They were skilled employees at a business. The business decided to substantially cut half the employees' salaries from $36,000 to $24,000 and demote the other half to part time workers making only about $10k per year. The employees did not accept this. Nothing about that speaks ill of the employees.

Maybe the "fiscal reality" is that they can use this time to do better things which maybe are also paid better.

In what way? The article specifically cites Lubbock (a significantly smaller city) as managing to handle paying their musicians and being fiscally solvent.

This doesn't seem to be an unsolvable problem yet the current Board of Directors can't seem to pull it off.

Let it go bankrupt. Surely someone will want to put a symphony together and they can avoid all the baggage.

Or not. And that will say something as well, no?

How far will you accept fiscal reality ?