abc7chicago.com: McCormick Place, Wintrust Arena, Navy Pier, United Center, and ballrooms across the city are empty, and that means thousands of union employees who set up live entertainment, TV and film sets are without work.
"The bottom fell out of everything there," said David Gardner, a stagehand with Chicago's Stagehands Local 2. "All the employment is gone, all the shows are gone, so all of our work is gone."
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As the pandemic grows, many people across the US are being laid off as businesses, schools, theaters, and restaurants close. However, for the stagehands in Chicago that help set-up staging, lighting, and sound for various venues across Chicago, the loss of their job makes it difficult for them to apply for unemployment with the federal government. I do not know how unemployment works or how to qualify for it, but I have read about the many troubles people have been going through to get it. Websites have been crashing due to the large volume, while calling unemployment centers results in being put on hold for hours. Even after all of the agony of filing out a form or getting through to a person, some are told they do not qualify. According to this article, Chicago stagehands do not qualify for unemployment because they have more than 20 employers. This must be crushing to those who need the money. The stress of a pandemic and protecting your loved ones from it should be enough; people should not have to worry and fight for their next paycheck too on top of that. It will be interesting to see what develops from this disaster in the arts culture world.
There are so many questions that people have about what to do next and how to do things now with corona taking over the world and the biggest one I have is how are people expected to work? And make money? There are so many devastating things that come from corona and one of them is definitely the mass and abrupt amount of unemployment that has to happen. It’s extremely heartbreaking because people work so hard for their jobs and families, to be unemployed is something probably very new for some people or at least something they haven’t had to deal with in a long time. I know for most companies the unemployment is temporary and as soon as the virus calms down, people will get their jobs back and will be able to go back to work, but that isn’t true for everyone, which is extremely heartbreaking and hard to manage.
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