Corporations and insurance companies raise the bar for qualified techs.
Despite what Donald Trump might have us believe, the age of the apprentice is coming to a close. Training for technical stage skills continues to expand, from college programs to private skills schools. ESTA, in conjunction with other professional organizations including IATSE, and with private entities such as Live Nation and PRG, has established the Entertainment Technician Certification Plan (ETCP), a voluntary testing and certification program that grants enhanced status to individuals who have passed its examinations.
The first “class” graduated late last year, with 110 ETCP-certified entertainment electricians, 23 of whom are also certified in arena/theatrical rigging specialties. Initially the program is aimed at these specific electrical and rigging specialties, but will be expanded into other areas in the future.
More interesting is the program’s particular focus on safety for crew members, performers and audiences. It underscores the corporatization of the performance environment, which by nature is a costsensitive environment. Liability insurance premiums are soaring nationwide, and regardless of what litigation attorney- turned-presidential candidate John Edwards says, the number of personal-injury lawsuits and size of their awards has also been steadily rising.
Combine that with the trend towards corporate ownership — or corporate branding — of performance venues, particularly by publicly traded companies whose shareholders will dictate the most conservative and prudent approaches to risk-taking, and you have a fertile field for certification as a means of deciding who works for them and who doesn’t.
Jim Utterback, director of training for Local 22 of IATSE in the Baltimore area, says ESTA members have always felt pressure around the subject of liability; the inclusion of a company like Live Nation on the ETCP board of advisors clinches it. “No company can risk liability issues anymore,” he says. “Certification is a way of limiting that risk. It creates a set of standards that anyone in the industry can use as a reference.”
Industry-generated standards also address an issue that Hollywood learned back in the 1930s, which is that when public scrutiny of an industry ramps up, that industry must quickly apply its own governance before larger and less informed forces do it for them. That was the genesis of the Hayes Commission, which was the first ratings mechanism for films.
“There has been a lot of concern for a long time that if we didn’t establish standards and a certification process, someone else would,” Utterback says. “We didn’t want to accept something that wasn’t organic to the industry. It’s not an easy business to comprehend; not many people really know what goes on backstage.”
Mike Woods, an independent lighting consultant who serves as ESTA’s representative on the ETCP council of advisors, agrees that economic concerns on the part of venue owners has in part precipitated the move to establishing certification processes at this time. But he believes that the trend is a natural evolutionary one, not driven by any panic about liability costs. “That’s a component of it, for sure,” he says, “but the reality is that this has been a very safely operated industry for the most part. I’d go so far as to suggest that’s why this hasn’t moved forward sooner. The sense of urgency wasn’t there.”
But the climate and the mood have changed. States and municipalities, including California and Chicago, have recently tightened regulations regarding worker safety certification. Wood thinks Live Nation’s presence on the ETCP board reflects a significant change in venue owner attitudes about the issue, as does the fact that Live Nation and IATSE have both agreed that certification will be a part of all future contracts going forward, with a certified rigger and electrician to be part of each venue’s crew, effectively taking it off the table as a negotiating point.
But there are critical entities that haven’t climbed aboard yet, most notably entrepreneurial organizations, including the League of Broadway Producers, which tend to resist programs that can’t produce positive cost-benefit advantages from day one, and insurance companies, which Wood says will want to see results before they move to reduce liability premiums. That will take a while because, as noted, this is a relatively safety-conscious industry, and certification is preventative, not remedial; the true cost benefits will accrue over time and be as much productivity based as safety oriented.
Certification won’t produce dramatic results, but it will change the nature of the business; it will affect who works and who does not, and could create a new supervisory and pay scale niche in the crafts. It’s one of the long-term residual effects of the ongoing merging of corporate and theatrical orbits, a trend that will continue to change the face of the industry.
Contact Dan at ddaley@plsn.com.
