www.theatreartlife.com: Several requests have been made to Playbill in recent years; Costume Professionals for Wage Equity got in touch back in 2019, while On Our Team and Costume Professionals for Wage Equity with support from Theatre Communications Group (TCG) also contacted Playbill to make the change prior to releasing the open letter.
5 comments:
I do agree with the author that disclosing the wage of a particular job beforehand would be beneficial to all parties involved. No one would have to waste their time conducting interviews for people that would not take the job and that time could be better spent elsewhere. This is not a typical practice though in any other field. Perhaps this could also be helpful in closing the wage gap as people will easily be able to find out how much other people in their field are being offered for their services. Disclosing this information on all job listings could also make this information fairly easy for people to compile and crunch numbers. People would be able to figure out which locations in the United States pay more, which venues pay less, etc.. This could be great for finding out where you might want to work. I do think that this is part of the solution to solving the wage gap but I also think that we need additional measures put into place.
I fully agree with being transparent about pay upfront. It is important for people to know what they will be paid and what their peers will be paid, not only to make sure they're getting their work's worth, but to know that they will be working in environment that values them as much as the next person. For a lot of groups of people who historically are discriminated against in the workplace, unequal pay is the first red flag. And for allies of those people, refusing to work somewhere without equal pay is an act of ally-ship. Places have unequal pay because they believe that they can take advantage of a group of people because they may not have the privilege to turn down that job. That is why allies are so important, privileged people can have that specific privilege. Being public about what you are paid is the first step to uncovering and ending unequal pay.
Pay transparency is so important! What this article specifically talks about is the job application process– if companies are not required to say the salary amount on the posting, it does two things. First, it means the company has the ability to create pay disparities because of gender, race, ability, and more. Second, it also means someone could go through the entire process of interviews and applications just to find that the salary is either less than what they make now or is too little to support themselves. That means a waste of time for everyone involved. What this makes me think about is something I was always told growing up: “never ask someone how much they are paid”. Now, I think this is actually a super important conversation, especially with peers. Hold companies accountable to pay people for their work and pay people equitably. I hope to see this letter go somewhere and that we see some changes soon.
I think that pay transparency is so incredibly important. I think that all companies, not just theater organizations either should be required to disclose how much they are paying before someone applies. As Maureen said, not disclosing a pay amount can enable companies to create pay disparities based on a wide variety of factors. It also is so incredibly unfair to the people who are applying because job hunting is a lot of work and it would be crushing to go through the whole application and hiring process just to discover that you aren't being paid enough. I think there needs to be a discussion around salaries, especially in theater. It is important to talk about how much people make compared to other people even though it may be a touchy subject with some. But this is essential to ensuring that people are paid fair and equal wages. I hope that in the future there is a huge reform in the theater industry about wages as well as paying people fair and equal wages instead of stipends as well.
As someone who has be looking heavily into the job market for Theatre and the entertainment industry at large recently I totally agree that pay transparency is something that is both seriously lacking in our industry and needs to be addressed going forward. It’s hard looking at job applications and try to find positions when you have no basis for what the pay maybe. This also makes it even harder for first time employees who may not understand all the roles and responsibilities of the position to understand what they should be looking for. Pay transparency is still something in our culture we don’t like to share along piers and we don’t feel comfortable even sharing it with close friends and companies have been able to take advantage of this by buying into the same principles and not disclosing everything. And in tern they can negotiate and manipulate employees creating these wide pay gaps that we tend to see in our industry for a variety of in all honest horrible reasons.
Post a Comment