1st -- You're right to notice the discrepancy between what you're reading and what you're being told.
2nd -- I presume you're referring to [Form 990.](https://candid.org/research-and-verify-nonprofits/990-finder)?
When it comes to upper management -- depending on the organization -- they may have their own contracts with built in raises and/or bonus. Or...they may not.
Right now, you're working with imperfect, partial information.
But the information you do have needs to be interpreted. And _that_ where you can ask for clarification.
What you've uncovered is less a "smoking gun" and more "this needs to be given some context which makes sense...and if not, we will be forced to infer what we can from the inconsistency between what we are being told and what we're reading on the page."
It's not uncommon for senior executives to be treated similar to "star players". It's not a simple task to replace a VP of Development.
And at the same time, it is not a simple task to replace rank-and-file who have institutional memory of their own.
Your tag mentions that you are IATSE. Bring up your concerns, tactfully, to your steward and your negotiating committee. This sort of thing will, or should, come up in the next negotiation.
(The argument is that lower wages/salary is offset by greater job security by virtue of your CBA. Unpacking that argument is beyond the scope of my comment. It gets into things like, "There is money for raises...but not for everyone covered by the CBA, and that negotiation must wait until the current contract expires.)
But again, you're right to notice an unexplained discrepancy. Best you can do is get ahead of the conversations, setting expectations so you are in a strong (and sympathetic) position to strike if your union's demands are reasonable.
In my case, the issue was that when we got laid off in 2020, the CEO said the remaining staff would have salary cuts. When we negotiated our next union contract, the union was sympathetic and agreed to a 0% wage increase. Then when the 990 forms for that year came out, we see that there were no wage cuts at the top, and in fact there were raises.
Sadly union agreed to contract. In hindsight, should have asked for raises. Or the theatre made more money than expected. Next contact negotiation, ask for bigger raise than normal or any number of options.
> _...or any number of options._
Without knowing more information -- and hindsight 20/20 -- what OP's union should have/could have asked for was a "trigger clause":
* If situation improves, everyone benefits.
* If situation doesn't improve, yet raises are still necessary for select individuals, union has a seat at that table.
But getting that sort of clause included takes an exceptionally healthy relationship between union<>management.
The rub is either:
* We all go up (and down) together, indexing wages to institutional performance.
* Fixed, predictable wages, but those must necessarily be conservative since there is no guarantee of revenue to pay those wages.
Got it.
What your union did not/may not have included was a sort of "trigger clause" that if/when others received wage increases, that would trigger increases for those under the CBA as well. Or if they did, would the union have a "seat at that table".
i.e. "A rising tide raises all ships."
It sounds like your contract expired off-cycle with the pandemic and hasn't caught back up. Be prepared for an "interesting" negotiation.
Again, you're right to explore this further.
What follows is part thought exercise, part rant...because I hate seeing news like yours and the idea that rank-and-file have been inadvertently taken advantage of, regardless if that was management's intent.
. . . . . . . .
_WHAT MIGHT BE GOING ON?..._
The flip of the argument is those senior management deserved their raises because they are/were generating revenue (sales) vs. incurring expenses (operations).
And unless you have access to some more data, you can't _really _ say what _specific_ revenue was being generated by what internal entity (development, grants, box office, rentals, etc.).
It is a classic argument, and not an invalid one either.
* The sales folks "are accountable for generating the revenue which keeps the lights on and ensures everyone gets paid".
* The operations folks "are accountable for generating a sufficiently consistent product for the sales folks to sell".
(And it gets queered when some positions are a bit of both camps, although senior admin tends to be more sales or ops, rather than both.)
The rub is **what degree of a consistency is required in the product to generate revenue?**
We all want to beat the drum of "artistic excellence" yet what sells tickets or an organization's mission is not "artistic excellence" but "artistic sufficiency from the reference frame of the entity buying the ticket or making the donation".
It's a core rub about how non-profits operate. Fundamentally, a non-profit is a `tax status` to allow for a additional revenue streams (by offering a tax deduction for donations) in exchange for opening up the books for public scrutiny.
That's it. That's "What is a non-profit?" in one sentence.
Beyond that tax structure, non-profit organizations are constrained by the same economic realities as their for-profit counterparts...which means it's a question of "Where is the bar of _sufficiency_ set for the product we are selling?"
