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Stage artists denounce the abuse by UEFA

A sustainable sector cannot be built on calling for volunteering at an event as important as the Opening Ceremony for the UEFA Champions League Final.

Our complaint arises after the publication of the call for an audition by a veteran producer in the field of artistic productions, SoldOUT.Looking for 200 artists "volunteers", "over 16 years", with availability to "rehearse between May 15th and June 1st", in order to perform at the side of a world-known musical artist and choreographer of international prestige. "

The associations Apdcm [1] and ConARTE [2] can only denounce the assault on dignity and rights of the performing artists. Excactly as they did before,  caused by the offers for unpaid work "in exchange for being mentioned in the credits" for participating at 080 Barcelona Fashion Week or at the Gala de los Goya (organized by the Film Academy) as well as advising the Labor Inspectorate of the alarming proliferation of these bad practices.

We want the Opening Ceremony of the UEFA Champions League Final, the great European professional football event, to be an example of good practices for the entertainment industry. Also we claim respect by sport institutions for the working conditions and wages of a sector, already sufficiently impoverished and fragile: the sector of performing artists.

We consider it as an insult as well as a impairment of professional ability of all workers, and the collective of artists, whenever it is pretended to not pay for the work of the workers. Today it´s about dancers, tomorrow ity could be any other profession.

We demand an entity such as UEFA to be a example of good practices, in defense of performing artists, vigorously rejecting this type of conduct, which assaults on the dignity of workers, violates current labor regulations and supposes a fraud to Social Security .

We demand the Ministry of Education Culture and Sport and the Royal Spanish Football Federation as  member of the UEFA, to support good practices in our country of this European entity. We claim that private entities that sponsor the event, insist on that the UEFA, the production company SoldOUT as well as any other subcontracted company, fulfill the current labor legislation and also make an ethical investment of the economic effort carried out by supporting this event.

Nowadays dance artists in Spain, find themselves in a situation detailled by the SGAE Yearbook as the following: "Dance: comparing the results obtained in 2017 with those of 2008, dance has significant losses in the three indicators: a 56% in the number of representations, a 46.3% in attendance and a 54.6% in ticketing income". With indices like that, declining during 10 years more than in any other sector of the performing arts, the timid recoveries that dance in Spain has been experiencing during the last exercise, tell us about human situations that can be imagined complicated. So complicated that, according to the Study labor partner of the group of actors and dancers in Spain, a 92% of the interpreters have incomes lower than 12,000 euros per year; We are talking about a professional profile in its majority 33-year-old women with higher education and 600 € of monthly income, in case of being employed that specific month ....

This time it is not about a charity event for which a disinterested collaboration could be proposed. There is nothing worse than posing these issues as exclusive dichotomies between football fans and artists, between professionals and amateurs, when the question is very different: if UEFA claims respect as a value, it must begin by respecting the professionals it wants to work in its sport events of the European league, instead of disguising volunteering as job offers ...

Sincerely,

Association of Dance Professionals in the Community of Madrid

Cl. Conde Vistahermosa, 9

Tel: (0034) 915695195

Contact: conarte.media@gmail.com

Social networks: https://www.facebook.com/APDanzaMadrid/

https://twitter.com/apdcm

 

[1] Association of Dance Professionals in the Community of Madrid

[2] Confederation of Artists-Show Workers

 

Both entities are professional trade unions of performing artists and are registered in the corresponding registers of the Ministry of Labor and Employment.

 

APDCM is a union of the ConARTE confederation,
ConARTE is a member of FIA (International Federation of Actors)

This international campaign is based on an original idea of N.M.
English translation of G. S.