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Theatre industry news, University & School of Drama Announcements, plus occasional course support for
Carnegie Mellon School of Drama Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni.
CMU School of Drama
Thursday, February 18, 2021
Creative industry workers suffer the most stolen wages, according to UNESCO
Boing Boing: A recent white paper from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization shines a necessary but depressing light on working conditions within the arts industry throughout the world.
2 comments:
Victor Gutierrez
said...
The creative industry is long overdue for a revitalization and a shift in how we as a society look at a lot of the workers. As a freelance worker, my work was often either one off independent contractor gigs that were never large enough to prompt any tax things or if I was lucky, I got to work as a W-2 employee for an organization whose HR are often unprepared for situations having to do with freelancers. I have a retirement fund started with like $30 from Berklee. I accrued all of like half a day in time off from Emerson. Tying health insurance and retirement funds through individual employers as a system leaves a lot of small chunks at a lot of tables and harms gig workers. A federal system that accounted for all the work freelancers do would be a lot better. I’m all for paying taxes and everyone chipping, but it seems like creative industry workers aren’t getting their fair share for what they put in.
Cyclical systems like this are just so difficult to break. I certainly wish the federal government would engage in a works project administration type of expenditure for the good of everyone right now. These small businesses that lie right on the edge of breaking even and have too many “interns” running around who are actually just underpaid employees is not healthy, but those individual organizations are struggling to survive. On one hand my mind immediately jumps to saying well, at least they have jobs in the entertainment industry. But on the other hand, maybe it makes sense to just let them crash and burn because it’s necessary for a newer and better version to come along and making space for that is imperative. I’m really glad that CMU is starting to pay a reasonable wage, but our whole product-based economy is based on lots of part-time employees who are underpaid, so the system obviously has it’s issues.
2 comments:
The creative industry is long overdue for a revitalization and a shift in how we as a society look at a lot of the workers. As a freelance worker, my work was often either one off independent contractor gigs that were never large enough to prompt any tax things or if I was lucky, I got to work as a W-2 employee for an organization whose HR are often unprepared for situations having to do with freelancers. I have a retirement fund started with like $30 from Berklee. I accrued all of like half a day in time off from Emerson. Tying health insurance and retirement funds through individual employers as a system leaves a lot of small chunks at a lot of tables and harms gig workers. A federal system that accounted for all the work freelancers do would be a lot better. I’m all for paying taxes and everyone chipping, but it seems like creative industry workers aren’t getting their fair share for what they put in.
Cyclical systems like this are just so difficult to break. I certainly wish the federal government would engage in a works project administration type of expenditure for the good of everyone right now. These small businesses that lie right on the edge of breaking even and have too many “interns” running around who are actually just underpaid employees is not healthy, but those individual organizations are struggling to survive. On one hand my mind immediately jumps to saying well, at least they have jobs in the entertainment industry. But on the other hand, maybe it makes sense to just let them crash and burn because it’s necessary for a newer and better version to come along and making space for that is imperative. I’m really glad that CMU is starting to pay a reasonable wage, but our whole product-based economy is based on lots of part-time employees who are underpaid, so the system obviously has it’s issues.
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