No Deal

The culture secretary Oliver Dowden claimed that the emergency relief package was intended to preserve “the crown jewels” of British cultural institutions; they would need to demonstrate how they contributed to wider economic growth in order to be eligible. “Sadly, not everyone is going to be able to survive and not every job is going to be protected…of course we will see further redundancies.”

The term ‘new deal’ is being touted by conservatives in reference to a post-Covid recovery. Michael Gove hailed Roosevelt’s sweeping job economic programme, which “save(d) capitalism.” The Federal Arts Project, the cultural arm of FDR’s New Deal, was a sweeping job creation programme for theatre workers in the aftermath of the Great Depression. The project director, Hallie Flanagan highlighted that the primary aim of the programme was “to pay wages to unemployed people,” rather than generate revenue. 

However, it didn’t stop there – the project sought a deeper re-evaluation of artistic labour, one that cannot be quantified in terms of economic growth. According to Jody Patterson, the Roy Lichtenstein chair of art history and an associate professor at Ohio State University, the New Deal enabled “an alternate economy of the arts. It shifted the social and economic bases for culture away from a market-driven luxury commodity.” Dowden’s demand that arts institutions justify their eligibility for funding by demonstrating their economic contribution is in direct opposition to this principle.

Sadly, this stunted view of artistic work remains unchallenged by the leaders of our cultural institutions. The National Theatre’s artistic director, Rufus Norris, boasted in an interview of the theatre’s contribution to GDP. The arts media is also partially responsible for promoting this reductive view of the value of artistic labour. Arts journalists have prioritised the opinions of high profile fine artists and artistic directors and neglected to listen to the voices of the underpaid staff actually running their venues.

I recently wrote in Tribune about how a bail-out package for the arts could learn from the scale and ambition of the Federal Theatre Project. I spoke from my experience of working in Front of House roles at a high profile arts venue, and argued that, much as FDR’s programme enshrined workers’ rights and sought a reevaluation of artistic labour, any government rescue package should prioritise and strengthen the jobs of the sector’s most vulnerable workers.

A few weeks later, the Guardian arts section ran an article highlighting the need for a ‘new deal’ for the arts. The author failed to mention the importance of protecting the jobs of the sector’s lowest-paid workers. This failure by the arts commentariat to recognise the army of casual workers that keep venues running belies the public debate about arts sector funding and informs decisions at policy level. It means that in the event of a bail-out, their jobs are still on the chopping block.

Specialist Skills

In an email to staff, the National Theatre management outlined their criteria for the redundancy process. “We must retain specialist skills and experience,” it stated. This inadvertently revealed a truth that casuals had long suspected – that, in their view, the 400-strong front of house team was unskilled and therefore expendable. The hurt was palpable in the staff’s Facebook posts. One angrily demanded, “Are we not deemed unskilled and unessential workers? Easy to replace… We’re just a drain on their expenditure.” 

In a letter to management, the front of house team made a moving case for the retention of their jobs, arguing that, “Our drive, passion and varying skill sets are an important part of what makes the National Theatre a success, and we are equally as important as any other department within the theatre. As such, we would argue that we are not easily replaceable.” They have not, as yet, received a response.

“It takes a minimum of 2 years to know the building like the back of your hand,” one staff member told me. “And I still find hidden bits.” She was astonished by management’s failure to recognise the value of the front of house team’s detailed knowledge of the building, particularly in the context of a post-pandemic reopening.

A member of the bookshop team told me, “We are a curated team, carefully chosen by the previous manager. We came with and have continuously developed our own specialised knowledge which has contributed to the National Theatre Bookshop’s reputation as one of the best bookshops worldwide… this isn’t something you can just replace.” When she raised this in her redundancy consultation she was told that “other people read books.”

Another staff member who worked in the theatre pub, The Understudy, highlighted how gruelling the bar-work was and how much revenue they generated. She described the weekends in the summer during the ‘River Stage’ performances as the hardest, and most lucrative; “we’re usually still there at 3am trying to clear the mess. I genuinely collected 27 bags of rubbish from the square in one night… We make roughly £50-60,000 a day over that weekend.”

Representation

But it’s not just for those lower-paid arts workers that the National Theatre job losses will bite. “We must be representative,” the list of priorities continued. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, the National released a statement of support, professed that “we remain committed to doing our part to eradicate racism.”

BAME representation in the arts is low. At the National, they account for just 15.5% of the staff. The highest ranking staff member from a BAME background is in middle management. An informal survey conducted by a member of staff confirmed that the majority of employees at the theatre were not only concentrated in front of house, but were employed on casual contracts – exactly the kind of staff whose jobs are now likely to go.

In a meeting on July 6th, the head of audience and marketing said: “we realise a lot of the diversity lies within casual contracts and it’s very deeply regrettable.” The most diverse team at the theatre, the cleaning staff, are employed by a sub-contractor, Atlas FM. A staff member reported that they had received almost no communication from their employers throughout lockdown.

