Friday, October 20, 2017
Equity Announces Major Change to Membership Candidacy Program
Backstage: On Tuesday, the nation’s union for stage actors and stage managers, Actors’ Equity Association, announced a change to their Equity Membership Candidacy program (EMC). The statement, emailed out to suitable candidates, explained that in 2018 the EMC program would be relaunched. The biggest shift? The amount of weeks a candidate would have to accrue before being offered membership to the union.
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6 comments:
As a member of the Equity Membership Candidacy program I have mixed feelings about this change. It is exciting that there is prospect for me as a stage manager to join equity sooner however there is also the possibility that this could have two negative effects. 1) That is will cause for too many young stage managers who do not have enough experience and or connections with equity affiliated theaters too have enough equity work to maintain their career. 2) That this change will flood the stage management market too quickly and push people out of jobs or that there will not be enough jobs to maintain. The plus to all this however is that Equity and LORT have ratified in their recent contract negotiations a clause which calls for theaters to higher more equity assistant stage managers. This seems to be one of the large reasons they have ratified the shortening of the EMC time requirement for contracts and hopefully will cause a balancing out effect.
I believe I understand the reasoning behind Equity’s decision to reduce the EMC week requirement, but I share both of the concerns that Kyrie has above. Will this create a glut of stage managers of potentially unreliable levels of experience? There might be an influx of dues, but what happens when there aren’t enough jobs to go around? Will these young stage managers, who’ve only been candidates for little over six months be able to stay in the field and work enough to receive the benefits of the union into which they’ve paid a significant initiation fee? Or perhaps there’s a shortage of managers I’m not aware of? I’m curious how this change will create “more flexibility and choices” for members.
On the bright side, if there is enough work to go around, I’m pleased at the idea that many new managers will have lower hurdle to clear to join an organization that helps ensure reasonable pay and benefits.
Although I am excited about the possibility of joining the union earlier I do share Kyrie and Rachel's concerns about people who are a little inexperienced joining the union. Personally I do think that they should have lowered the weeks as not many people actually get fifty points, but maybe to something like forty or thirty five points. Cutting the amount of weeks in half just seems a little too drastic to me, and I know that if I were and EMC candidate with 49 points I'd be pretty annoyed. I'm also not super thrilled about the increase in initiation fees that Equity has proposed. I understand that it hasn't gone up in awhile but this seems like a big increase over a short period of time. This could have the potential to fight the issue of inexperienced people joining the union, but it might push people without a solid source of income away.
I think this change might cause a bit of chaos. While I think it is great Equity is trying to swell their ranks-and by doing so becomes a more powerful union, I have seen many people struggle after turning too early to find work. I was always told that I shouldn't even consider turning equity unless I have a full year of work lined up for me. If a company has a choice to hire you, a new equity member with less experience, or someone who is well established and known to them, you are going to lose out every time. The push to be union is a big one, but people really need to consider how their resume's will standup to those who are in the same union pool as them, and if you haven't been around for very long or don't have as much experience, turning union is not a magical job ticket that will make getting work a walk in the park. Union members are paid more, and theatre companies are going to aim to get the most experienced person for the money.
I read about the changes to the Equity Membership earlier this week, and I did not think too much of it, because it seems like just a personal choice. That if you want to join with 25 points you can, otherwise you can still wait for the 50 points. I briefly was discussing this with some of the other PTM people, and some thinks its due to Equity putting more requirement on having and ASM in more shows, so they will need more people available. Which makes some logical scene. Others think it is Equity wanting to have more leverage as a Union, because the more people in the Union the more power it has. I would want to hear from and actors perspective what they think about the change. As this does effect them too. I know in class we have discusses how it can be a bad thing to become Equity early in your career, because if a theater is going to be hiring an Equity Stage Manager they will want the one with more experience.
When this was announced my Facebook was almost as blown up as it was during the election. I think that this is a really good and strategic move for Equity to make. They were losing a lot of people to the non-equity tours and shows that are starting to become more and more popular, and I have talked to a lot of people, actors and stage managers alike, who say that that was really hurting the union, and sort of disrupting the natural flow of things. Generally you work for a few years our of the union and build up your credits and then you join but the problem a lot of people were having was that there just weren't as many equity jobs so readily available as the non-eq jobs, so what do they do but keep going non-equity and see what can happen. I think this is a great move for Equity because it encourages a lot more people to join the union and eventually will smoke out those tours because they will lose a lot of their talent. I am interested to see what happens in the next few years with his change, and see if the natural order of things is restored.
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