Performing Arts Feature | Chicago Reader: This past week, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) announced that its job search engine, ARTSEARCH, would not only be free of cost to all users, but would additionally require all prospective employers to list a salary range for all postings. This announcement comes on the heels of seismic changes within the theater industry aimed at dismantling inequity and financial exploitation.
4 comments:
I am a big fan of pay transparency now. It does not make any sense to have the amount of secrecy around salaries that exists in America today. I think it stems from our weird consumer culture and capitalist society that has created the notion that if someone else is making more money than you, then you are failing or losing money that you should be making. But I really do not think this is the case in pretty much any industry in the country. I really believe that a rising tide raises all boats, and if another designer or technician starts to get paid more, that is helping to open the door for others to get paid more. I am glad that people are out there doing this work. Pay inequality has gone on for far too long, and transparency like this is a great step towards alleviating that inequality. Salaries are such a vague concept to me right now, because there is so much mystery surrounding them. I do not even know how much money I should expect to make next year let alone for the rest of my career. I think that should change.
I really agree with everything laid out in this article. There needs to be transparency in salaries for theatrical designers as well as every other aspect of theatre. I think one of the weirdest taboo things in our society is the lack of conversation about money. The gender pay gap (and the race pay gap, and disability, etc.) is a major issue and one that people often refuse to admit exists because there are no conversations about how much money people make. Having salaries for jobs posted before people apply for the job is so important because then people know that the pay is equitable and not based on the person applying. They also are able to make the decision of whether they apply or not based on something instead of wasting time going through the application and interview process just to find out the job did not pay enough so they would not have taken it away. It sounds like theatres are moving towards posting salaries more and I really hope soon, all jobs everywhere will have salaries posted before people apply.
I have so many good things to say about this! Transparency for job positions is something I believe should already have been common and widely used in every industry. It has been so strangely absent, and negative effects have come from that. I cannot even imagine the number of times people have applied for jobs, thinking they were a full time or well paid position, only to find out that it was not what they expected (part time, no contract, “exposure bucks,” low pay). Putting yourself through dozens of job applications, and then having to go through dozens of interviews, only to find out that part of them were what you were expecting, just sucks. Or to be a less experienced person going into an interview and having to do a salary negotiation with no time to prepare for what they have offered (which could be getting you totally ripped off!), not having transparency would also suck. I think Elsa Hiltner made a good move advocating for salary transparency on ARTSEARCH. Hopefully people will find more pay equality through this.
I think this is an awesome article, and it seems to me that Elsa Hiltner is doing really important work. I think the taboo around salaries and compensation is so strange, across all industries, but especially in theater. Overall, individuals would benefit so much from having open conversations about compensation and our avoidance of the issue is really peculiar. I think Hiltner is opening up a really important conversation, and making it accessible to everyone (for example through her Google sheet) not just people who are already established within the industry. It is just as important for new people in the industry to understand compensation as it is for established people, and I think Hiltner is doing an amazing job of making it possible for everyone to access, understand, and utilize this information. I hope that in the near future conversations about salaries and compensation become more commonplace and less taboo, as it will be to everyone’s benefit.
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