Average stagehand at Lincoln Center in NYC makes $290K a year — Page 2

I cannot comment on IATSE, but I refuse to let anyone say AEA is tearing down the industry, and I would be hard pressed to believe that they are any worse than an automotive union.

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"If no one actor is "essential" (and by that I mean irreplaceable), then the stage hands sure as hell shouldn't be. No stage hand or carpenter has ever sold a ticket."

You are, as huskcharmer aptly put it in an earlier post, comparing apples and kumquats. Obviously, stagehands have nothing to do with selling tickets, but they have everything to do with safety, which to my mind, is far more important that selling tickets. The fact that you believe this:

"Those guys are taking advantage of union reg loopholes that pay extra OT, and other perks, when it would clearly be much much cheaper to have 2 people work half that amount each. They are abusing the system."

makes it very clear to me that you don't understand this particular situation. There's a lot of "if"s, "maybe"s and "probably"s in your arguments, and you have a grudge against unions, besides. You simply don't want to hear the truths that BosBroad and I are telling you, for it doesn't fit it with the way you demonize unions.

Nobody wants to work 80 to 100 hours a week for weeks on end. It might be cheaper to hire two guys, but in this case (which I have personal knowledge of and you don't) it wouldn't be safer or more efficient - so in the long run, it wouldn't be cheaper.

It isn't comparable to other businesses. Every show is unique and protypical. The inner workings of each theater is complex, as are the business relationships involved. It takes many years to figure out the ins and outs. These guys are well-paid because of their experience, sacrifice and dedication to the theater. I can guarantee you they'd be happier working fewer hours, making less money and spending more time with their families.

Updated On: 12/28/10 at 02:12 PM

They work many, many events in a year, back to back, and work very long hours, back-breaking, exhausting work, for weeks on end. It's high-stress and tough on the body. They don't have time with their families, they work holidays.

These posts are just as much a turn-off as the anti-union ones. As others have said, there are countless Americans who do back breaking work with long hours, and they don't make $300,000 a year, despite being just as specialized and high risk in many cases. I don't care if Lincoln Center pays their employees $300,000 a year, it's their prerogative, but don't suggest stagehands deserve that income simply because it's a difficult job. It's an insult to hundreds of thousands of American laborers with comparable training, work and risk, who are barely scraping by.

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I'm not saying stagehands should be paid less, I'm saying I think the pity argument is counter-productive, because people aren't going to feel bad that propmasters making $300,000 a year can't join their families for summer in the Hamptons before their children go back to private school. It reminds me of that Chicago Tribune article where the college professor and his doctor wife complained that if Obama didn't extend the Bush tax cuts, they might have to cut the full time nanny's hours and their daughter's art classes. Even if it's only a handful of employees, they're still in the top 2% of American earners.

Defend a $120 tomato like you did a $120 theatre ticket and then I'll concede that unionizing and paying everyone more is the easier solution than just cutting back on the sob stories to defend the fact some of these stagehands are overpaid.

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ummm i am sure the 40k that that stagehand made was NOT on a broadway stage. He was probably at bucks county playhouse and again, he almost made as much as a teacher making 40k a year.

sooo no one wants to talk about how much extra they make mopping a stage every week huh...knew it..

I am actually somewhere in the middle on this. Like ghostlight2 (a fascinating name) I, too, am in a position to know something about this issue. One minor correction: A stagehand employed on a Broadway show full-time, doing no other work, can indeed make six figures, depending upon their status and which show they are working on. I am including overtime, which is all but inevitable on long running shows. But most don't, and that is true.

I have no problem with stagehands making a decent salary. As has been pointed out, they are skilled tradesmen (and women) and have to catch work where they can. In that respect they are like an actor or musician. But like actors and musicians, this is the industry they chose. It is a volatile industry with a high turnover rate. If you want security, you are much better off choosing another profession. Almost any other profession, in fact.

The idea that it can be a 'very dangerous job' is a bit of a stretch, at least for most of them. It is certainly less dangerous than many other jobs which pay considerably less money. I'm not saying that to demean them in any way, and there is always some risk to any job, I suppose, but to imply that career ending injuries are happening on a regular basis is just not the case.

Are Broadway tickets too high? Absolutely. Are unions at fault for some of this? Definitely. Are producers more at fault? Definitely. But the complexities of the situation are simply too...well, complex.....to hope to resolve on a chat board.

These guys operate massive lifts and fly systems which hang tons of equipment over the heads of stagefulls of actors every night; they control thousands of volts of live electricity, elevators, turntables and float tons of equipment on-and-off stages full of performers. At any moment, one bad move, one bad decision and people can literally die.

The IA guys are worth every penny they are paid.

And just like a doctor (who you'd like to be fully trained before he cuts out your appendix) crew members spend years in their craft before theyare placed in positions that require those life-and-death-decisions.

Next time you're in the theater, look up and consider who you want rigging the stuff above you.

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MassofMen, since you've brought it up twice, why don't you tell us your stage-mopping horror stories?

Updated On: 12/29/10 at 10:03 AM

Ghostlight2, right on. Thank you for your comments.

Lost in this discussion is a fundamental lack of understanding of the hows and whys of working as a stagehand. Most stagehands don't work anywhere 8 hours a day, five days a week. They do a load in here, a load out there, and so forth. They are paid a premium because they don't work in the same place all the time and may be out of work for long periods because there isn't anything going on to require all but the house staff to do the work.

