COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Priorities for Creative Professionals
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to devastate creative professionals. Economic relief aimed at supporting creative professionals during the pandemic is urgently needed. The economic devastation goes beyond creative professionals’ wages, affecting their health insurance and retirement security due to the near total work stoppage. In normal times, these everyday individuals help power a sector that generates more than four percent of the country’s GDP and employs more than four million people. However, to date, this sector has lost an estimated $14.1 billion in economic activity due to COVID-19,[1] and losses are expected to continue as many theaters, soundstages, and performance venues remain dark well into 2021.
Economic relief will also be needed so that employment in this vital sector can return to pre-pandemic levels when it is safe to go back to work. Helping get creative professionals back to work safely will help the economy as a whole recover faster, as their industries’ audiences spend an estimated $31.47 per person, per event, beyond the cost of admission on lodging, restaurants, clothing, transportation, and other goods and services.[2]
Relief
Extend and expand COVID-19 economic support programs
Extend Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, and Mixed Earner Unemployment Compensation through December 31, 2021.
Extend the Families First Coronavirus Response Act’s paid leave provisions through December 31, 2021 and expand its coverage to professionals working for companies with 500 or more employees.
Preserve access to affordable, quality healthcare
Subsidize 100 percent of a person’s COBRA costs for one year.
Extend COBRA eligibility to 36 months.
Provide economic support for multiemployer health plans that are waiving cost-sharing or keeping ineligible members on their plans for reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Protect the pension funds of creative professionals
Allow multiemployer pension plans to:
Freeze zone status for at least one year, based on provisions similar to the Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008.
Smooth investment and contribution base unit (“CBU”) losses in the funding standard account, and investment losses in the development of the actuarial value of assets, following provisions similar to the Pension Relief Act of 2010.
Institute a special partition program at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to deal with critically endangered multiemployer plans without increasing burdens on healthy pension plans.
Shore up the PBGC through government funding, rather than by depriving healthy plans of funds needed to cover plan obligations.
Protect the collection and dissemination of news and information
Expand Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) access already provided for print, radio, and television news organizations to digital-native news organizations to keep news professionals on the job at a time when news is essential.
Provide fair access to government economic support for all nonprofits
Extend PPP access to 501(c)5 organizations in line with local chambers of commerce, trade associations, and other 501(c)6 organizations’ existing PPP access.
Ensure tax fairness for middle-class creative professionals
Allow middle-class creative professionals to deduct necessary business expenses by including the Performing Artist Tax Parity Act of 2019, bipartisan legislation that would update the Qualified Performing Artist tax deduction.
Sector Recovery
General
Establish a federal insurance program for pandemic-related losses to encourage the resumption of productions and performances that will put creative professionals back to work.
A federal insurance program has been available previously, and is needed for the sector to resume hiring creative professionals to work productions and performances. Knowing that potential pandemic-related losses are insured will motivate banks and other private lenders to invest in productions and performances that may need to shut down if a cast member tests positive.
Create a nonrefundable tax credit for businesses to cover the costs of COVID-19 workplace safety compliance, including expenses for sanitation, personal protective equipment (“PPE”), and testing.
Live Theater and Performances
Appropriate $9 billion dollars for the National Endowment for the Arts to help jump start productions and put people back to work across the nonprofit arts sector.
Dedicate 75 percent of the $9 billion for the NEA to expand grant capacity to ensure arts organizations can continue operations, keep arts professionals employed, and immediately resume productions when it is safe to do so.
Authorize the NEA to distribute the remaining money to temporary programs that put arts professionals to work on projects that can lift the spirits of Americans as the country emerges from the pandemic. Such projects could include:
“Reopening America” performing arts tours that bring music, theater, dance, opera, and variety performances to big cities and small towns across the country at minimal cost to Americans, particularly areas that do not often see touring performances.
Increased USO performances for the military and their families at military bases here in the United States and abroad.
Free matinee performances of nearby musical, theatrical, dance, opera, and variety productions for K-12 school children and the residents of retirement homes and assisted-living centers who were particularly isolated during the pandemic.
Encourage employers to put creative professionals back to work quickly.
Provide a temporary, two-year partial employer tax credit for each person employed in the cast or crew of musical, theatrical, dance, opera, or variety performance.[3]
Incentivize private support for the arts.
Permanently reinstate the business entertainment tax deduction.
Provide a temporary, two-year individual entertainment tax deduction for the purchase of tickets to live arts and entertainment performances up to $400 per individual/$800 per joint filer.
Film and Television
Pass a National Broadband Program to allow more households access to high-speed Internet and the ability to stream content, which in turn will increase residual income for union creative professionals and their health and retirement funds. Such a broadband program should provide federal funds to companies to provide high-speed Internet to unserved areas of the country.[4] Companies receiving such funds must honor any existing collective bargaining agreements they have, be prohibited from outsourcing of U.S. jobs, and must remain neutral during any union organizing drive.
Public Radio and Television
Commit to a two-year temporary funding infusion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to help stations that are affected by reduced charitable giving as a result of COVID-19’s economic impact.[5] Funding should support:
Continued operations at public radio and broadcasting stations.
Maintaining employment at public radio and broadcast stations, including the rehiring of employees laid-off or furloughed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Grants to seed American-based productions of new content for public television and radio.
Triple the grant capacity of the National Endowment for the Humanity’s Media Projects program, which supports the development, production, and distribution of radio, podcast, television, and long-form documentary film projects that engage general audiences with humanities ideas in creative and appealing ways.
News and Information
Pass a two-year temporary tax credit to maintain journalists and other media workers on payroll across all formats - print, radio, TV, and digital - to ensure continued information at a time when it is needed most and as industry recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic’s shock to advertising revenue.
Appropriate and direct federal advertising dollars for programs where community outreach is needed for spending on local media.
If you have any questions, please contact DPE Assistant to the President/Legislative Director, Michael Wasser at (202) 638-0320 ext. 11 or mwasser@dpeaflcio.org
[1] Americans for the Arts. (2020) “The Economic Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on the Arts and Cultural Sector.” Retrieved on November 9, 2020 from https://www.americansforthearts.org/by-topic/disaster-preparedness/the-economic-impact-of-coronavirus-on-the-arts-and-culture-sector.
[2] “Arts Audiences.” (2017).Arts and Economic Prosperity Five. Americans for the Arts. Retrieved on January 25, 2020 from https://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/aep5/PDF_Files/NationalFindings_StatisticalReport.pdf.
[3] The tax credit should go to new hires and individuals re-hired to work for the same employer on multiple productions or performances.
[4] An unserved area of the country would be defined as one where citizens do not have access to the FCC’s standard for broadband which is download speeds of a minimum of 25 Mbps and upload speeds of a minimum of 3 Mbps.
[5] The 2008 Great Recession led to a 7 percent reduction in charitable giving in 2008 and a 6.2 percent reduction in 2009. Charitable giving did not recover back to pre-recession levels until 2014. (Reich, Rob & Wimer, Christopher. 2012. Charitable Giving and the Great Recession. Stanford, CA: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Retrieved from https://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/CharitableGiving_fact_sheet.pdf)