TMA snub to performer pay claim

Published Tuesday 9 May 2006 at 12:50 by Nuala Calvi

Theatre managers have rejected demands for a £350 per week minimum for actors in subsidised repertory theatre, insisting the sector cannot afford the increase while government funding remains at a standstill.

The claim would have represented a 9% rise on the current minimum, but Equity officials had argued that the rate, which amounts to a full-time annual salary of just £18,200, was low for an industry in which most employees hold professional qualifications.

Instead, an interim increase of 2.4% - £7.65 a week - has been agreed for the next 12 months and Equity has indicated it hopes to negotiate a better deal for the following two years. The agreement has yet to be ratified by the Theatrical Management Association’s members.

Equity’s assistant general secretary for theatre and variety Stephen Spence said the union needed to join forces with the TMA to lobby for more money for the sector, to address what he called a “funding crisis”.

He told The Stage: “Clearly we have not got [a deal] which will be satisfactory for the next three years. The TMA are saying they don’t have the money to meet the claim, so we need to jointly lobby government to look at why this is the case. We can’t hold off forever this question of getting a decent minimum wage.”

The results of the negotiations do not augur well for Equity’s commercial theatre agreement, for which it has also put in a claim of £350 - a 23% hike on the current minimum of £285. The union is due to meet managers to discuss the agreement at the end of the month.

Chairman of the TMA’s industrial relations committee Robert Noble said: “Central government only gave a standstill grant - a cut in real terms of £30 million - to the arts council to pass on to some regional theatres. With many local authorities also reducing grants, there simply isn’t extra money floating around to fund large increases in salaries without once again destabilising the sub-rep sector and reducing the number of actors and stage managers employed.

“The TMA has already agreed to work with Equity to persuade central government of the need for more funding to assist with all pressures on the sub-rep theatres, provided this is done within the understanding that the next review of funding from government and therefore any change from the current standstill position would be 2008 at the very earliest.”