October 17, 2005

Monkeys and Footballs...

So I'm sitting here in fabulous Las Vegas... I'm sitting in a lounge at the Tropicana... I'm blogging here because this is one of only two place in the Trop where you can find broadband... How Lame... But that's not what I'm talking about...

I'm sitting in fabulous Las Vegas because a company hired us to handle the lighting aspect of their trade show booth... This is a recurring event every year, though the city usually changes... We come in and basically handle the direction and focus of the dozen or so lights in the booth... The hardest part is transporting the 5 custom glass templates to and from the show without breaking them... The actual work on site takes no more than 15 minutes... No, I'm not kidding, it takes me 15 minutes to drop the templates in the units and have them pointed where they need to be... That however is not how I actually earn the outrageous fee we charge for this event...

Trade shows are typically held in convention centers... How very logical... Convention centers are typically the target of union labor contracts... Also actually quite logical... Las Vegas Convention Center has a number of different unions that are all vieing for the same piece of pie... While logically it is the jurisdiction of the IATSE since its a production event, they have a very limited slice of the pie... They have to compete with the Teamsters, Carpenters, and IBEW, with a few smaller unions that I really can't specify as I don't have to deal with them... Those three alone are huge, powerful unions, and they don't give up anything easily to the IA... So the end result of being at the convention center all day is this... I didn't get the 15 minutes worth of work done... I had to play politics all day... I had to dodge all the bullets in the turf war I found myself caught up in the middle of...

You want to know why the union movement in America is having problems?... Come out here and try to do an event like this... 4 unions are involved in this booth... They all have their minimum charges, and their minimum personnel quantities... The reality of this booth is this... Given myself and 2 other of my usual employees, I could set this booth up, including the scenery (which is handled by someone else than me on this event), and lighting in all of about 4 hours... Throw in the carpet, and I'll make it 5 hours... The bill for labour from all the various interests for this very small booth I can assure you will be no less than 25 - 30 hours... It might be far worse than that... Last time I was in Vegas with this show the labour hour total was 57 hours...

It all brings to mind the question of "how many monkeys does it take to fuck a football?"

Perhaps tommorow, I'll get my 15 minutes of work done...

Posted by Backstage at October 17, 2005 08:33 PM | TrackBack
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