Datebook: A little more than a year ago, as 2020 was getting into gear, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable to think that AB5 would be the biggest force reshaping Bay Area theater for the year.
Many theater workers get hired as independent contractors instead of as employees — a system that AB5, also known as the gig-worker law, is poised to upend.
2 comments:
Living contract to contract is difficult, and it only has worsened with the pandemic as thousands of jobs have been put on hold. It has exposed the cracks in the system, and the embarrassingly small amount of support independent artists can receive from the larger groups. Like with many other aspects, there is no time but now to take a look at the systems in place and see what should be fixed. Independent workers deserve to have a place where to stop, where they can find a source of reliability amidst the jobs they take and end during any given period of time. I do not understand how asking for health insurance sounds like asking for a small loan of a million dollars, when it really should be something that everyone should have access to. We could ignore these odds and ends of the system before we were forced to look, but now that we are living through it to do nothing would be the higher evil.
The pandemic has exposed a plethora of issues in the US that already existed– and by that I mean they have become more exposed to those who are entirely unaffected by the issues. So many artists, whether stage managers, actors, visual artists, etc, do a lot of freelance work– going from one job to the next. And, as this article discusses, this means things like health care aren’t provided by a company and there is less of a safety net when things go south (like, oh I don’t know, maybe a global pandemic?). Not to mention the fact that so many people take artists’ work for granted. You want art? You pay for it. You pay for the artist’s time, talent, resources, research, work. That is non-negotiable, but somehow some people just don’t realize that. I hope that we see more support for freelance artists, and I hope we see it soon.
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