These stories may help us feel better about our choice to engage with art that doesn't pay the creator. Or it may help us feel better when we allow our creativity to be exploited.

But either way, it's a tool to divide, exploit, and limit who has the resources to create and share their work. 2/2

We tell ourselves so many stories in order to justify low pay for creative workers.

"It's a passion, not a profession."
"You can make a killing, but not a living."
"Do it for the exposure."
And the below "class traitors" line,
Etc...

Both creative workers and consumers tell stories like this.1/2

With Black Friday approaching, there will inevitably be well-intentioned talk that these deals are only possible because workers are denied a livable wage.

Don't buy into this. It's not low prices vs. fair pay. It's the demand for ever-higher profits and shareholder returns that forces deprivation.

I know we know this, but authors need to get better at talking about how they actually make their money. Stop pretending it's from the books.

Philadelphia Art Museum Accuses Former Director of Theft After Alexandra Suda accused the museum of wrongful termination, the institution said she misappropriated funds to increase her salary.

Multiple theft accusations by and from the folks making the most (leadership/department heads and the board, wherever they work), all while many museum workers aren't making a living wage.
@hyperallergic.com
@onourteam.bsky.social

hyperallergic.com/1059426/phil...

We're working on re-balancing the scales in the arts. We all need to do our part to end pay inequity in all sectors.

Staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Petition NLRB for a Union Vote

UAW 2110 this week petitioned the NLRB for a union election for nearly a thousand staff of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Workers cite pay inequities, lack of job protection and ever-increasing workloads as reasons for the unionization efforts.

Read: nycclc.org/news/staff-m...

We love to see it!

My kingdom for a living wage.

That part 👇

"...it’s a business built on the unpaid and underpaid labor of the very workers who generate its product. Art is labor, no different from any other kind of labor..."

"Do it for exposure" never ends.

The exploitation of artists is the point, not some inconvenience artists have to navigate on the way to paid opportunities.

On Our Team On Our Team builds pay equity and labor equity in the theatre industry, and is dedicated to creating a united front in requiring equitable pay and support for theatrical designers.

Hi! We're here building pay equity in the arts.
Artists are workers and art is a job.
www.onourteam.org