Electric Forest Staffer Cuts Hundreds of Electric Forest Volunteers Just Days Shy of Event
Kingdom Promotions have just let go hundreds of volunteers in days before Electric Forest 2019. This was a staffing company enlisted by the Rothbury, Michigan Electric Forest festival’s organizers (a third-party company).
According to an email by the event staffing agency, an unforeseen staff reduction was the reason for the volunteers’ termination. The deposit the volunteers paid for would be immediately refunded, they said.
However, as a result of this news, chaos ensued. Many volunteers had already traveled to the festival grounds. Consequently, they were in dire straits. Many had no lodging or means of return.
Indeed, this was such an unfortunate thing to happen. Furthermore, especially following the fact that many had traveled miles and miles to volunteer for Electric Forest 2019.
This situation was clearly out of Electric Forest’s control, because Kingdom Productions was a third-party hire. According to the festival, the promo company overstaffed the entire weekend by several hundred people.
Here was the statement from The Festive Owl:
Beware for future volunteer needs. — Kingdom Promotions has cut 200 Electric Forest volunteers after many had already arrived onsite to start working. Leaving them all out to dry with no tickets, no work, and no reimbursement for the hours of time + money invested in travel to Rothbury.
Official Statement from Electric Forest regarding the issue:
Kingdom Productions was hired by a third-party staffing vendor, and were contracted by that vendor to help them fill volunteer positions at EF2019. While the number of volunteer positions for them to fill was clearly specified in their contract with that vendor, Kingdom overstaffed their available positions by several hundred. These volunteers were not hired by the festival and are not part of Electric Forest’s Fan2Staff program. With Electric Forest sold out since last December, unfortunately there are no options for the festival to consider how we might be able to help those affected by Kingdom Productions’ error. There is physically not enough space on site to accommodate them.
Electric Forest Official Statement
