Picketing actors seek pay rise

Press, 12 March 1985, Page 8

Picketing actors seek pay rise

PA Auckland About 40 actors picketed the opening last evening of Theatre Corporate’s show, “Trafford Tanzi,” at His Majesty’s Theatre in Auckland. They are seeking a wage increase. Actors Equity has announced it will campaign for the wages of a fully trained actor to be increased from the present minimum of $2OB to $3OO a week. Auckland actors, including those from the professional theatres Mercury and Theatre Corporate, will stage a march in Queen Street. The Auckland branch of Actors Equity says that it also plans to picket New Zealand films and local

theatre productions to make audiences aware of the “precarious position of actors in the community.” An Equity spokesman, Mr Farrell Cleary, said that award talks with the employers broke down two weeks ago. He said the quarrel was not with theatre management, which could not commit themselves to an adequate increase because the extent of arts funding for 1985 had not been disclosed, but with the Government for not honouring its election promise to allot more money to the arts. Mr Cleary said that a married actor with two children earned more on the dole than he could in the theatre.