Professional Performers

Performing artists face working conditions quite unlike any other group of working people, characterized by no security, sporadic employment, multiple employers, low income, intense competition and frequent rejection — as well as excitement and glamour and, occasionally, fame and rich rewards. This paper examines the employment conditions that set this group of professional workers apart from others, and examines trends in the performing arts occupations that challenge the unions that represent performers.

Employment and Earnings

Although performing arts occupations can be extremely rewarding for a few, most performing artists experience poor employment prospects and uncertain financial rewards. There is a very large disparity in wages within each performer category. For example, while 8% of all radio and TV announcers earned more than $50,440 in 1997, 22% earned less than $11,960. A similar pattern is found among singers, composers and related workers, as well as among dancers and choreographers. It is evident that only a minority of performing artists ever move into the top income brackets. Far fewer achieve the type of stardom and wealth some people associate with the performing arts.

This point is underscored by the data compiled in 1994 by the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Arts from the decennial census, which demonstrates that the performing arts are characterized by wide spread unemployment and under-employment. In 1990, only 21% of male dancers and 29% of male musicians were employed full time for a full year. The numbers are even lower for female dancers and musicians, 16% and 15% respectively. The evidence of underemployment is even more glaring when one compares these statistics with those of all professional workers labor force. For example, 64% of all male professionals worked full-time for a full year in 1990, as did 39.5% of all female professionals.

Performing artists often receive wages that are highly contingent on the size of their employer, the industry and the sector of the industry in which they are working. Union contracts for Broadway actors, for example, called for a minimum weekly salary of $1,040 in 1997, whereas off-Broadway union performers were paid minimums of between $400 and $625 per week, depending on a theatre’s seating capacity. Union performers on tour also receive per diem allowances, travel and lodging costs. Union actors in regional theatre companies earned minimums of $375-$600 per week (also dependent on the size of the theatre), while their colleagues in motion picture earned a minimum of $1,942 for a five-day work week (Occupational Outlook Handbook, 1998-99 Edition).

Musicians experience even more widely divergent earnings, with symphony orchestras paying between $22,000 and $100,000 in the 1999-2000 season. Those creating music for television, movies or for recordings earned between $200 and $400 per "service," typically defined as three hours of work; that includes rehearsals and/or performances. In accordance with collective agreements and certain provisions of copyright law, many performers receive additional "residual" payments for the use or reuse of movie or sound recordings. These "residual" payments are often far greater then the actual wages earned.

Finally, the earnings of dancers and choreographers also are determined largely by place and type of performance. Ballet and modern dance performers receive an average of $693 per week, plus an additional allowance for room and board when the company is touring. Dancers employed on movie sets earn $500 per day of filming. Choreographers earn a bit more, typically $1,000 or more per week in professional companies, $30,000 for choreographing a Broadway production, $3,400 for a five-day film production and $8,000 to $12,500 for television assignments lasting fourteen days (U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook 1998-99 Edition).

It must be stressed that such salaries are usually minimums set in collectively bargained contracts. Many performers negotiate for higher amounts. One must also keep in mind that these salaries are no indication of annual income since so few performers work year-round.

Union Organization

Professional performing artists are represented by a variety of different unions. The American Guild of Musical Artists, for example, represents dancers employed by ballet and modern dance companies, as well as opera singers and choristers. The American Federation of Musicians represents instrumental musicians in all styles of music and all venues. Actors, dancers and singers performing in the live or "legitimate" theatre, as well as stage managers are represented by the Actors’ Equity Association. Sports, news and other announcers, radio and television performers and sound recording artists, other than instrumentalists (e.g. vocalists), are represented by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). The Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) represents all performers, except instrumental musicians, working in the film industry and made for television productions. SAG and AFTRA share responsibilities for representing actors, singers and dancers in commercials.

As the above paragraph implies, many performers can and do hold multiple union memberships, making it difficult for observers to get an accurate picture of overall union membership. Most available information, however, suggests that union representation of professional performing artists is high and growing.

Few professional fields match the performing arts in experiencing the impact of technological changes, which modify working conditions considerably, alter traditional employment relations and erode many employment opportunities. It is to such issues that we now turn.

New Challenges and other Changes

Although the entertainment industry has grown enormously over the past several years, the benefits of this growth for performing artists have been mixed. The live commercial theatre, for example, while enjoying a sizable increase in box office receipts over the past twenty years, has not experienced an equivalent growth in employment, the number of productions mounted each year or in the size of its audience. In fact, just the opposite has occurred. New York’s Broadway grossed $498 million in box office receipts in 1997, compared with only $143 million in 1980; yet the number of new productions was cut nearly in half over the same period, from 67 in 1980 to only 36 in 1997 (Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1997 and 1999 Edition). Touring productions of Broadway shows attracted an additional 750 million in 1997 compared to approximately 200 million in 1980 but, again, the number of shows on the road was less. Similarly opera and symphony orchestras have experienced declining or, at best, level attendance in recent years, while gross revenue from all sources has grown markedly.

