I'm sorry, Zeno, but I strongly disagree with your assessment. Yes, stage hands do a lot of their work in the evening, on weekends, at the expense of being with their families. But that's the nature of the game. The same is true for the members of an orchestra, our police and firemen, hospital workers, etc. Yet they don't get paid almost 10 times more than other people in their profession, just because they work weekend and holidays, even though most of them are probably very good at their job, too. To me this is just another example of a union wielding WAYYY to much muscle, when their is no need for that. Unions are there to protect the workers, not to gouge the companies for whom they work. And this is a case of gouging. As far as unionizing piano tuners, let's not even think about it. Who are you going to negotiate with? Who are you going to go on strike against? Just my two cents worth. Wim -----Original Message----- From: Zeno Wood <zeno.wood at gmail.com> To: pianotech <pianotech at ptg.org> Sent: Tue, Dec 28, 2010 3:45 am Subject: [pianotech] $450, 000 Salaries For Stagehands. No, really. $450, 000 Salaries For Stagehands Good for them! IATSE is a good union and I work with some of its members. Too bad we don't have some of that bargaining power. I bet that those stagehands named in the article (which, by the way, I find unethical - it's basically targeting them and inviting harassment) work a huge amount of overtime, evenings and nights, holidays, weekends, long long days, etc., and thus don't get to see their families at those times. I would also wager that they have a huge amount of experience and are very good at their jobs. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101228/5c8926ee/attachment-0001.htm>
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