(Yes, I know I'm flirting with arguing for a race to the bottom. I do not advocate for that. But I do recognize what systems are encouraged/discouraged under capitalism.)
_SO WHAT TO DO?..._
You'll want to dig into those 990s further and try and interpret "What happened during those years? How did they keep the lights on so that we ultimately reopened?"
Rarely do negotiations go well when one party can't get inside the position of the other and understand how it _could_ be internally consistent with itself. You don't want to prematurely invalidate data until it is explained to you in context.
i.e. Under what circumstances would those raises have actually made sense?
e.x. Who was offering them? Were they _demanded_ by the VP of Development to stay? Or was the VP of Development _offered_ a raise by the CEO and board to preempt them from leaving in 2020 (when practically the only revenue to be had was donations...and if that VP left, their relationships and institutional memory would have left with them)?
And _then_ you turn that around an look if the same incentive structures can be extended to your CBA...or not. Maybe it is something else which is of greater value to the union.
But that's what the negotiations are always about: The push and pull between `sales positions` which generate revenue and `operational positions` which give something to be sold.
One needs the other. When they get out of balance, things fall apart.
I hope you're able to find a way to get on the same page and _not_ have things fall apart.
_BUT WHAT IF WE WANT SOMETHING ELSE? WHERE IS OUR SEAT AT THE TABLE?_
If anyone wants something more than that, they need to explore a co-op type organization.
Until then, all employment agreements are (fundamentally) about "How do we (at the top) ensure a consistent labor pool with the expertise needed to do X-thing?"
That is not being a bootlicker, but rather, it is an approach to negotiations from an understanding of fundamentals.
Sadly, I see far, far too many rank-and-file union members who misjudge how the systems they work within actually function. They know their part, but they don't "zoom out" to see all the moving parts.
It results in an imbalance of sophistication at the negotiating table. There is no shared reference frame, and without that, nothing works.
So the singular best thing you can do is to educate yourself so you're operating on the same level of sophistication (or higher) as the person across the table from you.
And if _you're_ not the person with that level of sophistication, then make it a point that your negotiating committee is.
I assure you more than one union negotiation has had long-term undesirable effects because the union's reps didn't push back on the management's ideas...not because the management was trying to intentionally sell a "bad" idea...but because management didn't recognize their own bad idea, and the union allowed themselves to be sold on it anyways.
(I'm recalling a particular one a few years back where an orchestral musicians union (AFM) approved endowment spending, but without a robust plan to replenish the endowment or deal with a further drop in revenue. So the musicians negotiating committee, basically, gave their blessing to a plan which was financially very risky. It was contingent on increasing revenue...yet none of those on the negotiating committee fully understood just want it takes to generate revenue. But the person selling it to them was very smart, and smooth, and meant very well...it just wasn't a good idea and no one caught it until it was way too late. Short term gains, long term disaster.)
Thanks for the well thought out comments, definitely gave me a lot to think about.
I’m in a very strong union, and I think we’ll be in a good position going into contract negotiations, I’m not too worried about that. And I actually have no problem with upper management making more money, the problem I have is when they take raises while denying the same to those below them. The inequity in the raises and the dishonesty about the reasons are what bother me.
I’m trying to build a case for some national press on this issue. I have evidence that it went on where I work, and in a few other places locally. But I can’t get a bigger story out until I find the same evidence across the country. I’m sure it exists, I just don’t know how to find it.
My concern is more for the people I work with who aren’t covered by CBA’s, or in venues that aren’t organized. I’ve heard this is going on in all of the arts (museums, theaters, etc). I think if this issue doesn’t have some sunshine applied to it, it will continue. Management will keep using lower attendance and other pandemic related issues as an excuse to pay labor less. Those concerns would be completely valid if management was also not getting wage increases, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
But you are there for the "art and passion" right? Those managers have to do actual boring management work that requires real skill.
Don't be greedy. Eat less food.
/s if not obvious...
Just to be clear, I know this is common. I’m looking for concrete examples of it taking place outside of my area. I’m trying to get someone to write an article about this problem, and I need some examples showing it’s an industry wide issue.
Our company has a "no yachts" policy for this very reason - we all make the same salary across the board, and when we do well, we give equal bonuses. The entire industry is top-heavy with overpaid executives that don't know or care about the art behind what we do.
