Some interesting tidbits trickling out in various post-strike articles I've been catching up with.
First Campbell Robertson sums up pretty credibly what spun it out of control:
After months of negotiations, league officials were genuinely surprised to find
that the union wasn’t giving in on a range of points, even on rules the league
thought were plainly unreasonable.
Unreasonable to who, again?
Again, the League also never recognized how ape-shit a union will go when you say you're going to roll back conditions that have been in the contract for nearly 100 years, and that
your organization has renewed again and again.
They also underestimated union solidarity from the actors--who know they're next.
When the strike began, the first on Broadway in the union’s 121-year history,
the league also expected to see fault lines between Local 1 and the other
Broadway unions, but these lines never really materialized. The new director of
Actors’ Equity Association, John P. Connolly, turned out to be a stalwart
defender of Local 1, giving fiery speeches at news conferences.
The League let Connolly know, by the way, what fun he's in for next year, when the
AEA contract comes up for renewal.
In an open letter to the actors’ union during the strike, league officials said, “Before the recent vitriol aimed at us by Equity, we had no expectation that next summer’s production contract negotiation would be difficult in any respect.”
Meanwhile, the Sun's
Kate Taylor takes up the question of, why doesn't this happen over in London? Turns out they have an interesting solution over there:
[E]ach West End theater is required to permanently employ at least four stagehands. They then hire additional stagehands for the load-in and run of a show....
On the other hand, once a Broadway show closes, all the stagehands working on it are immediately unemployed.
Perhaps this sensible alternative model came out of more fruitful, creative, and respectful labor negotiations.
Oh, and one other factor:
A spokesman for Local One, the Broadway stagehands' union, Bruce Cohen, noted that the British unions and their employers also don't have to negotiate about health care, since Britain has national health care.
Oh, what problems would "evil socialized
medicine" not solve!
Finally some "final thoughts" of my own:
- Note how easily so many assumed that because a stagehand might not be fully put to use on one day of a load-in that therefore he must be earning six figures a year doing nothing. I sincerely doubt, need I say, that is the case with anyone. Yet there it was spread all over the press.
- I think the big picture that's been missed throughout is
why the old contract allowed for so much so-called "featherbedding." (In other words, let's
not assume along with Charlotte St.
Martin that her predecessors at the League of American Theatres and Producers were either labor-loving pinkos or crack-addicted incompetents.) My guess is that the old contracts
assumed most Broadway shows were
big shows and would require big load-ins. Hence, in the days when Broadway meant big, you didn't hear as many "featherbedding" complaints since...they actually used all those stagehands! Now the shows have progressively shrunk in every way (
Bronx Tale anyone?) but the contract remained the same.
The League is right that the rising economic costs of real estate, marketing, and other union demands, make profit more difficult on the old super-size budgets. And indeed, despite their claims the stagehands were doing
nothing to compromise, these negotiations have ended up acknowledging the changing landscape and giving them more flexibility. But if they're asking unions to adjust to a much smaller Broadway, it's only fair to provide a much more gradual transition for the average day-laborers and their families. Instead of just all at once downsizing them.
-I believe I heard someone on say on NY1's On Stage this past weekend that while the old contract did
not mandate load-in minimums for non-musical plays, the new contract--as a concession--does! I don't know about you, but what I take out of that is the news that you can't blame the stagehand union for keeping serious drama away from Broadway. That's not what this was about. In fact, the League seemed content to give that away as a
bargaining chip. Why? Because
they don't plan on producing any more plays.
Seriously folks, what it really means is today's business savvy producer is relying now on only one formula: the small to
midsize musical. Small enough to cut the stagehand costs, but large enough to fill the house.
Ol'
Wedekind's Spring Awakening may be having all kinds of unintended consequences...
-And finally, here's the number one reason I'm
glad there was a strike: to remind people that people who work in the theatre
really work. They're not minstrels for our amusement. They're not doing it as a hobby, like community theatre. Whether working on stage or off, this is their livelihood and if we want a theatre in this town (and this country) we better look after it as a profession. Like any other profession.
When auto or transit workers strike, sure there's grumbling and anti-labor rhetoric. But for play-people, I sense a more shocked outrage.
How dare these men be picketing on the street instead of enchanting my children, and my aunt from Indiana. The Times ran a letter to the editor that said something like:
Good going stagehands, you ruined the restaurant industry. But you know, restaurant workers have unions, too. And we recognize their right to strike. (Don't we?)
I suppose an
analagous group of employees not "allowed" to strike are teachers. Indeed, an important civic job. But without the power to strike, are we content to let them be exploited with no leverage?
So as we enter what is promising to be a
harball decade for Broadway labor negotiations (as has widely been reported, the League has a long-term, course-resetting agenda here) I hope everyone in the press or in real life who loves the theatre will remember that the people who make those magical nights on stage happen--they're employees. Just like--probably--you.