PAGE 6 | March 1, 2019 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
ON THE JOB with IATSE Local 28
ALL HANDS ON DECK: Rigging the KISS show at Moda Center is a team effort. Joel Gburek, left, works with a rigger 100 feet up to attach chain motors that will later lift the equipment.
From Page 1
KISS, cackling, “Welcome to
the Psycho Circus!” can de-
scend on individual octagon-
shaped platforms as flames
shoot off in the background.
Katy Perry can fly out over her
audience sitting on a flying
saucer. Tommy Lee of Motley
Crüe can play drums on a rotat-
ing roller coaster above the
crowd.
Some riggers get their start at
rock and roll clubs. Gburek got
his start his senior year of high
school in State College, Pennsyl-
vania, when his English teacher
talked him into doing stage work
on a spring musical. That led
him to study technical theater
production at Penn State, and a
$4.15-an-hour student job work-
ing back stage. After graduating
in 1995, he moved to Portland.
“My number one priority was
getting an IATSE card, no matter
where I ended up,” Gburek re-
calls.
When he saw that the Broad-
way hit Les Miserables was
coming to what was then the
Civic Auditorium (now the
Keller), Gburek, who’d previous
worked on the show’s touring
production, went to talk to two
stage carpenters he knew on the
crew. They introduced him to
IATSE Local 28’s business
agent. He joined, and started get-
ting jobs through the union hir-
ing hall.
Twenty-three years later,
Gburek has rigged countless
concerts, stage productions,
conventions and trade shows.
He’s been all over the world,
rigging on six continents. He
traveled with the Broadway
show Wicked. He rigged the
Joel Gburek
2016 Republican National Con-
vention. He toured with The
Rolling Stones, Nine Inch Nails,
The Killers, Michael Bublé,
Kings of Leon, Macklemore &
Ryan Lewis, and Imagine Drag-
ons. And like most people in the
industry, he’s never been
starstruck.
“The star knows you’re not
there to get their autograph,”
Gburek says. “They know
you’re there because you’re a
professional. And they know
that they hired you and they’re
paying for you. You’re part of
the machine that makes their
show go on.”
“The touring lifestyle is not
like the movie Almost Famous.
Touring these days is a business.
There are lobby calls and day
sheets and time schedules and
per diems and sexual harass-
ment policies and non-disclo-
sure agreements.”
Working for a band’s touring
production crew is non-union,
but Gburek keeps up with his
Local 28 dues while he’s on the
road. And he calls Portland, and
Local 28, home.
“I think we are one of the best
rigging locals in the United
States, and I say that with a lot
of humility but also a lot of ex-
perience of being in all the other
ones.”
Rigging a production is a
team effort and a collaboration
between “production riggers”
who work for the traveling
show, and “local riggers” who
work for the venue.
“A production rigger’s job is
to take the same show and fit it
into 30 different boxes,” Gburek
says. “A local rigger’s job is to
take 30 different shows and
shove them into the same box.”
Gburek said Portland’s Local
28 has a lot of riggers who’ve
been on the road, so they under-
stand the needs of a traveling
production.
“We bring a lot to the table.
We bring professionalism, we
bring pride, we bring a sense of
union integrity.”
And Local 28 enjoys a solid
relationship with arena manage-
ment, Gburek said: “We’re paid
well, we’re treated well, we’re
well-taken care of, and we’re re-
spected.”
IATSE stands for Interna-
tional Alliance of Theatrical
Stage Employees. At Local 28,
being a union rigger means a
wage of about $38 an hour, plus
health, retirement, and training
benefits.
Thanks to the professionalism
of Gburek and his fellow IATSE
members, serious accidents are
rare. But the risks are real.
In 2003, a ceiling lighting
grid collapsed at Boardwalk
Hall in Atlantic City as riggers
IT’S A LONG WAY DOWN. For upriggers in IATSE Local 28, a work day means
walking out onto beams 105 feet above the floor of the Moda Center arena.
were setting up for a concert by
Christina Aguilera and Justin
Timberlake. Thirty people were
working below, and miracu-
lously no one was hit, though
three stagehands sustained mi-
nor injuries in the scramble to
get out of the way. The accident
caused $1 million in damage to
the tour’s equipment and to the
false ceiling, and put the tour on
hold.
Because today’s shows often
exceed the rated capacity of
venues’ structural beams, pro-
ductions must hire an engineer
to determine where load can
safely be applied to the building.
Gburek doesn’t take any
chances, and with an experi-
enced union crew, he doesn’t
have to.
“Every single thing we do, all
the thousands of pieces of hard-
ware we put together, each one
of them is critical to a catastro-
phe not happening. So to me the
union means knowing my
brother or sister on the other end
of the line. If I’m going to send
something up to the grid and
someone comes on the radio
and says it’s safe and secure, I
trust them unequivocally.”