How the Producers stole Thanksgiving

I'll be honest - I never thought the Broadway producers would let the strike shut down shows on the lucrative Thanksgiving holiday weekend.  I've been hearing numbers like $20 million when it comes to the fund the producers socked away to survive the strike, but Broadway as a whole makde $33 million last year for the Thanksgiving week.

But when the Producers posted on their website on Sunday night (an hour BEFORE they broke off talks with I.A.T.S.E.) that they were cancelling all the shows in the 27 strike theatres for the entire week, the strike took on a whole new level of urgency.  And when word that I.A.T.S.E. workers who had agreed to keep 'The Grinch Stole Christmas' open this week were locked out by the Nederlander organization, we discovered who really is the Grinch on Broadway.

I believe that the producers are trying to break the stagehands union, which are on strike for the first time in their history.  (more after the break)

Most of the press reports have made it sould like the big issue on the table is the minimum number of stagehands required to work load-ins and performances.  The press ludicrously wrong on this one.  Unlike the musicians union, that has a minimum number of pit musicians for musicals based on the size of the house, I.A.T.S.E. has no such fixed numbers.  The producer (through their technical director), decides how many stagehands are required for loading in a show, and then how many stagehands are required to run a show (generally a much smaller number).  

The main things that are the sticking points in the negotiation are the work rules regarding load-ins and performances.  Current rules (or should I say, the rules in existence under contact before the producers unilaterally enacted new work rules three months after the current contract expired in July), state that once the number of stagehands has been determinded for a load-in, that number of stagehands must be employed for the duration of the load-in (usually 3-5 weeks).  Similarly, the number of stagehands at opening night (after 4-5 weeks of preview performances) must continue to remain the same for the duration of the show's run.

In an e-mail I received from I.A.T.S.E. Local One (via the business manager of my own union , United Scenic Artists Local 829, which is a subsidiary of I.A.T.S.E., and o\bviously supports the strike), the stageshands have made significant concessions on these points.  A typical broadway show today has a load-in crew of 30-40 stagehands (carpenters, electricians, props people, sound engineers, etc).  The Union has offered that the minimum number on a given day be as low as 18, so that if the full load-in crew of 36 is requred on a monday, then the Producers could call as few as 18 for the Tuesday (for lighting focus, for instance, when fewer carpenters might be needed).  In addition, the same offer was made in relation to overtime (under current work rules, if anyone on the crew gets paid overtime for working beyond 8 hours, the whole crew gets overtime):  now, all but 18 members of the load-in crew can be released once the call has moved into overtime.

These two issues represent a major savings for the producers, and a huge concession for the union.  For those familiar with other union negotiations, you can often get pay raises and even benefits back in future negitiations, but once you negotiate away work rules, you're unliklely to ever get them back.

Another misconception out there is about the amount of money these incredibly highly trained and specialized stagehans make.  The average stagehand working an 8-show week on a production makes $1200-$1400 per week.  Now that may sound like alot of money over the long haul, but when you consider that for every show that runs for years, there are five that close after only a few weeks (sometimes with only a couple of days notice), and that money sounds pretty minimal, especially when you consider the high cost of living in New York (the median apartment price in Manhattan is north of $1,000,000, and the median rent north of $3000/month).

Remember, these are the same producers who wanted to crush the Musicians Union 4 years ago and charge the same $120 per ticket for canned music, throwing hundreds of musicians out of work (can you imagine going to a Grateful Dead concert and having Bob Weir play solo with a bunch of synthesizers recreating the other musicians?).  That didn't work out so well for the producers, thankfully, as the other Broadway unions rallied aroound the musicians, and audiences demanded live music on broadway they have come to expect since the first Broadway musical.

I think that Broadway producers, which raked in $1,000,000,000 last year, and were well ahead of that pace this year, have decided to try to break the strongest union on the Great White Way.   Please support the Union in any way you can - join the picket lines, come to New York anyway, and see some of the great shows off-broadway or at the non-profiut theatres that are not affected by the strike, and dismiss the press reports that are trying to make the stagehands out to be the bad guys.

Solidarity, Brothers and sisters!