Eden & Karen — Page 2

JBroadway said: "I think Broadway61004 simply meant"unionized employment" and not "employment through the union." It strikes me as a simple case of unclear wording, as their earlier post suggests that they do understand the difference.

I don't know enough about union mechanics to take a hard stance on this, but aside from that one bit of wording, Broadway61004's point strikes me as logical. But I'll be curious to continue reading this thread for more insight on both sides."

Thank you JBroadway, yes, sorry if my wording was unclear, but I of course meant that while the union doesn't provide the jobs themselves, they know how many jobs are available and how much opportunity is or is not out there. So there's a major issue with having 51,000 members, who you refuse to let take any non-union work, when you know on average there are only approximately 17,000-19,000 union jobs a year. I completely understand wanting union members to only take union jobs--that's of course the basis of a union--but when there's such a discrepancy here between number of members and number of jobs, something has to change. So unless theatres can suddenly triple the number of jobs they have available (which we all know is completely unrealistic even had they not been closed from covid for the past year), that means they either need to reduce membership or allow their members to seek work elsewhere. Otherwise they are actively contributing to their members not being able to work. Which completely defeats the point of a union.

The discussion above of non-union employment misapprehends the situation. Unlike many unions, AEA members can and do work as actors and performers and other theatre roles (e.g., directors, choreographers, etc.) in other union employment. They also perform other collateral work within their trade (teaching, coaching, etc.) that is not typical of many union employees. And many of them do these things while employed under AEA contracts. Now that does not mean that there are not a ton of AEA members who are not finding work in the performing arts, but as noted a union does not create jobs. A more trenchant discussion is whether the union is doing anything that impairs its members from getting union employment, but make no mistake, talk of letting members work on both sides of the union divide is a fundamental non-starter and anethema to the baseline function of the union.