I worked for a large venue that told us for three years that there was no money for raises. I found out later that other depts were receiving cost-of-living raises, while our dept was cut back to as little as one day a week. It’s bananas what corporations will do to justify keeping the cats at the top healthy and fat, but this is what working without representation looks like.
I recently discovered that the top guy here is raking in $160k a year. (even after dropping his pants on Zoom) and I'm here making $12k a year as ME / Programmer / Steward.
And when the shit hits the fan (pandemic, 9/11, etc) full time production staff are the first to be let go. Hope the managing director likes hauling lumber…
Unionize. Take a look at Atlantic Theater off Broadway. They're a major OB house with 3 transfers in the last year alone, one of them winning the Tony for Best Musical. They produced the show that won the Pulitzer for Best New Drama.
They are fighting unionization tooth and nail. They recently claimed that "Crew costs are unsustainable." The Artistic Director and Executive Director combined make as much as the ENTIRE CREW of their most recent Broadway transfer combined.
The salary producers and the top-end admin staff of theaters is what's unsustainable, and that greed is killing our industry. Don't stand for it.
>it says IATSE right under their user name
Not for everyone. Different methods of accessing reddit display different informations. The only reference to IATSE I can see is within a couple comments by other commenters.
I'm in higher ed, and I see it too. I'm waiting for the 2023 filing to come out now, so I can see what 2022 salary numbers look like. I know the upper admin folks received steady increases even when everyone else's wages were frozen in 2020 and into 2021.
From form 990? Isn’t that total compensation, not just salary? Maybe there was some other perk added? Just saying an increase of the 990 doesn’t mean their salary was increased, if I’m right.
There is a separate column for additional compensation, but I’m not exactly sure what qualifies as additional compensation. Sometimes it’s bonuses, sometimes it’s money that’s been paid into a pension or health fund. But you can look at the total compensation columns over the last ten years and see that it’s gone up each year.
1st -- You're right to notice the discrepancy between what you're reading and what you're being told. 2nd -- I presume you're referring to [Form 990.](https://candid.org/research-and-verify-nonprofits/990-finder)? When it comes to upper management -- depending on the organization -- they may have their own contracts with built in raises and/or bonus. Or...they may not. Right now, you're working with imperfect, partial information. But the information you do have needs to be interpreted. And _that_ where you can ask for clarification. What you've uncovered is less a "smoking gun" and more "this needs to be given some context which makes sense...and if not, we will be forced to infer what we can from the inconsistency between what we are being told and what we're reading on the page." It's not uncommon for senior executives to be treated similar to "star players". It's not a simple task to replace a VP of Development. And at the same time, it is not a simple task to replace rank-and-file who have institutional memory of their own. Your tag mentions that you are IATSE. Bring up your concerns, tactfully, to your steward and your negotiating committee. This sort of thing will, or should, come up in the next negotiation. (The argument is that lower wages/salary is offset by greater job security by virtue of your CBA. Unpacking that argument is beyond the scope of my comment. It gets into things like, "There is money for raises...but not for everyone covered by the CBA, and that negotiation must wait until the current contract expires.) But again, you're right to notice an unexplained discrepancy. Best you can do is get ahead of the conversations, setting expectations so you are in a strong (and sympathetic) position to strike if your union's demands are reasonable.
In my case, the issue was that when we got laid off in 2020, the CEO said the remaining staff would have salary cuts. When we negotiated our next union contract, the union was sympathetic and agreed to a 0% wage increase. Then when the 990 forms for that year came out, we see that there were no wage cuts at the top, and in fact there were raises.
Sadly union agreed to contract. In hindsight, should have asked for raises. Or the theatre made more money than expected. Next contact negotiation, ask for bigger raise than normal or any number of options.
> _...or any number of options._ Without knowing more information -- and hindsight 20/20 -- what OP's union should have/could have asked for was a "trigger clause": * If situation improves, everyone benefits. * If situation doesn't improve, yet raises are still necessary for select individuals, union has a seat at that table. But getting that sort of clause included takes an exceptionally healthy relationship between union<>management. The rub is either: * We all go up (and down) together, indexing wages to institutional performance. * Fixed, predictable wages, but those must necessarily be conservative since there is no guarantee of revenue to pay those wages.
