An interesting in the Monday New York Times describes a fight going on in Los Angeles  concerning the application of the minimum wage to actors working in very small theaters:

The willingness of Los Angeles actors to perform for a pittance, hoping to hone their craft and, maybe, to catch the eye of an agent or manager, is now at the heart of an extraordinary rift in the union representing theater actors, and has opened a new front in the nation’s battle over the minimum wage.
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Actors’ Equity, the national union that represents Ms. Odell and about 6,500 other stage performers in Los Angeles, says its members are selling themselves short. The union, seizing a moment when organized labor is having some success pressuring low-wage employers to pay higher salaries, says many of this city’s small theaters — which currently pay actors nothing for rehearsals, and stipends as low as $7 per performance — should start paying California’s minimum wage of $9 an hour.
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But the union’s effort to help boost actors’ pay has prompted a vociferous backlash from its members, many of whom fear that higher pay will cause many theaters to disappear. In a nonbinding referendum conducted over the last several weeks, 66 percent of Equity members in Los Angeles who cast ballots voted against a mandatory minimum wage for small theaters. (About 45 percent of the 6,990 ballots sent out were returned.)