Such is going on proper now, because of Ife Olujobi’s sharp acumen in sharing her battle with pay fairness as a playwright working at one of the well-funded and influential theatres within the United States (New York City’s the Public). The criticism kicks off earlier than we even get into the meat of the textual content the place even the essay’s writer, the Dramatists Guild, catches a stray for failing to pay her to speak about failing to get correctly paid. The lengthy and in need of the piece itself is that Ife obtained a manufacturing alternative, shortly realized the pay was trash, stated “BBHMM,” came upon that wasn’t fairly really easy, lobbied and rallied and lobbied once more, then finally ended up profitable a rise not only for herself, however for future playwrights. The complete saga is an account of her actually phenomenal mixture of braveness, advocacy, and endurance. I can’t stress sufficient how uncommon these qualities are to search out in a single particular person. I’m not even a playwright and I have to thank her for her instance and for the true materials beneficial properties she received.
As somebody who has been desirous about labor and theatre for some time as each an artist and organizer, a number of issues in Ife’s story stood out to me. Since graduating from the Juilliard School, I’ve been lucky to construct a profession as an actor working at a lot of the most well-regarded theatres in New York City, and but I’ve constantly discovered myself and my fellow artists struggling in subpar working situations. And so I’ve spent the previous 4 years creating a political training mission using idea to lift the extent of employee energy in our {industry}. From these experiences, I do know many people are asking why this type of factor retains occurring and what we are able to do about it. This is my try and construct on Ife’s expertise in direction of an understanding of bigger financial forces working in opposition to theatre employees with some concepts on what we are able to do about it.
Class. Class? Class!
Ife used the time period “conflict” a number of instances and rightfully cautions others that in advocating for extra pay, “conflict is often necessary.” I might agree, and add that this isn’t simply any type of battle—it’s class battle specifically. In my studying of her account, there are two varieties of characters that seem in her story: the group of individuals asking (combating, actually) for more cash, and people able to determine in the event that they get it. These positions, or relationships to capital should you like, are the broad outlines of what constitutes financial courses. I word this to not squabble over semantics, however as a result of class battle (or battle) is kind of the bane of our collective existence. Everything from shorter work days, minimal wages, air flow in workspaces, enough breaks, and many others, needed to be fought for in conditions identical to this. None of it was freely given. Our capability to enhance financial processes rests upon our capability to know how they operate. When we perceive our struggles as class struggles, we make clear our place in an ongoing historical past and achieve entry to a long-standing, deeply refined, and extremely efficient conceptual arsenal. It is due to this fact our accountability to take up these instruments, and to withstand the tendency to really feel we’ve got to reinvent the wheel or begin from scratch.
From a category standpoint, Ife’s story is certainly one of being exploited. Exploitation, in its easiest phrases, happens when those that produce worth don’t get their fair proportion of it. That’s just about any job, together with inventive ones (even should you make 1,000,000 {dollars} on a movie set, the studio is making 100 million). The particulars are past the scope of this writing (Karl Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital will assist), however it’s essential to make clear that exploitation isn’t primarily an ethical subject. Properly understood, it’s structural. Which is to say, exploitation will invariably happen because it constitutes the working logic of our current financial system (capitalism). While sure people might assist us out, and sure reforms might happen, exploitation can’t be reformed away, and no quantity of kindly supportive people will change the calls for of the system itself.
This is why each Public worker named could be the loveliest particular person ever (I’ve met a lot of them and so they are), however the group as a complete merely didn’t trouble updating their pay schedule, even for inflation, in over a decade. It can also be why the theatre’s creative director has been nonetheless compensated one thing to the tune of virtually 1,000,000 {dollars} a yr whereas one of many final instances I acted in a brand new play there I used to be paid $413/week (earlier than taxes, agent charge, and union dues to be actual).
Now, right here’s the tough half. Exploitation is made potential not due to disparity of wages per se, however as a result of just one class directs the circulate of worth. There are those that produce worth and people who management it as soon as produced. Returning to our earlier positions of sophistication: the working class typically produces worth, whereas the employer class (and the substrata amongst them, the managers) management what to do with it. The secret sauce to sustaining this complete dynamic is that the appropriated worth principally will get directed towards employers growing the standing of their enterprise whereas breaking off the naked minimal for his or her employees within the type of a wage. Because us employees want a wage to outlive, we are inclined to take what we’re given.
