By the Strike the Stage Organizing Committee
[To read the full and original version of the June 2025 Edition of Strike the Stage, click here.]
June marks one year since the first edition of Strike the Stage (formerly Strike the Set) was written and distributed in order to make a humble beginning toward forming an industry-wide political organization run by and for workers in the live event industry. Since then, we’ve made modest progress in terms of distributing copies of the paper, but very hopeful progress when it comes to the quality of organization and consciousness among our growing number of readers. Last year we struggled with regularlity: no new editions were released for a few months of the 2024 season, and those who received copies didn’t receive them regularly—a problem made worse by the temporary and irregular nature of our work. Achieving better regularity and reliability will be one of our priorities going into our second year.
The point of this newsletter is to provide our coworkers with political education and information which is based in the real conditions of our industry in order to show how political questions (in other words, questions of power) are directly connected to what we already experience every day at work. This is why we expose the abuses we suffer and who is responsible for them; who is on our side and who is not; what the short-term and long-term solutions are and what they are not. Without knowing these things, we can never hope to unite our industry and struggle collectively for better conditions. No other organization which claims to represent us goes to the lengths Strike the Stage does to reach our coworkers, learn from their ideas, and implement their suggestions, all while being run exclusively by workers in our industry.
As part of this struggle for power, we struggle for improved working conditions and pay, against the continually worsening exploitation we experience at the hands of promoters like Live Nation, stingy and politically reactionary production company owners like those of MediaQuest and Flyspace, venue operators like PromoWest, and corporations like the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and Live Nation which are all of the above. These first struggles and protests will start small, but they need standards to work toward.
To this end, we present in this article the main points of our draft program for minimum working standards and pay for all workers in the events industry. We would like our readers to help spread the word about these demands as much as possible among our coworkers: by word of mouth, or by sharing this paper with trusted coworkers. IATSE contracts are notorious for including financial penalties that pay overtime but do not actually change working conditions (for instance, West Coast film crews may work 16+ hour days despite steep overtime pay). Our demands include financial penalties, but the primary enforcement of working standards is the threat of an immediate work stoppage if they are infringed. The only way to truly implement this program is by organizing, supporting each other, and fighting for it.
The following is only a point of reference that we hope to refine over time and we welcome all suggestions for improvements from other stagehands and event production workers. A full document that further explains the points of our program and lists more demands not mentioned here can be found at strikethestagearchive.wordpress.com.
Pay: We want a $30/hr industry-wide minimum wage for general stagehand labor at small to medium-sized events, and $40/hr for any event above 10,000-person attendance. No temporary worker on any live event should be making less than $25/hr. This includes laborers at companies like All Occasions or event operations workers at Flyspace.
Day minimums: We want 5-hour minimums per day, 4-hour minimums per shift to be standard across the live events industry. (Ex: load-in and out (no show call) pays 8 hour mini. Only working load-in but not out or vice versa pays 5 hour mini)
Daily OT, not weekly: Time and a half after 8 hours worked in a day (not necessarily consecutively), double time after 10 and triple time after 12. No shifts longer than 12 consecutive hours including meal breaks are justifiable. Time and one-half pay for work between midnight and 8 am.
Breaks: The nature of our industry means that sometimes we work through the 15-minute breaks that workers in other industries might get every 2 and 1/2 hours. This does not mean we don’t need breaks. Paid meal breaks must happen every 5 hours, else we get paid a steep financial penalty, or we walk off the job. If we have to skip a 15 minute break in between meal breaks, we get paid 1 hour additional straight-time pay.
No more short turnarounds: A 10 to 12-hour minimum rest period between shifts must be industry standard, regardless of whether these are with outs and ins with different companies or the IATSE hiring hall. To make this more possible, we need a streamlined unemployment process for stage-hands and event workers to offset the need to hoard for the off-season.
Hazard pay for weather: When events take place outside, time and a half hazard pay must be standard for very hot or cold conditions and working in the rain. Accommodations like shade, accessible bathrooms and electrolyte-drinks must be available in hot weather, or handwarmers and warm up centers in cold weather. Work outside over 90ºF, rain under 45º, temperatures under 25ºF, and severe weather watches mustpay double-time.
No more 1099 classification: The law excludes practically all stagehands and most A/V technicians from independent contractor status, meaning workers filing as 1099 are being unjustly barred from certain rights and forced to pay unreasonably high tax rates.
Protection from abuse: Abusive and incorrigible men like Kris Köhler should not be free to continue their abuse and drive women and queer people out of our industry. We want all violent offenders formally blacklisted and publicly denounced by anyone who could hire them.
Strike the Stage belongs to the workers and everyone who would like to can do something to help us. Anyone who would like to write an article, however short, about something related to our industry (independent research, ideas about how to change things, or an exposure of a certain abuse by management or ownership at work) is welcome to submit original writing personally, or to our email address. We also need useful and verifiable information about inner workings of different groups, labor, and capital (equipment, warehouses, etc) to be able to plan actions to struggle for better conditions. If you don’t feel sure about sharing the paper with someone, you can still talk to your coworkers about the ideas shared here.
