This is how Elsa Hiltner sees this future. All theaters will end unpaid internships. Those with annual budgets in excess of $ 1 million will meet the minimum wage rates and, finally, the vital wage rates for all workers. The categories of compensation, or the actual salary of each worker, will be clearly defined and shared. The highest salary of an organization will exceed the lowest by no more than a factor of five. Schedules will be set “as far as possible” to suit a 40-hour work week.
These are among the benchmarks for the certification of pay equity standards, a new program developed by Hiltner, who worked in theatrical production for 15 years, and his colleagues in the advocacy organization with its on Chicago On Our Team. Two small businesses in this city — Collaboration, dedicated to social justice, and 2nd Story, dedicated to “real stories of real people for real change” —are the first to meet all the requirements. On June 29, they received, among other things, the right to use (but only for the rest of 2022) a beautiful laurel-crowned badge on their marketing materials. Six more theaters across the country are working to achieve certification by 2023.
They are small businesses. It seems unlikely that New York nonprofits will apply with artistic directors earning $ 1 million or more a year, and with wage differentials that can approach a factor of 50. Still , as with LEED certification or fair trade stickers or organic food labels, the hope is that the badge will eventually help theater consumers choose a job that aligns with their values. While they wait for this to happen, cinemas can benefit, says Hiltner, from happier, more hardworking staff, and from the positive response they see from funders and donors to institutions that truly “fulfill their missions.”
But it is also the case that funders and donors generally prefer to contribute to theaters that do a lot of theater. This is one of the problems PlayCo, a New York City company that is implementing a new compensation model this year, is facing.
As Kate Loewald, founding producer of PlayCo, and Robert Bradshaw, its CEO, described to me, the plan is designed to address not only the usual inequalities by raising everyone at least to a decent wage, but also to adjust wage misalignment. among the staff. (which can be full-time) and artists (who usually work for a month or two).
It does so, in part, by placing each job in a clearly defined and matched salary category: a stage manager receives the same pay as Loewald and Bradshaw, an associate director of staff, at the same price as a freelance costume designer. Because all categories are “transparent,” everyone knows what he’s doing, which in almost every case is more than before. (The exception is Loewald, which was reduced.) According to an estimated 250 hours of work, directors who previously paid $ 3,500 will now be paid $ 7,100.