Bill of Rights

Earlier this week I got a distressed email from a student.  They were writing to tell me that they'd recently had a car accident while driving home from work.  The schedule was topping 80 hours per week and in the midst of that marathon they'd fallen asleep behind the wheel and hit a telephone poll.  The schedule for the next week wasn't any easier and I was being asked what they should do.

I let them know that is was reasonable to think the employer should look out for their safety.  It would be reasonable to expect that if the current schedule made travel unsafe that the schedule should change or the employer should find a way to get them home safely.  That in the event that neither of those things could happen that it would be reasonable to walk away.

Walking away from an early career gig is tough.  Students worry excessively that their reputation will be damaged in our small professional community and that a potentially good reference will be lost.  That pressure makes the decision to remove oneself from a negative situation difficult.  I tired to let this person know that I thought even if they were to lose a reference that there would be other opportunities.  It is likely that this place or this current supervisor probably wouldn't hire them again - but the community and range of opportunities are larger than one might think.

My time in summer stock - and professionally for that matter - hasn't had all that much in the way of terrible hours.  There have been overnight calls from time to time, but they were mostly about fitting things into a schedule rather than about working hour after hour.  There were a couple of really long days, but as a supervisor I always managed to get my crews reasonable time off.  When I was working in Vegas I did have several really long days strung in a row, but never in such a way that I felt really unsafe.  I had friends that worked places with unreasonable shifts.  When they told me what was going on I always found myself wondering why management wasn't building a schedule that didn't ask the unreasonable.  Theatre schedules just shouldn't have to do that.

You can't really say it isn't formative.  There are industry segments that do work this way "in the real world."  The LA film locals are trying to make it a thing in their next negotiation: Hollywood’s Grueling Hours & Drowsy-Driving Problem: Crew Members Speak Out Despite Threat To Careers

It does seem like there ought to be a solution to this for summer stock though.  That particular segment really leans on early career workers that don't have the financial security to walk or a union to look after them.  It feels like there's an opportunity for an organization like USITT, or ESET, or maybe SETC or KCACTF to establish some boundaries.

A third party organization might be able to come up with what would essentially be a "Good Housekeeping Seal" for theatre companies.  The companies could then post their compliance on their website and list it in their job postings.  The certifying organization could also maintain a directory of compliant companies that job seeking folks could search.

The certification would want to include things about working hours and time off, crew sizes, safety and training, housing and transportation.  Mostly though I think about hours.

There would need to be some kind of compliance hotline and when a company got x number of complaints against it they would lose their standing until some kind of re-certification process could be completed.

The problem here is that there is WAY more available workforce than there are gigs.  Even if all the top theatre schools in the country told their technical and design students to stay away - for every one of those folks there are five more at other schools.  I wonder if there'd be any way to get the impact the program would need.

Interesting thing: I am pretty sure all of this is actually illegal under the current law.  To consider someone an intern - legally - the services that person provides cannot be foundational to the function of the company.  In other words: if you need them in order to function then they aren't an intern - they're an employee - subject to overtime, OSHA, minimum wage.  Pretty much all these gigs, whether they call them interns or apprentices are central to the company being able to put work on stage.  Most of the companies would likely go under if they had to treat these people as staff.  I would think that would be a fairly strong motivator to treat them better.