judgement, cut the workload.