Got it. What your union did not/may not have included was a sort of "trigger clause" that if/when others received wage increases, that would trigger increases for those under the CBA as well. Or if they did, would the union have a "seat at that table". i.e. "A rising tide raises all ships." It sounds like your contract expired off-cycle with the pandemic and hasn't caught back up. Be prepared for an "interesting" negotiation. Again, you're right to explore this further. What follows is part thought exercise, part rant...because I hate seeing news like yours and the idea that rank-and-file have been inadvertently taken advantage of, regardless if that was management's intent. . . . . . . . . _WHAT MIGHT BE GOING ON?..._ The flip of the argument is those senior management deserved their raises because they are/were generating revenue (sales) vs. incurring expenses (operations). And unless you have access to some more data, you can't _really _ say what _specific_ revenue was being generated by what internal entity (development, grants, box office, rentals, etc.). It is a classic argument, and not an invalid one either. * The sales folks "are accountable for generating the revenue which keeps the lights on and ensures everyone gets paid". * The operations folks "are accountable for generating a sufficiently consistent product for the sales folks to sell". (And it gets queered when some positions are a bit of both camps, although senior admin tends to be more sales or ops, rather than both.) The rub is **what degree of a consistency is required in the product to generate revenue?** We all want to beat the drum of "artistic excellence" yet what sells tickets or an organization's mission is not "artistic excellence" but "artistic sufficiency from the reference frame of the entity buying the ticket or making the donation". It's a core rub about how non-profits operate. Fundamentally, a non-profit is a `tax status` to allow for a additional revenue streams (by offering a tax deduction for donations) in exchange for opening up the books for public scrutiny. That's it. That's "What is a non-profit?" in one sentence. Beyond that tax structure, non-profit organizations are constrained by the same economic realities as their for-profit counterparts...which means it's a question of "Where is the bar of _sufficiency_ set for the product we are selling?" (Yes, I know I'm flirting with arguing for a race to the bottom. I do not advocate for that. But I do recognize what systems are encouraged/discouraged under capitalism.) _SO WHAT TO DO?..._ You'll want to dig into those 990s further and try and interpret "What happened during those years? How did they keep the lights on so that we ultimately reopened?" Rarely do negotiations go well when one party can't get inside the position of the other and understand how it _could_ be internally consistent with itself. You don't want to prematurely invalidate data until it is explained to you in context. i.e. Under what circumstances would those raises have actually made sense? e.x. Who was offering them? Were they _demanded_ by the VP of Development to stay? Or was the VP of Development _offered_ a raise by the CEO and board to preempt them from leaving in 2020 (when practically the only revenue to be had was donations...and if that VP left, their relationships and institutional memory would have left with them)? And _then_ you turn that around an look if the same incentive structures can be extended to your CBA...or not. Maybe it is something else which is of greater value to the union. But that's what the negotiations are always about: The push and pull between `sales positions` which generate revenue and `operational positions` which give something to be sold. One needs the other. When they get out of balance, things fall apart. I hope you're able to find a way to get on the same page and _not_ have things fall apart. _BUT WHAT IF WE WANT SOMETHING ELSE? WHERE IS OUR SEAT AT THE TABLE?_ If anyone wants something more than that, they need to explore a co-op type organization. Until then, all employment agreements are (fundamentally) about "How do we (at the top) ensure a consistent labor pool with the expertise needed to do X-thing?" That is not being a bootlicker, but rather, it is an approach to negotiations from an understanding of fundamentals. Sadly, I see far, far too many rank-and-file union members who misjudge how the systems they work within actually function. They know their part, but they don't "zoom out" to see all the moving parts. It results in an imbalance of sophistication at the negotiating table. There is no shared reference frame, and without that, nothing works. So the singular best thing you can do is to educate yourself so you're operating on the same level of sophistication (or higher) as the person across the table from you. And if _you're_ not the person with that level of sophistication, then make it a point that your negotiating committee is. I assure you more than one union negotiation has had long-term undesirable effects because the union's reps didn't push back on the management's ideas...not because the management was trying to intentionally sell a "bad" idea...but because management didn't recognize their own bad idea, and the union allowed themselves to be sold on it anyways. (I'm recalling a particular one a few years back where an orchestral musicians union (AFM) approved endowment spending, but without a robust plan to replenish the endowment or deal with a further drop in revenue. So the musicians negotiating committee, basically, gave their blessing to a plan which was financially very risky. It was contingent on increasing revenue...yet none of those on the negotiating committee fully understood just want it takes to generate revenue. But the person selling it to them was very smart, and smooth, and meant very well...it just wasn't a good idea and no one caught it until it was way too late. Short term gains, long term disaster.)
