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Theater producers and Local One, the Broadway stagehands’ union, may have agreed to return to the bargaining table next week, but don’t rush out and buy Phantom of the Opera tickets just yet. (Or ever.) The Posts’s Michael Riedel points out that Local One is being joined at the table by Tom Short, the boss of their umbrella union, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). Since Short will have to give the final authorization for a strike – and it's a union rule that an IATSE official be present during at least one round of negotiations before striking – this could signal a breakthrough or a breakdown.
It’s been three weeks since talks stalled, and in the meantime producers have already begun implementing the changes they’ve sought in their new contract proposal. (Stagehands have been working without contracts since July.) Playbill has a rundown of the new work rules, which include obscene demands like making stagehands help clean up a mess, even if it’s not their job! Stagehands have been chafing under the changes, and the building tension is making a Thanksgiving-time strike seem like a real possibility.
If you’ve got Broadway tickets for any time during or after the Thanksgiving weekend, you might be wise to unload them and wait it out. Depending on how things go next week, we could be seeing a very high-stakes game of chicken coming to the crossroads, with poor Mama Mia! trapped in the middle.
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"hich include obscene demands like making stagehands help clean up a mess, even if it’s not their job!"
what a misleading and ignorant comment. This shows a complete lack of understanding about what is being implemented and demanded by the league.
Please learn a little something about a subject before writing about it.
Agreed. There is a lot more to the issue than simple "line items." Broadway is having another banner year, and any producers' demands that reduce the take-home pay of stagehands, even if they deal with seemingly archaic work rules, should be viewed in the appropriate light. A little objective reporting wouldn't hurt either.
I'm all for unions and hope the stagehands get a fair deal, but what is "fair" is quite a matter for debate, isn't it? If you look over the changes already being implemented by producers (posted on the Playbill link above) many of them don't seem unreasonable at all. (Three people paid to run a soundboard that only needs one operator? Everyone gets paid overtime even if the show only needs a few stagehands to do OT?) From what I've read, most stagehands are very well paid, some pulling in 100K; we're not talking about home nurses or miners toiling in the coal mines here.
My sarcastic tone noted by commenter #1 points to my feeling that this is not a black-and-white story - it's hardly objective to paint a knee-jerk picture of rapacious producers and poor, exploited workers. (Commenter #1 - see also my previous post on the strike: www.gothamist.com/2007/10/22/broadways_strik.php)
That said, I think it goes without saying that my heart isn't bleeding for super-rich producers like Mel Brooks and company either. And speaking as someone who's passionate about theater, I think there'd be worse fates than a strike happening, the League losing their shirts during the holidays, and Broadway audiences perhaps looking elsewhere for theater, which is in varied, exciting abundance in NY pretty much everywhere but Broadway. (To be fair, I would hate to miss the upcoming production of The Homecoming and, possibly, Rock 'n' Roll.)
These producers are out to union-bust plain and simple. They want drastic cuts not to lower ticket prices or anything beneficial to the workers or the audience - this is all about them making more of a profit so they can buy their second third and fourth beach homes. Don't be fooled. Playbill, by the way, shills for producers - glorified press releases does not reporting make. They should do their homework as should the author of this piece!