As the industry returns to full steam, labor is in high demand. We lost a lot of good crew members to other industries. They realized that working eight hours per day is a sweet deal. Some became realtors and some of them went on to pursue other passions. This has caused a feeding frenzy for good help. Likewise, our industry is still reeling from the hemorrhaging of cash from the last two years. Budgets are tight and demand is high. This is creating a bottleneck for those who need to keep their standards on par with the rest of the productions. I’m hearing stories of people being asked to “Do us a solid” and chip in a little extra. I pride myself on going above and beyond, but there is a fine line between being a star player and getting taken advantage of. I hope you will indulge me and allow me to use my platform to express some views that may be unpopular. I want to share these views to get your feedback and open a dialogue on the topic of unpaid labor.
Getting a Foot in the Door
This article was inspired over a delicious burrito with a local stagehand. She was so proud to be working at her venue. She did not miss a single opportunity to tell how the stage had just been recarpeted, the sound system was dialed in, and the venue always sells out. The more I asked questions, the more she was willing to share about her time on the crew. Eventually, she told me that she wanted to be a part of this team for so long that eventually she offered to do a load-in for free. She wanted to prove herself so badly that she was willing to provide her muscle power at no cost. Her efforts paid off. She showed the production manager that she was competent and professional. I have mixed feelings about this practice. As a touring guy, I would never want to know that one of my crew was being exploited. I want to know that they are well paid and happy to be there. In this case, only one of those criteria was met. She was not compensated for that one day, but nonetheless, she was happy to be there. Whether she knows it or not, she was taken advantage of. Whether she cares is up to her. I have a hard time blaming her for offering up such a deal, but I do question the intentions of the production manager who allowed this to happen.
Advancing
At a certain level of touring, all the advancing falls under the jurisdiction of the production manager. Sometimes the lighting director is asked to field their part of the advancements. This can often happen days or weeks before the tour. Hence this labor-intensive task takes place long before payroll starts. Starting a tour without advancing is a recipe for disaster. It can easily turn a two-hour load-in into an eight-hour standoff. If a single piece of gear does not arrive on the first day of the tour, phone calls need to be made, shops need to open, and trucks need to mobilize. Because of that fact, I’m hesitant to put up a fight when I’m asked to advance a show even though I’m not getting paid. I have requested payments for advancing a tour in the past, but with mixed results. Some tours have accepted that advancing a show is part of the job and others have taken the request as an offense. “We have never paid a lighting director to do the advances before” is a common response. Some advances are three-emails-and-done, others take days to advance. It’s difficult to gauge exactly how much time has been spent on each advance because a few of them have been completed while sitting in line to pick up kids from school. It’s difficult to charge for something so simple. This is still labor that I am providing, though. I hear rumors of people who have successfully charged full rate for advancing shows, but I haven’t met them yet.
Rehearsals
I understand that rehearsal time is solely the artist’s expense. Promoters don’t pay the artist for their rehearsal time, so they try to keep those costs to a minimum. Some artists have offered me half pay during rehearsals. I understand the bind, but I don’t fully understand why this needs to come at my expense. I am not half at home. I don’t get to eat half the food in my refrigerator. I’m fully invested in the rehearsals, so why do I need to take a pay cut to help millionaires? Most often, rehearsal time is when I work the hardest. Being chained to a desk in a dark room banging out 60 songs that may never see the stage can wear me down. Knowing that I am only making half of what my time is worth doesn’t make it any easier.
Load-in Prep
One of the hardest pills to swallow is when a tour chooses not to pay a shop technician to prep the gear before it shows up onsite. This inevitably leads to me asking the local crew to address, label, configure and loom the gear while also loading in around backline. On smaller shows, this request is not unreasonable for me, but the local crew did not know that they were going to be doing double duties. While they are removing C-clamps from floor fixtures, I must keep running back and forth to get tape, zip ties, Sharpies, paperwork, and so on. All of this is taking place onstage for the whole team to see. It makes for a frantic day. The reasonable remedy would be to pay one of the local crew an additional sum to make up for the lack of preparation. In all fairness, they are doing the work of two technicians while saving the tour that expense.
Opening Act
This topic comes up often. An opening act falls into the eternal gray area of our industry. We understand that they need to be lit. This requires someone to provide these services to them. Most of the time, the house operator is more than excited to bang some buttons for them. More often than not, this requires some technical demands that can put a strain on the headliner’s production. This can be as easy as switching users or as complicated as switching control from one console to another. Either way, this is labor, and it should be compensated.
The Answers
I don’t have the answers to these questions. Each time these questions arise, my answers vary. Most of the time, my juvenile people pleaser personality wants to hop right in there and get the job done. I hope this article gives you the courage to request compensation. It can’t hurt to ask. Be polite but firm. “I can run your lights, but it will cost you $…” is not an unreasonable request. Unpaid labor does not keep the lights on.
