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Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Richard Dare: Unions: Friends or Foes of the Arts?
huffingtonpost.com: In an era some have described as the neo-gilded age of union busting, let us take a moment to note some of the good things unions do for the arts.
2 comments:
Adelaide Zhang
said...
I can't claim to be an expert on unions, but just from reading the article, it seems there are a number of benefits provided by unions that should definitely be taken into consideration. In reference to the title, unions should ideally be completely, one-hundred percent for the arts and aimed at creating the best environment possible for theatre workers (and other industries) to do what they do best. Clearly that's not always the case, and admittedly, the article does not offer a list of arguments from that side of the debate, about why unions are bad, but it seems to me that the reasons given in favor of unions should be worth something at least. It would certainly be advantageous if in the future unions moved towards working alongside theatre management instead of against.
Unions are definitely a little bit beyond me. That being said, they seem to be like any other bureaucracy. They are trying to do their best to secure rights for the workers they represent. Sometimes they may be too strict, or too regulated, but overall they want to help the artists achieve as best they can. Now sometimes there may be a conflict of interest between theatre owners and the unions, but I think that everything the author said is true. Unions provide for things that theatres cannot under current circumstances, they should be celebrated, but with the subtext that we know that they are not perfect.
2 comments:
I can't claim to be an expert on unions, but just from reading the article, it seems there are a number of benefits provided by unions that should definitely be taken into consideration. In reference to the title, unions should ideally be completely, one-hundred percent for the arts and aimed at creating the best environment possible for theatre workers (and other industries) to do what they do best. Clearly that's not always the case, and
admittedly, the article does not offer a list of arguments from that side of the debate, about why unions are bad, but it seems to me that the reasons given in favor of unions should be worth something at least. It would certainly be advantageous if in the future unions moved towards working alongside theatre management instead of against.
Unions are definitely a little bit beyond me. That being said, they seem to be like any other bureaucracy. They are trying to do their best to secure rights for the workers they represent. Sometimes they may be too strict, or too regulated, but overall they want to help the artists achieve as best they can. Now sometimes there may be a conflict of interest between theatre owners and the unions, but I think that everything the author said is true. Unions provide for things that theatres cannot under current circumstances, they should be celebrated, but with the subtext that we know that they are not perfect.
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