Do New York Stagehands deserve $300K a year????

No wonder I can't afford to go see a play on Broadway!

RUSH: Well, guess what the average annual salary, including benefits, for stagehands at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York is? Take a guess. Literally, take a guess. The average for stagehands. Let me tell you what a stagehand does. A stagehand moves the props around; takes the chairs, moves them around; puts up the music stands. That's what a stagehand does. A stagehand is not a performer. In New York at Carnegie Hall and at Lincoln Center (there are a number of different performing halls at Lincoln Center) $292,000 a year is the average salary. It is a union salary. It's a union job. Now, all of you parents out there who have children who are showing artistic talents, prodigies in the musical arts?

Throw it out. Send 'em to New York and have 'em become stagehands. That way they get to spend all day... Well, I don't know how many days or how many hours a day they work. They spend all that time at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and 292 grand is the average. This was the result of the stagehands threatening to go out on strike not long ago, and if you go talk to a musician and ask them, the musicians don't make anywhere near this. The performers, if you go ask them about it, you won't find one critic. If the stagehands don't show up, nobody can work. It's $292,000 a year (laughing) for stagehands. "What do you got get stagehands, Mr. Limbaugh?" Nah, I got nothing against stagehands. Everybody needs to do something. But I just...$292,000 a year. There's a separate stagehand, by the way, that does nothing but raise and lower the curtain. One button. I kid you not. One stagehand lowers the curtain. It's a button. Average salary: $292,000 a year.

A CALLER DISAGREED WITH RUSH:
CALLER: Anyway, I gotta bring it back to the last hour because I gotta take task with something that you brought up on the stagehand unions in New York, the guys over at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. My son is a member of the stagehand unions, and he doesn't... You know, first, my son is... He works long hours. He makes pretty good money for doing what he's doing, but he works long hours, puts a lot of effort into what he does, and he works odd hours, and many days. The guys over Carnegie and Lincoln, they're at the top of the game. Those guys have been in the business for a long time. They have, you know, amassed skills, and everything to bring to the table. That union is one of the few, I think, that are what you'd consider a free market union. I mean, you're not gonna pay the money to see the shows to get in that pays them --

RUSH: (big sigh)

CALLER: -- unless you enjoy what it is that they give you. So you're taking them to task for how much they make, I find that kinda... You know, I hate that argument. You know, "Because they make so much money, they're somehow bad." That's the same argument that the Democrats and the use against the --

RUSH: No! No, no, no. In the first place, they are the sons and grandsons in that union. It's not a meritocracy. I'm not talking about how little or long they work or how hard it is. I do know that a stagehand who raises and lowers the curtain pushes a button. All I said was that the New Jersey Bergen Record is reporting the average salary for the stagehand union is $292,000. I don't know what your son makes, but that's the average: $292,000. I throw it out there. Other people can decide whether it's excessive or not. I did make the joke, "It's far more sensible to send your kid to become a member of that union rather than become a violinist at Carnegie Hall or anywhere over at Lincoln Center," but I'm not opposed to people making money. Free market union? You could say "free market" in that they sort of blackmailed the performers. (laughing) They shut down the stage for 19 days and so forth. But if you wonder why tickets to Broadway shows cost what they cost, that's one of the factors. The violinists... I know people here. The violinists at Carnegie Hall make a hundred thousand dollars a year. They're the top in their field, and it's the violinists and the performers on the stage that people are coming to pay to see perform and so forth.

BUT WHO IS PAYING FOR THE SALARIES OF THESE PERFORMERS AND STAGEHANDS?

RUSH: I knew, ladies and gentlemen -- I knew! -- when I did the stagehand story that somebody was gonna call. I didn't know it would be a relative of somebody who worked there, but I've been waiting. I knew somebody was gonna call and say, "What do you have against somebody make $292,000? I thought you were fine with people making money?" I totally agree. If somebody is willing to pay it for that work, fine and dandy. I do know that opera tickets at the Met top out at around $435 a pop, so you're not gonna have a whole lot of people other than the upper crust going to sit there and listen to an opera. They just hiked the prices up 11% this time last year.

By the way, the Metropolitan Opera and other places at Lincoln Center get a boatload of taxpayer money through grants, the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and so forth and so on. People, all the time, complain about how little teachers make; another complaint is how much athletes make. Let's turn it around then. Let's use the stagehand versus athletes. Let's say that you're a Yankees fan. Take Derek Jeter. Let's say Derek Jeter makes (pick some arbitrary numbers here) half million dollars a year, and the ushers and usherettes make $2 million. Would that make sense to you, if the stagehands are making three times what the performers make?

In other words, Derek Jeter is making $10 million. Let's take $10 million. So the ushers and usherettes are making $30 million. Well, obviously the economics of that aren't gonna work out because nobody's coming to Yankees Stadium to watch the ushers and usherettes. Well, you might have some perverts showing up but you're not gonna fill the stadium with people who want to watch the ushers and usherettes seat people or wipe off seats or what have you. Teachers. Everybody says teachers are notoriously underpaid because of the truly crucial and important task they have of indoctrinating our youth. Okay, teachers, let's pay 'em $500,000 a year or $300,000, like stagehands. You know what your property taxes are gonna be?

And you are paying. Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall are being subsidized. That's the only reason they can stay in business. I guarantee you $435 a ticket at the top, at the Metropolitan Opera, is not enough to support the place to keep the lights on to pay the stagehands, the performers, and everything else that has to go on in there (and the same thing at Carnegie Hall) unless there is a whole lot of subsidizing going on.