Mixed-Crew Venues: What to Know When Planning an Event with a local Union

Architex produces a gathering of wildfire thought leaders in a mixed-union venue.

Introduction

When planning an event, we understand that venue selection is often driven by capacity, location, aesthetics, and cost. There is a strong chance you will encounter venues that have unionized crews or unique labor policies. These policies directly affect how your event is designed, scheduled, staffed, and budgeted. For planners who may not know what questions to ask, understanding the ins-and-outs of union labor regulations is pivotal in making the event cost effective and time efficient.

Architex recently produced a summit for industry professionals located in a mixed-crew venue—that is, union and non-union—which had unique challenges that need addressing prior to arriving on site. This article offers a practical overview of what mixed-crew venues are, why AV labor unions exist, how common labor policies affect your event, and what real-world challenges to expect when planning and producing events.

Unions Explained : Why They Exist and How They Shape Event Production

Understanding the Role of AV Labor Unions

In the live events and entertainment industry, labor unions play a central role in protecting technicians, maintaining safety standards, and ensuring fair compensation. The most common union encountered is International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), which represents skilled professionals across audio, video, lighting, rigging, staging, and scenic disciplines.

Union agreements exist to establish predictable working conditions, protect workers from unsafe schedules, and maintain consistent quality across venues. In many cities, venues sign contracts that grant unions jurisdiction over specific technical tasks. When this happens, production labor becomes a contractual obligation tied to the venue itself which cannot be broken.

For event planners, this means that once a venue is selected, certain labor rules are automatically in effect, regardless of your production company, technical vendor, or internal staffing preferences.

Unions You May Encounter

Common Labor Policies & Financial Implications

Although each city and venue operates under its own union agreements, there are several policies that appear frequently in events that we produce. We recommend reaching out to venues directly to gauge their union status and to understand the specific policies that affect their spaces.

Frequently, there is a 1:1 shadow policy. Under this rule, every non-union technical position must have a union position to ensure there is an equal or greater amount of union technicians. This affects not only show operators, but also load-in and strike labor, leading to strategic staffing plans in pre-production. If it’s important to you and your production companies to utilize and staff specific labor, this may cause an increase in both crew size and cost, in order to satisfy the needs of the union to non-union ratio. Note that management, or “hands-off,” positions are not affected by this policy.

If you are working with a venue under this policy, it is important to discuss the number and allocation of technical positions throughout the entire event. This helps to prevent penalties by ensuring that the union ratio is maintained at all times. If mistakes are made in staffing and too many non-union positions are working onsite, they’ll either have to be dismissed unexpectedly or the union will have to send an additional worker, which may delay your schedule and lead to unexpected on-site cost increases.

Please note that in these venues, all technical work is typically prohibited unless there is union representation not just present on site, but also in a work-shift. Technical work is strictly prohibited when union labor is on a break, which can feel frustrating, since breaks are often the best times to accomplish individual tasks. This is an intentional, deliberate policy that ensures producing entities are thoughtful in their pre-production tasks and deadlines, discouraging any last minute changes at the venue. In a union house, after hours, late-night, or early morning edits can quickly lead to a higher bill than expected.

Another common policy is a non-union crew cap, which limits the total number of outside technicians who may be onsite. A venue may allow only a handful of non-union operators while requiring that all remaining technical positions be filled by union labor. This will affect the staffing strategy and even the technical design itself.

Non-union positions may be more cost-effective based on the operational costs of the city in which the venue is based versus where the production company may be headquartered. Conversely, it could be more expensive depending on the same criterion. Requiring union positions locks in financial expectations, for better or worse, and helps create boundaries for producing organizations.

In the event union labor is required, production positions will likely be unfamiliar with the technical design before load-in because they are usually less involved in pre-production. Staffing strategy, in these instances, should include more management positions that monitor and support the accurate build of the creative vision of the show.

Equally important to note: regardless of union status, it is usually true that at least some operational and load-in labor will not be brought into the process during pre-production and therefore fly blind for the first several hours of the event. This is another reason why strong, sufficient management positions and a robust pre-production process are the difference between an ordinary show and an extraordinary one.

Venues may also enforce strict jurisdictional boundaries, dictating exactly which tasks union technicians must perform. These rules can include who is permitted to run cable, connect power, operate lifts, rig overhead structures, adjust equipment once set, among other tasks. Even small technical changes may require union involvement, which has direct implications for schedule flexibility.

Finally but most commonly is a modified labor policy that may differ from your staff, your production company, or technical vendors which needs to be accounted for so everyone is treated equitably onsite.

