Friday, October 30, 2009
IATSE vs Bloomberg News’ (and others) bias.
Backstage at BackstageJobs.com: "A recent article in Bloomberg.com revealed that the top 5 IATSE stagehands at Carnegie Hall made an average of $430,543, with the Prop Master earning $530,044. These are high amounts to pretty much anyone. What is not mentioned in the original article [though I could swear it was at first] is the fact that these stagehands are working an average of 80 hours per week. All the pay over 40 hours each week would be paid at time-and-a-half, or double time. This does not include instances where meal or other break related penalties might have come into play, including during the first 8 hours of the day or 40 hours in the week."
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10 comments:
Wow! That is a lot of money. Who said theater was a money-less profession?
In any case, I think it is obvious to anyone in the industry that these salaries are not the norm. This is a perfect example of how if you look at a small piece of the puzzle, you have no idea what's really going on. These guys at Carnegie Hall work more than in those spaces than they are in their homes. If you are going to demand the time, you need to pay up. That is true for any job.
I think what really got to me about this article though was the example of how people perceive theater professionals. To over-simplify our proffessions like that is terrible. The nomenchlature alone would take most people a year to learn. We are not just overpaid screw jockies. I just hope people realize that.
I agree that it is pretty sad how the work that theatre professionals do is often times ridiculously oversimplified, although it doesn't surprise me. It tends to happen an awful lot. I like how this article took the time to explain the overlooked details of the Bloomberg News. Many don't realize the time commitment that goes into a job like that, and so of course they seem to generalize that these workers are getting overpaid. Once the details are laid out, it becomes more clear that they really deserve what they make.
Full Disclosure: I have never worked an IATSE house nor am I a member of IATSE.
These salaries are insane. Part of it is because of the IATSE rules and part of it is from the theatre renter who is scheduling. It should not be normal for any crew to work an 80 hour week on any kind of regular basis. Yes these people are earning 40 hours of overtime a week on average. One point that is not made, is there is no way for the theater producer to control how is hired each day and so can not minimize overtime. In a non union house, the producer can cycle through their staff to avoid overtime. This is good financially for the theater and better for the individual crew members.
I think unions in general need to be revamped. They served their purpose when they were invented. However, they have outlived that purpose. On the flip side of that coin, there needs to be some one out there to protect the employees from producers who will take advantage of their crews. There has to be a new way that both parties can fix this system.
I agree with Cody in that these crew members are being paid fairly based on the amount of time and long hours they put in, but the Union does negotiate contracts in such a way that it is easy to take advantage of double time, leading to these exceedingly high payouts. I understand a crew member's desire to work multiple shifts to get all this money, but it means that crew members lower on the "priority list" aren't getting as much work. The money is being spent disproportionally here and IATSE needs to reevaluate its rules based on taking calls and overtime.
I feel that both articles (Bloomberg's and the response) leave out too much to be credible. Yes, the work these folks do is sometimes *way* outside of the norm, and folks who work obscenely long weeks, often of quite stressful and physical work, deserve extra pay for it. On the other hand, $530k is a whole lot of money for *anyone* to be making, and I'm left to wonder if the contract is as much punitive to the employers as necessary for the employees. While I certainly take issue with the anti-union overtones in the original article, I also take issue with the idea that just because these folks work hard, we can't question what a reasonable wage is. It seems that once again, the union issue has polarized folks away from any useful discourse.
I think that Brian brings up an excellent point. The union is necessarily being fair to all of its members by favoring these select few. I'm sure that these few members are housemen with extremely specialized skills that are incomparable, but wouldn't it be great if the wealth was distributed evenly. The Union contracts are a little strange in many ways, but they aren't going to radically change any time soon to distribute the wealth evenly. And who says that it should, this is a system that seems to work for most stagehands.
That being said, these few IATSE members really throw themselves head first into the game, and work themselves to death. The risk of burn out is something that these guys are fully aware of and they have prioritized their lives to put their work ahead of their lives.
This is a tough issue, balancing the needs of the employee with the desires of the employer. That is what unions are all about. I can see both sides of the argument and agree with the author's position that Carnegie Hall and Broadway are like apples and oranges. While, yes these stagehands are making lots of money, from the looks of things, they fully deserve it. In my mind (and as the author pointed out)some of the IATSE rules and regulations are ridiculous and over the top in Broadway houses where everything is so scheduled. As to the equality issue, if you are doing more work, you should get paid more. Finally, I don't really see the issue here since both the employees (seem to be) and the employer are happy with the arrangement. It is a choice that both have made.
It's totally unfair that these technicians are working 80 hours a week and are being looked down upon for how much they are paid. They are working their butts off and they deserve what they are getting. No one should have to work 80 hours a week, but I think that at least if you are, your pay should represent that. It also isn't fair that so many people see what we do as such a simple job. There is so much to learn, and I definitely don't think that anyone could just step in and do the job correctly.
It's certainly a lot of money, and as most others have observed, it's not even close to typical. As the article itself points out, every word and number in the contract is agreed upon by both the union and the hall - if the deal is agreeable to both of them then why should anyone else even be concerned, other than as a possibility of using it to recruit more people to go into technical theater?
Saying that someone else makes too much money seems to be irrelevant unless you are one of the people paying them. It's someone else's business and someone else's salary. You wouldn't want them deciding that you as a doctor are overpaid, why should it be different for them?
I can't deny that these people are making a lot of money, but as others have mentioned, both parties agreed to the contract, and these guys have been working insane hours, so they have truly earned their pay. It seems as if Bloomberg (and others) have been running articles like this as sensational pieces with the purpose of ruffling people's feathers about how much money some people are making when the economy is in the state it currently is in.
The one thing that I wonder from this setup is why Carnegie Hall doesn't hire full-time staff so the current staff doesn't have to work so many hours per week.
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