American Guild of Musical Artists: On the evening of February 6, AGMA leadership and the Dancers and Stage Managers of American Ballet Theatre voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. The Artists voted 95.6% in favor of authorizing the strike.
This pivotal move follows an arduous eight-month period of negotiations that has unfortunately not resulted in a fair contract. During this time, AGMA Artists at ABT have been diligently working under an expired contract since September.
2 comments:
As someone quite familiar with the dance industry, its frankly not surprising that ABT is ignoring union asks and not paying their workers competitively. I’ve always described the ballet industry as having a “pay-to-play” culture. Apprenticeships pay barely anything and the culture is that one pays throughout high school and college to attend various intensives in hopes of being selected into an apprenticeship program. The ballet world has not committed to the possibility of equity in the way theatre has begun to. I’m particularly interested in how this union ship will affect stage managers. What is defined as dance stage management as opposed to theatrical? I imagine this gives more negotiating power to non-AEA stage managers but also confuses the lines of what is allowed. If the same exclusivity clauses exist in AGMA as AEA, how would dance pieces in the theatrical setting be categorized? I definitely need to do more research on this. ABT is one of the largest and highest-profiting dance companies; there’s no reason their performers shouldn’t be able to afford their careers.
I didn't know a lot about the conditions of ballet employees before reading this article, but I'm absolutely shocked that only 30% are able to make a living sustainable off of their income from the incredibly demanding, expensive, and time consuming passion that they employ themselves with. I think that given this information, a strike is well overdue. It's insane to me that on top of this, the company is proposing salaries that would leave at least 20% of members working below a livable wage in New York. I'm glad that the workers found enough solidarity to strike, and I think that it's a very promising sign that so many of them were willing to vote for a strike. I will be keeping an eye on headlines from this corporation, and I can't wait until those that are on strike get the support, pay, and respect that they very rightfully deserve.
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