Imagine you are a worker at a grocery store, and not only that, but you also grow the vegetables they sell in that grocery store. Imagine you are expected to be there working in the grocery store for 8 hours a day, opening the store, helping customers, etc, but you only get paid for the time you spend checking out people who are buying your vegetables. Is that fair? Is that right? US labor laws (and common sense) says no, yet that is very similar to what happens to many tattoo artists.
Tattoo artists are classified as private contractors. In many shops we have to buy our own supplies, we receive no salary or hourly wage, no benefits, we don’t even qualify for workers comp or unemployment should we need it. Despite all this…we still work for a business and we have a boss. We are still expected to work open-close, 8 hours a day, 5+ days a week, including weekends and many holidays. We can be reprimanded and fired. We essentially function like a full-time hourly employee except we only make money when customers pay us for a tattoo and then we give our boss 40-50% of that money.
This is how thousands of shops in the tattoo industry function (in America anyway, idk about other countries). If you are a tattoo artist i bet you have worked in a shop like this, you might still work in a shop like this because a huge number of shops run this way…
This is accepted and it really shouldn’t be. The idea that we are expected to go into work, only make money when we are actively tattooing, but are expected to sit there, ready to work, even if no business is coming in that day, FOR FREE, is outrageous (not to mention arguably illegal if anyone is looking…which they aren’t).
Early in my career I spent hundreds of hours of my time at shops NOT getting paid because this is how a huge portion of this industry functions and when you are first starting out you don’t question it. Phrases like “pay your dues” and “this is what you have to do to make it” ring in your ears while you hope that an iced coffee can be both your breakfast and your lunch.
It was only when I moved to a shop that actually respected my time and craft did i realize how much I had been taken advantage of by every other shop I had ever worked for. I now pay a flat monthly booth-rent that usually equates to about 15% of my monthly income, almost all of my supplies are provided by the shop, they even pay to market for me, and I completely decide my own schedule. I only show up when I have an appointment and I leave when I’m done. I work far less hours than I ever did at those other shops and I make three times as much money. Basically I am actually treated like the private contractor that I am legally classified as.
That’s how an industry full of private contractors SHOULD operate. If someone is asking you to work at their business for set hours then they should pay you like an hourly employee. If they dictate what you can/can’t do and when you can/can’t leave, then how are you a private contractor and not an employee? These shops shouldn’t be able to treat people like hourly employees while not paying them like hourly employees. Providing a space for their business to operate is not some favor shop owners are doing artists that we should be expected to slave for – it is literally the bare minimum required for them to own a business.
Artists – our time is worthy of fair compensation. We are worthy of respect and for workplaces to not take advantage of us just because there is a shady system in place that allows for them to take advantage of us. Fuck that system. It should be burned to the ground.
And don’t even get me started on how messed up apprenticeships can be! An industry built on hazing and free labor shouldn’t be allowed to continue existing. Just because we had to do it doesn’t mean it was right or that we should keep doing it that way. The tattoo industry needs to evolve, we need to push this industry to evolve. Nothing will change if artists don’t start talking about this and demanding more.