WQXR:
Joyce Theater stagehands voted 12 to 1 to join Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (I.A.T.S.E.) Tuesday.
I.A.T.S.E. Local 1 represents stagehands at high-end Broadway venues including Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, The Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center.
If the Joyce Theater workers become part of Local 1, they stand to gain higher pay, Bloomberg reports.
5 comments:
This is where the practice of unionizing workers has become severely flawed, in my eyes at least. Union is to protect workers and ensure their benefits and fair wages. The issue with a merge like this is just as the executive director stated, some smaller companies would not be able to afford the higher wages that Local 1 would demand. I am not familiar with all of the rules that go on with hiring unions and what there contracts do and don't allow them to require from employers but I feel there should be more the union, and the workers who are in the union, can do to be more supportive and therefore available to the smaller dance venues. A union requires an employer to pay an established fair wage, but if the union is now running companies out of business because they are required to use union labor at a ridiculous wage rate then union has gotten out of hand.
A central debate to the art world juxtaposes the artist’s right to be paid and the accessibility of their work. A common theme, both in theatre and the larger art world, artist do not work for the money, but rather to share a common vision or experience with others. Yet with this the creator also has a right to be paid for their work, after all it is there work. Yet unlike many other fields, the work of an artist cannot be measured by any objective means, but rather the subjective opinion of the audience, their viewers. By making theatre financially unreachable or inaccessible, we inherently diminish our audience base, thereby creating a greater financial strain and so the cycle continues. The role of a stagehand is not as clear cut on this issue, as their work is not as creatively based and more skilled. Once again, this is not to say that they do not have a right to get paid for their knowledge and work. It would be alarming to see the artistic scene shrink due to any one group’s individual paycheck.
I agree with what sean is saying, however, the Joyce Theatre is not, in my eyes, a small dance venue. They are very high profile, just had a massive renovation, and are establishing themselves as a big New york company. Therefore the move to unionize their stagehands will hopefully establish them as a venue where larger groups can come and have longer, more profitable runs of their shows. If there's one thing New York has in abundance, it is smaller, non-union venues, so perhaps it would benefit smaller companies more to do scaled-down runs there where they can stand to earn a profit.
I have never thought about how unionizing affected theaters outside of its benefits for its workers. It is jarring to think that the Joyce, while doing the right thing for its staff, might also be closing itself to its smaller acts. The venue really benefits from the diversity of the artist using the space. It would be sad to see that lost.
I really never gave the idea of joining a union before and the effects it would have. It shocks me to see that just because the theater would join Local 1 it could put them in trouble. It always seems as if joining a union should be beneficial and not a problem. It is a benefit for the workers because they have the potential to make more money but it can hurt the theater as a whole because they have to raise prices and that could end with them losing business because people can not afford to preform there anymore.
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