Some policies may require that breaks are strictly given 3-5 hours after the start of a shift, otherwise meal penalties will be applied until a break is given. For extended 12-16 hour days, more thought is needed to schedule breaks in accordance with labor policy and the programming of the event. Architex tracks the policies of all parties and create a unified schedule that balances the needs of event programming and labor.

Similarly, some policies may state that a workday is 8 hours long instead of the currently industry standard of 10 hours. This means that overtime and double-time starts sooner in the day for some or all of your technicians; so extending an event day by an hour could have larger impacts than initially considered.

Another variable to keep track of is the event schedule. Some policies automatically incur overtime on holidays, weekends, or shifts extending into the late-night, meaning a whole shift can start in overtime automatically. Catching this before signing a contract will help prevent rebalancing a whole budget unnecessarily.

Staffing Plan

The venue for the event discussed herein required a 1:1 shadow policy with a minimum of two union production positions; as such, we designed the event with CSR (Corporate Staging Resources), one of our preferred high-caliber production firms, and developed a staffing plan to not just best support creative design, but to also follow labor policies.

As an LED wall was the primary design element of this event, prioritizing LED and video positions staffed by familiar technicians (i.e., directly hired by Architex or CSR) was paramount to efficiently support load-in and troubleshooting during. While prioritizing union labor vs. in-network freelancers is a preference with pros and cons in each direction, the value added by having trusted and approachable speaker-facing technicians as part of the team can make or break an event. Ultimately, it’s important to Architex to know the personnel assigned to high-stakes situations to eliminate unnecessary variables. In this instance, we staffed the second audio (A2) position to prioritize our speaker’s experience. The A2 is generally very hands on with talent and therefore, needs a certain demeanor for success. While the lighting, audio, and video recording was important, these roles are not as strictly client facing and therefore it’s easier to trust that the local union labor could easily step into these roles. Finally, by splitting load-in and load-out hands across both teams (union and non-union), we were able to prioritize financial efficiencies while also ensuring that any half-day calls were synced.

One section of the venue was outside of union jurisdiction, allowing Architex and CSR to staff those positions entirely; this allowed us to have additional stage hands help push the gear into the union venue and then pass it off to the union and traveled show crew for load-in. The same was true in reverse for load-out, which helped to streamline both processes.

TEAM	UNION (VENUE)	NON-UNION (ARCHITEX)
POSITION BREAKDOWN	Light Board Operator (L1)	LED Lead Technician
	Audio Engineer (A1)	Audio Technician (A2)
	Audio Records Technician	Video Engineer (V1)
	Camera Operator	Video Technician (V2)
	Stagehand	Stagehand
	Stagehand (5 hour call)	Stagehand (5 hour call)

Challenges & Solutions

While producing this event, we navigated these challenges in order to stay within budget and remain compliant and supportive of labor policy.

Overtime Policy

The event programming was initially calling for a 14 hour event day, but as the union labor started overtime after the 8th hour, we modified the plan by shifting to have another crew of load-out stage hands take the gear from the venue, while also reducing some programming. With these updates, union labor costs were cut by almost half on this day.

Dark Stage / Venue

Several last-minute content and presentation updates from our speakers were delivered after load-in had concluded. This becomes challenging because it is always important to review all content prior to going live on screens, preferably in the room and using the same equipment used for show day. However, access to union venues is restricted prior to union-members being on the clock, otherwise known as being “dark.” Instead of calling crews an hour early and accumulating additional overtime, the event planner agreed to a compromise that pushed doors opening by 30 minutes, giving the teams time to review and update these graphics.

Meal Breaks

There was a meal break scheduled after mainstage sessions with a breakout immediately after. Because programming couldn’t be shifted (after accounting for the aforementioned adjustments), the most financially solvent action was to cut one of the union positions early, thereby staggering the meal break and allowing that technician to staff the breakout session without incurring meal penalty. However, these solves fail to account for the union vs. non-union ratio. In order to maintain this rule, we also needed to select a non-union position to join the union position on the staggered meal break and maintain the labor balance.

Summary

Union labor environments or venue-specific policies are not obstacles, rather another layer of planning that must be understood and managed correctly. When factored in early, these considerations assist in the creation of realistic budgets, timelines, and technical designs that support smooth onsite execution.

At Architex, working with union venues is no stranger to us. We can help you not just navigate these policies, but can also consult on your event design and management. Our goal is to remove uncertainty from the process, leading clients to focus on their content, audience experience, and event outcomes.

If you are considering venues with unique labor requirements and need a second set of eyes for consultation, or simply want a partner to make your event planning process smoother, we’d like to help you plan with clarity and confidence. Please reach out today at events@architex.co. We look forward to working with you no matter the venue!