Unions on the Road?

Prominent members of Actors' Equity held a rally in Times Square yesterday to protest the plethora of non-union tours. A couple of quick thoughts:

1. What should Equity do? Seems like their only options are a) maintain the structure of the touring contract, insist that all tours should be Equity, and accept that most tours will continue to hire non-union actors or b) lower the costs of the current contract across the board by reducing salaries and benefits, thus penalizing the very members that can least afford it. I'd venture that b) is the better option, as the tours will still have the Equity imprint, and actors will have at least some protection from unethical producers, but Equity will have a hard time selling that to its members. They've had enough resistance reducing salaries on a case-by-case basis.

2. Why doesn't the public care about the Equity status of a tour? Lots of reasons, but the main one is that, many times, there is no discernable difference in quality. Why should there be? Equity is union for professional actors, which signifies only that the actors get paid for their work (and are unable to take non-paying gigs except with Equity's permission) and that the actors have been hired for previous Equity productions. You don't need to have a certain amount of positive reviews or pass a quality test or anything. Of course, the process of being hired for a professional production does tend to separate the wheat from the chaff, but there's no reason why a non-union actor would be any less talented than an Equity actor. Hell, Heather Graham is an Equity actor. Another factor in the apathy of the public is summed up in these sentences:

"For a union tour, an actor can make, with benefits and travel, about $2,300 a week.
The non-union salary comes in at around $700 a week."

How many people do you know making $119,600 a year? How 'bout $36,400? Not me. Not a lot of my friends. Equity bases their salary demands on the fact that actors seldom work year-round, and therefore an actor making $2,000 a week may only take home $24,000 because he worked on a 12-week tour. I think Equity would get a lot farther with this argument if they pointed out that the $700 reduced salary also has to cover room and board (in many cases), and also needs to pay the rent back in New York or LA or wherever home is. A lot of non-union actors lose money by going on tour, but they take the gig because they need the exposure.

3. Producers don't want to pay union rates because they say that it's impossible to make money of a tour paying those salaries, especially one with a large cast. However, if a star goes out on the road (and I mean a current star, not Ann-Margret), would audiences pay more to see her? Would they pay hgher ticket prices? Would the big-name actors who rallied in NYC agree to commit to a US tour following their Broadway appearances, thus guaranteeing union work for their less-fortunate chorus brethren? (This practice used to be quite common, but has pretty much died out due to the economics of film and television. Or, to translate, more money in Hollywood.) Some shows tour well without stars, but imagine how well even old chestnuts would do with some bonafide big names...