The cleaners were paid the furlough money, but received no notification from management until they were informed about their redundancies in July. They are still waiting on their official furlough letters. One employee told me, “I’m lucky in my situation… I feel sorry for the other cleaners, they’re only employed by Atlas and that’s their only income.” She estimated that most of the cleaning staff were migrant workers with little English.

It has to be noted this problem is not restricted to the National, or indeed, the arts sector. According to the Race Inequality in the Workforce Report, workers from ethnic minority backgrounds are 47% more likely to be on zero hour contracts. Redundancies are hitting casualised workers the hardest across many sectors in the wake of Covid-19.

However, the hypocrisy of an organisation that commits to “representation and inclusivity” as a priority in its redundancy process while indiscriminately slashing all its casual team, the most diverse section of its workforce, is striking. “I just wish the public knew that there has always been disparity between (the theatre’s) casual (and creative) staff,” a staff member told me.

Protecting Creatives

“We must support creative people and creative work,” the statement of principles went on. The distinction between ‘creative’ and ‘non-creative’ staff is something deeply felt by casuals at the theatre, many of whom are artists and theatre makers in their own right. “I have always felt like they have seen us only as Customer Service Assistants rather than a collection of deeply talented, multifaceted humans,” one Facebook post said, “I think most workplaces can be guilty of this, but it seems even more insulting considering that they are the NATIONAL theatre.” The Facebook post continued, “Of course they don’t need to see all our work, or hire us all as creatives, but some acknowledgment of the wealth of talent who were committing themselves to the organisation would have been nice.”

Another staff member described the theatre as a fragile “ecosystem.” More than a source of income, it provided a safety net and community for artists working outside of a corporate context. Sparse creative jobs, and stiff competition for funding meant that the theatre provided a lifeline for freelancers who don’t have a firm foothold in the industry. That is not to say that the casual staff at the theatre did not depend on their jobs as a primary source of income. It was a vital way to sustain themselves while producing often unpaid creative work.

The illusion that casual staff in arts venues do not depend on their jobs as their sole source of income is one that is perpetuated by high profile cultural pundits. In one of the rare reports on arts sector job losses that mentioned the impact on casual workers, the author wrote that “Many front-of-house staff have second jobs in the arts to afford to stay in the sector.”

An informal survey conducted via the staff Facebook page revealed that the majority of the front of house team relied on the theatre as their primary source of income, many of them had worked for an average of two years. One staff member told me “I wasn’t just picking up a few shifts when I needed the extra money. For many months after I graduated university, it was my primary source of income… I worked a lot of hours at the NT… I’d approximate that over the seven years, I’ve worked at least 3 out of 4 Saturdays a month, probably more… My entire adult life has been constructed around this routine.”

A cursory look at the staff posts reveals the gravity of their job losses – impacting people not only financially but unravelling a fragile safety net that provided many of them with a community. “The National has always been my rock,” confessed one staff member, “I can’t imagine a lifestyle without it.”

These heart-rending posts by staff revealed years of accumulated anger at a deep rooted disregard for their work by management. They had felt it in the gradual erosion of their benefits; the reduction of their meal tickets, the removal of their ability to use empty rehearsal rooms. Before the pandemic, the theatre’s rigid hierarchy of workers worked more insidiously; it was starkly exposed in the run-up to lockdown when front of house staff were banned from using the theatre bar after 8.30 pm amid concerns they could infect the actors.

This hierarchy of ‘creatives’ and ‘unskilled’ art workers was masked in the theatre’s ‘right-on’ public image. Casuals knew from experience the discrepancy between their words and actions.

In a company zoom call, an executive director alluded to the need to ‘restructure’ the theatre’s workforce. This hints at a grim future for the theatre – one that can be glimpsed in the treatment of the theatre’s outsourced cleaning staff. Instead of strengthening the hand of their workers, it’s fair to assume that this employment model is going to be extended to the rest of its entire front of house workforce.

The National is not unique in this approach. Covid-19 is functioning as a form of shock doctrine in many arts institutions, justifying an acceleration of casualisation and outsourcing that is sweeping museums, theatres, galleries and arts universities. The restructuring of their workforces is facilitated by the terms of the government hand out which stipulates that institutions prove their economic viability. The strength and the scale of the Federal Art Project was driven by a different aim altogether. “For the first time in the relief experiments of this country the preservation of the skill of the worker, and hence the preservation of his self-respect, became important,” wrote Hallie Flanagan.  

On the 9th July, the front of house team gathered on the Southbank outside the theatre doors – a gesture of grief, but also of defiance. Confronted with management’s view of their expendability, they at least would recognise the value of their work. As they stated in their unacknowledged letter to management, they are not replaceable.