Digital Music NewsDigital Music News: This Thursday’s performance onstage at the Maroon 5 concert in Atlanta will be great, but backstage it’s a different story. Stagehands work in poor conditions, are paid poverty-level wages, with no benefits – for a job that is often dangerous. On Thursday evening, outside Philips Arena, stagehands and their supporters will hold banners and approach concertgoers with information on this and other “poor performances.”
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The reason IATSE was formed in the first place was because working condition and wages in the entertainment industry were unpredictable, unregulated and subject to the whim of whatever producing agency was in charge of a project. Its not like this is a new problem. People can be hired to work for nothing, because unskilled labor will work for what you are offering to pay, until someone tells them that they can form a union, at which point they may try and form a union, in order to bargain collectively for better conditions and wages. The fact that Atlanta’s bug production houses don’t have contracts with IATSE that guarantee at least slightly better wages is a little bit surprising. I understand that the terms “Red State” and “Right to work state” are often synonymous, but this seems ridiculous. Especially because it is a large producing agency like Live Nation that can defiantly afford to compensate workers fairly, because they are able to compensate workers fairly most other places in the nation. I think its interesting that the Crew One employees are attempting to form a union, and not just ask to form their own IATSE local.
This is a gross example of misconduct. Working in entertainment is very different from working in any other industry. Jobs aren't steady, and workers aren't visible in the final product. That, of course, doesn't mean that the job can be done by just anyone. These are difficult jobs, with a lot of health and safety risks, and it should be a given that all is done to protect workers from unnecessary risks. The issue is of course that very few entertainment organizations have enough money to do the job right. Those that do sometimes skimp on things anyway. We need to remind people that Health and Safety, proper compensation and protection against unnecessary risks is not a luxury, it is a necessity. There is an obscene amount of money that goes into producing liver performances. Some of that needs to go to the people who make it happen. Whether through formation of a union or a new local, I support the workers' need to find security in these uncertain work conditions.
It’s really sad that stagehands get ignored and put on dangerous job without much pay or benefits. It never made much sense to me as to why stagehands would not get paid at least decently- without them you can’t have a show unless you have your actors putting together the set and running everything during a show. And you can imaging what kind of a disaster that would be. If producers thought of the stagehands in that way I think a lot of things would change. Never would they want one of their lead actors to get hurt during a load in and not be able to perform that night so they should care just as much if one of the stagehands gets hurt. I guess they just figure that if one person won’t do the job then they can just as easily find someone else who is willing to do it- which is the sad truth, but also dangerous because not everyone is skilled enough to do the job. But good on the Atlanta stagehands for protesting and crating a union. Hopefully someone will listen and they can get better pay and benefits for what they do.
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