Stagehands working a broadway musical show during the load-in and technical rehearsals are working 80-100 hour weeks: get to the theatre at 8am, do a work call until noon. Cast comes in at 1 and rehearses until six, return at seven and continue rehearsals until 11:30 or midnight, go home and do it all over for weeks on end.

When the technical rehearsals are over, and the show is running, those same stagehands are only working 32-40 hours a week, a show call comprising time for a preset, plus the running time of the show and any time after the show to do any necessary cleaning, land bags on the pin rail, collect mics or whatever.

These stagehands working the shows are the lucky few because they got a show call. That show call only lasts as long as the show runs. That theatre once the show closes and the production is loaded out, is dark until the next show is ready to go in there -- no stagehands are getting paid because the theatre is dark. The other hands that help put the show in move on to other piecemeal work from gig to gig.

For all the complaints about how a very small number of hands make large salaries (for which they live in those theatres), and how the cost of labor is what drives the cost of Broadway ticket prices, no one here has dealt with the fact that labor is at the mercy of the creative team and how well organized they are. If creatives aren't organized, that's going to cost money. If fitting the set into the theatre interferes with lighting or sound, and that needs to change, that requires hands to move those lights or modify those sets or move those speakers. Changes to the sound or lighting or set or automation require a lot of work and time and expertise. Then there are changes to the show itself that require rehearsals and that takes time and technicians as well.

There is a complicated vortex governing ticket prices, and as long as the public wants bigger and more complicated shows, the more its going to cost in terms of labor to build and run those shows. People want big productions with big casts and full orchestras. That costs money too.

No one here's mentioned the trend in pricing where the producers of shows like Jersey Boys jockey the available tickets to boost their average ticket price. They even have a sign backstage listing their average ticket price in whatever city they're touring in. I'm not suggesting they're not entitled to make money, but by the same token I'm unwilling to accept the commentary of some who've posted that somehow a few house positions that are statistical outliers are somehow demonstrative of the nature of the cost of stagehand labor generally, or necessarily have anything to do with the veracity of Trade Unionism and the rules of which are their to protect the workers. You have a 40 hour week because of Unions. You have workplace safety because of Unions.

There are work rules to protect the stagehands and penalties in the form of overtime pay to keep producers from running roughshot over the labor -- for example penalties for working late late hours that give less than X number of hours between the time they got off the night before and the time they start the next day which become particularly important when crews are overworked and tired and not as focused as they might otherwise be. They are there before the actors arrive and after they leave. These are easily manipulated into suggestions that the stagehands are getting overpaid when in fact the hands would rather go home, eat in their own home and get a full night's sleep. They are there to penalize the disorganization on the part of production rather than the enrichment of the stagehands -- after working so many hours, Uncle Sam takes most of the overtime and the penalties are in reality, blood money.

Updated On: 12/29/10 at 08:19 PM

I always find it amusing when people fall back on the "No [insert job title here] deserves to make that kind of money!" argument.

Who exactly gets to determine somebody else's salary? This topic tends to come up a lot when professional athletes' salaries are made public - my response "Hey, if somebody offered me $5million a year to play a game, my only question would be "Where do I sign?"

An old mentor of mine once told me, "You never get paid what you're worth, you only get paid what you negotiate." In these cases the contracts are the result of an agreement worked out between the producers/theaters and the stagehands. All these figures were mutually agreed to, and come as no surprise to anyone who can read a contract. These stories get pushed out every now and again, usually when another contract is about to be negotiated. That's what PR people do - they create "good guys" and "bad guys".

Does a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon deserve to make 10X as much money as an Emergency Room trauma surgeon in Detroit? No, certainly not. That is merely a function of how much money there is in each community and business -

To the point at hand - yes, stagehands work hard all over the country, and make different rates. I am currently working full time on a B'way show, and my end of year pay stub shows me that in 2010 my pre-tax earnings were in the ball park of $85 - 90k.

Did I work 2.5x harder than my college roommate, also a stagehand, who is full time in a regional theater in the Midwest? Probably not - but I know the theater scene in that town and the only ones who make close to six figures are the General Directors and upper ups.

I have another college roommate who is currently on movie crews in LA. He makes about 4X the money I make working 6 months out of the year - does he work 8X harder than I do? No - there's just that much more money in Hollywood.

The idea that anyone gets paid what they "deserve" is absolutely ludicrous, and certainly not what a capitalist system is based on. In any field, large markets have higher salaries - (they also tend to have higher living expenses - my standard of living in the NYC area is about the same as both my roommates living in LA area and the Midwest.)

Doctors are good examples - those who choose to go into the more lucrative areas of practice in high end areas make more money. It's not that the Hollywood plastic surgeon is a "better" doctor than the trauma surgeon in Detroit - one could even argue that the trauma surgeon is a more valuable member of society in general. It certainly isn't MY place to tell the plastic surgeon they shouldn't earn the money they earn.

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this entire thread has been a fascinating read for me. i had no idea about so much that has been mentioned. the amount of knowledge regarding the matter that some of you have is so impressive. (both sides of the discussion) much respect. and thank you for breaking it all down for a chorus boy like me.