A concert pianist may get as little as $20,000 for a Carnegie Hall appearance. One of the stagehands made $530,044 in 2008.

That kind of compensation for semi-skilled manual labor can only result from union power rising to the level of extortion. Imagine what staggering sum total of dollars is siphoned annually out of the operating budgets of all the concert halls, museums, and theaters in New York City, and how much richer that city’s cultural life would be if workers were paid conventionally generous wages and the currently misappropriated surplus applied to delivering more exhibitions and performances to the public.

Bloomberg