What Unions Are Tied To A Makeup Artist

Protesters mitt out flyers pushing for benefits for pilus and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera. Matthew Pearson hide caption

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Matthew Pearson

Protesters hand out flyers pushing for benefits for hair and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera.

Matthew Pearson

Hair and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera are at the center of a labor dispute that could have widespread implications across all industries. It's over a question that's indomitable workplaces for decades: who gets to be an employee and who gets to be an independent contractor?

The National Labor Relations Lath signaled recently that it was going to apply their instance to reexamine that question. Simply in the meantime, the pilus and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera are stuck in limbo.

Back in jump 2020, after an initial cancellation of shows, The Atlanta Opera came back with a run of outdoor performances. Information technology was a welcome return to almost-normalcy for hair stylist Sakeitha King – but still a trivial scary. This was before we knew what we know now about COVID, before the waves of variants, before vaccines.

"It was almost like playing Russian roulette," says Rex.

She and her beau pilus and makeup stylists wanted health insurance, so they started talking about joining a union and securing a collective bargaining agreement. They got in touch with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and started the process for a union election.

And then, The Atlanta Opera stepped in to say that the pilus and makeup workers were actually contained contractors and not employees, and therefore could not collectively deal. They argued that the hair and makeup workers were hired on a show-by-show basis, were free to take on outside work of their ain, and largely worked unsupervised. The Atlanta Opera declined an interview asking.

The amount of command a business has over a worker is at the core of the argument most whether they can be classified as employees, says Jeff Hirsch, a professor at Academy of N Carolina School of Police force, focusing on labor and employment police. "Traditionally, the sort of overriding business concern is whether or not the business concern has control over the style and ways in which the worker does the work. And every bit the control increases, the likelihood that the worker will exist considered an employee likewise increases," he says.

Only the regional NLRB sided with the hair and makeup workers, who and so went alee with the election. And then, The Atlanta Opera appealed. Now the ballots are impounded, shelved and uncounted until the NLRB mothership decides whether the workers are employees – and therefore eligible for protections offered by the National Labor Relations Act – or independent contractors, who aren't.

Hair and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera started the push to unionize in 2020, when they went back to work without healthcare benefits in the midst of the pandemic. Courtesy IATSE Local 798 hide caption

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Courtesy IATSE Local 798

Hair and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera started the push button to unionize in 2020, when they went back to work without healthcare benefits in the midst of the pandemic.

Courtesy IATSE Local 798

"It is quite common for employers that are opposing a union election to create delays in a variety of manners, because basically delay is decease for unions," says Hirsch.

The contend over who gets classified every bit an independent contractor and who gets classified as an employee goes dorsum ages. But in 2014, the NLRB made a ruling that determined a new standard that made it relatively easier to get classified equally an employee. So, during the Trump administration, the NLRB rolled back those criteria. At present legal experts see the pendulum swinging back to the 2014 standards under the Biden administration. And if that happens, Hirsch sees it as a signal that the Biden administration is interested in taking more concrete steps to augment the definition of an employee.

Classification bug are widespread, particularly in the arts, says Hirsch, where productions are temporary and workers can end up working for multiple businesses. Merely these are issues that are present in the always-growing gig economy. And without changes in the law, Hirsch says, these questions will likely keep to pop upwardly.

The hair and makeup workers at The Atlanta Opera have been frustrated with what they say is a lack of advice from management, peculiarly every bit they constitute out they were working backstage alongside people who were unionized. "Some crews were getting overtime on the weekends, and some crews were getting paid competitively in their field," says hair and brand-up stylist Brie Hall. "And we weren't, as hair and makeup artists, at all."

Hall sees this every bit a double standard, one that especially stings for the mostly Blackness hair and makeup workers as The Atlanta Opera touts its commitments to multifariousness and disinterestedness.

"It feels unfair and information technology feels prejudiced to work alongside people backstage who do have union contracts and are considered workers, but in some blazon of way, we're not," says Hall.

Neither Male monarch nor Hall have worked any shows at The Atlanta Opera since the marriage vote. And it could take months before the NLRB issues a ruling.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/20/1082037494/atlanta-opera-hair-and-makeup-workers-iatse

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