Reimagining Federal Support for the Arts and Public Media
The nonprofit arts and public media enjoy broad, bipartisan public support because they power local economies in every state and make it possible for Americans of all means, geographies, and abilities to have access to high-quality artistic and educational content. Federal support through the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has been essential to the sector’s success, and reimagining federal support will ensure its sustainable future.
Many members of our unions earn their living working on nonprofit productions and programs that receive funding from the NEA, NEH, and CPB. Even more employed now in the commercial sector established their careers through federally-supported work in the nonprofit cultural sector. We are committed to the nonprofit arts and public media because we know firsthand its economic and cultural power.
Informed by the experiences of our members, we believe that reimagining federal support for the arts and public media will require strengthening labor protections and, not only increasing NEA, NEH, and CPB funding, but also including a greater worker voice in grantmaking and modernizing grantmaking rules.
Federal funding for the arts, humanities, and public media must include strong labor protections
Taxpayer money should encourage high-road employment practices that raise industry standards and strengthen local economies. Strong, uniform labor protections and workplace safety requirements are central to ensuring that all people can pursue a career with fair pay and benefits. These requirements should protect all people employed on federally-supported cultural and news programming, and they must provide effective remedies to deter low-road business practices.
Necessary actions:
Strengthen the NEA/NEH prevailing wage requirement (20 U.S.C. §§ 954(m)) by providing for civil monetary penalties in cases when employers violate the law and allowing for a private right of action.
Modernize 29 C.F.R. Part 505 to reflect current industry employment practices and changes in union names.
Improve staffing requirements for CPB grantees in consultation with stakeholders, including public media professionals and their unions, to address stations’ unsustainable reliance on outsourcing and temporary employees.
Professionals working in the nonprofit arts and public media must have a voice in grantmaking
Union professionals contribute immensely to the quality, success, and bipartisan popularity of the nonprofit arts and public media, and they offer an important perspective on how federal arts funding can be used to greatest effect. Yet, too often, nonprofit arts employers, managers at CPB-funded stations, and producers of CPB-funded programming ask the members of our unions to do more for less, counting on their commitment to their employer and craft. Even then, these employers cut costs at the expense of our members and quality jobs. Omitting the workers who make nonprofit arts and media successful from the grantmaking process shuts out an essential voice; runs counter to the community-minded mission of publicly supported arts, humanities, and media; and erodes standards for all professionals in the sector.
Necessary action:
Prioritize seats for worker advocates on the National Council on the Arts, the National Council on the Humanities, and the CPB’s Board of Directors.
Federal grantmaking must be modernized to sustain employment in the nonprofit arts and public media
Sustainable careers in the nonprofit arts and public media requires that the employing organizations receive sufficient support to sustain their operations, not just productions or special projects. The current approach of smaller-dollar, project-specific federal grants does not provide the level of certainty and sustainability that employers need to support the infrastructure necessary to launch and maintain productions and thus employ our members across seasons. In public media, station funding formulas have shifted money away from the larger stations where union members work to smaller stations that have little potential for an employment impact. NEA, NEH, and CPB grants should take into account employment impact and be accompanied by strong labor protections that will help nonprofit institutions and public media stations maintain their roles as critical economic drivers for communities across the United States.
Necessary action:
Authorize larger-dollar general operating grants through the NEA, NEH, and CPB with a worker-centered approach to grantmaking.
For questions, please contact DPE Assistant to the President/Legislative Director Michael Wasser at mwasser@dpeaflcio.org