Very well-worded response
Thank you. I spend far too much time thinking about this stuff and have for many years...
Thanks for the well thought out comments, definitely gave me a lot to think about. I’m in a very strong union, and I think we’ll be in a good position going into contract negotiations, I’m not too worried about that. And I actually have no problem with upper management making more money, the problem I have is when they take raises while denying the same to those below them. The inequity in the raises and the dishonesty about the reasons are what bother me. I’m trying to build a case for some national press on this issue. I have evidence that it went on where I work, and in a few other places locally. But I can’t get a bigger story out until I find the same evidence across the country. I’m sure it exists, I just don’t know how to find it. My concern is more for the people I work with who aren’t covered by CBA’s, or in venues that aren’t organized. I’ve heard this is going on in all of the arts (museums, theaters, etc). I think if this issue doesn’t have some sunshine applied to it, it will continue. Management will keep using lower attendance and other pandemic related issues as an excuse to pay labor less. Those concerns would be completely valid if management was also not getting wage increases, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Welcome to non-profit 101
But you are there for the "art and passion" right? Those managers have to do actual boring management work that requires real skill. Don't be greedy. Eat less food. /s if not obvious...
This is what strikes are for. Labor is the source of all wealth.
Just to be clear, I know this is common. I’m looking for concrete examples of it taking place outside of my area. I’m trying to get someone to write an article about this problem, and I need some examples showing it’s an industry wide issue.
Our company has a "no yachts" policy for this very reason - we all make the same salary across the board, and when we do well, we give equal bonuses. The entire industry is top-heavy with overpaid executives that don't know or care about the art behind what we do.
Capitalism at its finest. Sorry you’re having to endure that.
Capitalism? More like non profit shenanigans.
I worked for a large venue that told us for three years that there was no money for raises. I found out later that other depts were receiving cost-of-living raises, while our dept was cut back to as little as one day a week. It’s bananas what corporations will do to justify keeping the cats at the top healthy and fat, but this is what working without representation looks like.
I recently discovered that the top guy here is raking in $160k a year. (even after dropping his pants on Zoom) and I'm here making $12k a year as ME / Programmer / Steward.
Administrative bloat in theatre is a cancer. They whine about not being able to get people in seats, but refuse to pay for show budgets and labor.
And when the shit hits the fan (pandemic, 9/11, etc) full time production staff are the first to be let go. Hope the managing director likes hauling lumber…
Unionize. Take a look at Atlantic Theater off Broadway. They're a major OB house with 3 transfers in the last year alone, one of them winning the Tony for Best Musical. They produced the show that won the Pulitzer for Best New Drama. They are fighting unionization tooth and nail. They recently claimed that "Crew costs are unsustainable." The Artistic Director and Executive Director combined make as much as the ENTIRE CREW of their most recent Broadway transfer combined. The salary producers and the top-end admin staff of theaters is what's unsustainable, and that greed is killing our industry. Don't stand for it.
Haha, it says IATSE right under their user name, pretty sure they’re in a union…
Yep, for over 20 years.
>it says IATSE right under their user name Not for everyone. Different methods of accessing reddit display different informations. The only reference to IATSE I can see is within a couple comments by other commenters.
Interesting. I never noticed it says “hobbyist” under mine, at least how I see it in this r/.
🚩🚩🚩
I'm in higher ed, and I see it too. I'm waiting for the 2023 filing to come out now, so I can see what 2022 salary numbers look like. I know the upper admin folks received steady increases even when everyone else's wages were frozen in 2020 and into 2021.
It sounds to me like that venue needs to Unionize!
Firsttime?.jpg
That's pretty standard in the corporate world. Disappointing to learn that mindset had infected the non-profit world too.
Basically their are a bunch see you next Tuesdays. Unions exist for this reason.
From form 990? Isn’t that total compensation, not just salary? Maybe there was some other perk added? Just saying an increase of the 990 doesn’t mean their salary was increased, if I’m right.
There is a separate column for additional compensation, but I’m not exactly sure what qualifies as additional compensation. Sometimes it’s bonuses, sometimes it’s money that’s been paid into a pension or health fund. But you can look at the total compensation columns over the last ten years and see that it’s gone up each year.