Brutkey

katharine
@thatkatharine@ohai.social

📣📣 Arts workers are workers and Covid is a performing arts issue.

https://newfeeling.ca/2025/08/08/covid-is-still-a-working-class-issue/

The music industry is deeply tied to the night time economy, which not only fuels its venues and events but also serves as a primary employer for musicians and other arts workers. When the pandemic hit, the abrupt shut down quickly revealed just how precarious workers in those positions are. This work is largely in person, pays minimum wage, happens in crowded spaces with poor ventilation, rarely offers paid sick days or leave, much less any kind of health insurance or job security. These pre-existing inequities are not unique to this industry, but ones that have been exacerbated by the ongoing pandemic. McBride's case is not unusual. To write this story I put out a call to speak with musicians who have been affected by long COVID. There were far too many respondents to interview, but of the group who reached out, the majority of musicians and music workers navigating long COVID were first infected after 2022, amidst the lifting of many pandemic restrictions and preventions worldwide, and in spite of the fact that the first round of vaccinations and boosters had been released. None of the musicians I spoke with for this piece work in the industry full time, reflecting the lived reality of many musicians and music workers, especially since the pandemic was first acknowledged as such. Broadly, silence around the ongoing pandemic is affecting our ability to collectively bargain for health and safety protections we should be entitled to. This invisibilization of COVID from conversations in live music can make it incredibly difficult for artists to ask for protections or accommodations. "I've been told by at least three people that sit on audition panels to not even bother auditioning" Cameron explains. "One, I can't audition if I'm masked and singing. And two, there would just be no way for them to ever have room to talk about it or to find a way to make it safe."