Such revenue growth is tempered by increasing production costs, which can be attributed to such things as rent, advertising, salaries, and royalties. The net result for the performer seems to be a stagnant if not declining job market. Though technology has played a role in such venues, its effect over the years has been far less than in other areas where performers are employed.

Rapidly evolving technology has had a devastating effect on musicians, who since the advent of talking pictures, sound recordings and synthesizers, have had to adapt to a dizzying array of changes and massive job losses, as users of music replaced live musicians with recorded, or sampled versions of their work, or synthesized and digitally produced music sometimes created by technicians and other non-musicians. New technologies such as MP3 and internet companies like Napster have made it possible to vastly expand the distribution of recorded music while avoiding payments to the performers who created it.

Digital technology has caused major upheavals in Hollywood, as well, as it is introduced into virtually every aspect of the film-making process. As in the recording industry, the ease and speed of reproduction of digitized images creates both conflict and concern regarding property rights and residuals. Visual images can now be widely distributed over the World Wide Web and also can be more easily transferred into a variety of media, raising serious issues of compensation for the artists who create the underlying content.

New digital technology is also providing a common base for traditionally disparate industries in information, communications and entertainment. This convergence of corporate organizations active in the assembling and creation of content and in its distribution has led to the growth of huge global media conglomerates. Touchstone Films and Hollywood Pictures, for example, are both owned by Disney. While both Touchstone and Hollywood have their own production, legal affairs and story departments, distribution and marketing of their films is handled by the parent company, which also owns the ABC cable and broadcast system as well as other media companies world wide. This kind of integration allows for coordinated marketing, promotion and exploitation of the performer’s work across a wide spectrum of the media, but it also increases the need for powerful representation if the performer is to realize a fair share.

In sum, growing technological and other changes in the entertainment industries have had disparate effects on performing artists, creating new jobs opportunities and increased income for some, while destroying the careers of others. How are the unions that represent performing artists responding to these challenges?

The American Federation of Musicians initially attempted to have its members boycott venues that were integrating prerecorded music and synthesizers into their operations. Later it broadened its efforts to include consumer boycotts. These efforts failed, however, and the AFM switched gears, accepted the inevitability of the new technology and negotiated higher pay rates for performers utilizing it (Gray and Seeber, 1996). In the 1940s, it negotiated with the recording industries to provide for a Music Performance Trust Fund that uses employer contributions to underwrite free musical events across the country, thus promoting the employment of musicians and use of live music. In addition, it negotiated the AFM Theatrical and Television, Motion Picture Special Payments Fund and the Phonograph Record Manufacturers Special Payments Fund, which provide payments to musicians from the sale of their recorded work. In the last decade it lobbied for changes in US Copyright law so that musicians could receive royalties from the use made of their works that are digitally recorded. All of these programs represent pioneering efforts by the AFM to secure for musicians a share in the increased revenue created by new technology that exploits their work. Other talent unions have followed an agenda, creating new ways in which their members can share the rewards of technological advances, while fighting to protect them from the negative repercussions of such innovation, i.e., displacement.

Accomplishing this requires more than collective bargaining — it also requires constant lobbying to reform outdated copyright laws, as technological changes make it easier and cheaper to pirate, counterfeit or bootleg the performer’s work.

Performing arts unions also have lobbied to expand government support of the arts at the Federal, state and local levels, arguing that access to the arts is as important as access to education and other cultural riches in a modern democratic society. Indeed, it was the performer unions and their allies in the labor movement that provided the major effort to achieve government support for the arts in the US in the 1960's.

Technological changes in the twentieth century posed many severe challenges for performers. Through their unions they have devised creative ways to adapt to these technologies while protecting their professions and themselves.

Sources Cited

Ellis, Diane C. and John C. Beresford. Trends in Artist Occupations: 1970-1990, Washington, D.C., National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division Report No. 29, 1994.

Gray, Lois S. and Ronald Seeber. "The Industry and the Unions: An Overview," pp. 1-49 in Under the Stars: Essays on Labor Relations in Arts and Entertainment, Lois S. Gray and Ronald Seeber (eds.) Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1996.

National Endowment for the Arts. Artists in the Work Force: Employment and Earnings, 1970-1990, Washington, D.C., National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division Report No. 37, 1996.

Netzer, Dick and Ellen Parker. Dancemakers, Washington, D.C., National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division Report No. 28, 1993.

Richardson, Charley. The Information Revolution: A Union Perspective, Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO, Publication No. 97-1, 1997.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. National Industry-Occupation Employment Matrix (http://stats.bls.gov/asp/oep/nioem/empiohm.asp), 1998.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Occupational Outlook Handbook, 1998-99 Edition, Bulletin 2500, Washington D.C., Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1977 and 1999 Editions.