Put this manner, it’s all fairly bleak and all of us, not solely playwrights are topic to it: administrators, actors, heck—everyone is on file going via some model of this downside (of which “Nothing for the Group’s” Bills, Bills, Bills column retains a working tab). This is mostly how capitalism works: concealing a extra basic and pernicious legislation (structural exploitation via worth management) behind the appearances of what’s most acquainted and normalized to us all (cash/wages) that by no means fairly will get on the root of the issue.
The above is barely the briefest, most basic account. All of these dynamics are at a play in Ife’s battle, however there are various distinctive components, too. For one, the Public is a nonprofit, not standard enterprise. Additionally, as she mentions, playwrights are prevented from unionizing, and it is because they’re thought of property house owners (the play is their property, which they contract out). These, nevertheless, aren’t obstacles to our downside, they’re contradictions—element processes of the bigger system. These contradictory particularities aren’t information that refute the structural compulsion of exploitation underneath capitalism, however merely give it particular character.
This isn’t an issue distinctive to the Public, its workers, or Ife. Nor is the answer certainly one of minting extra playwrights like Ife or brokers like hers to avoid wasting us. It’s structural. Not even simply industry-wide, however economy-wide.
For instance, who did everybody need to rally for ultimately? The board of administrators. Nonprofit boards are usually stacked with (high-earning, “successful”) artists related to the corporate (and… relations, for some motive), however everybody is aware of it’s the legal professionals, medical doctors, traders, and entrepreneurs that make the system tick (and plenty of agree it’s an issue). The logic of their company affect, privileged as it’s by their excessive standing within the company economic system, coupled with the monetary actuality of working a theatre (actual property, labor prices, and many others) and bigger, more and more punishing macroeconomic tendencies end in for-profit logics inside ostensibly nonprofit areas. This is evidenced when Ife notes that the Public tried to “take a collective issue—fair pay for all playwrights—and turn it into an individual issue.” In every other house we’d see this as anti-worker, anti-solidarity conduct predictable of an Amazon or Starbucks.
To reiterate: this isn’t an issue distinctive to the Public, its workers, or Ife. Nor is the answer certainly one of minting extra playwrights like Ife or brokers like hers to avoid wasting us. It’s structural. Not even simply industry-wide, however economy-wide. The excellent news is that the answer isn’t bespoke both. Nobody is coming to avoid wasting us, as a result of we save ourselves.
It’s Time to Get This Bread
Ife notes that they had been a member of Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY)’s Artist Employment Program (or AEP, itself impressed by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act). I’m proud to say I used to be within the CRNY Think Tank that helped design the AEP and its sibling Guarantee Income (GI) program. Speaking just for myself, Ife has fulfilled the good promise of these packages. Yes, AEP and GI guarantee entry to a stability that’s all too unusual for artists. But I imagine that stability ought to then be the means whereby artists can query why such a program just like the AEP must exist within the first place, understand the assorted contradictions inherent to creative exploitation, and use the vantage of their newfound stability to vary underlying points. This is precisely what Ife has performed.
Ife notes the connection between their actual, materials stability and their concrete actions to have interaction in advocacy: “My status as artist-in-residence/employee made it easier for me to engage in difficult conversations because it lowered my fear of retaliation from the theatre, and it also gave me the ability to call certain meetings I may not have been able to call if I were engaging from the outside solely as a playwright.”
So, kudos to Ife and kudos to CRNY. The query for the remainder of us turns into, how do we supply their work ahead? More typically, how can we take part in this type of work with out the monetary funding of the Tides Foundation and what looks like a one-of-a-kind champion of an agent?
In brief: we hyperlink up. We suppose collectively, we act collectively. We set up.
Theatre employees going through the identical issues should get collectively and talk. Through dialogue, we devise a shared objective and an attendant set of methods and techniques for attaining it. From this unity and solidarity, we share sources of assorted varieties (monetary, human, mental, social, and many others), buffeting our particular person efforts. Remember, we aren’t ranging from scratch! Study is an indispensable facet of organizing efforts to maintain themselves—of labor historical past, organizing methods, historical contexts, and financial realities. The essential factor is to adapt what you study to form your effort to the specificity of the objective round which you might be organizing.