Profile for bugmenot

ratification can't happen until the membership is given a 10-day notice prior to the meeting where the ratification discussion and vote will take place, so yeah, 12/9 sounds about right (I assume my notice is in the mail). Ratification is not "just a formality" nor is it guaranteed, but it would be extremely unusual for a contract to come before the membership with the executive board's recommendation and then be voted down.

nah, the strike is over. picket lines are down. contract ratification is more of a formality at this point. Go buy some tickets!

Please go see a Broadway PLAY...the musicals get the tourist dollars, the plays NEED the business of the people who actually love and understand theatre Every single show will be open for business Thursday night. Go see something! Just like the first performance after 9/11, it will be the experience of a lifetime.

I don't know what's negative about that article. There's one issue left to settle. It's now down to the pricetag.

Continuity refers to an additional 1-hour work period that can be scheduled prior to a show or immediately after it, i.e. in continuity with the performance call. Current practice is that you can have one before the show (which most shows do, in order to set up the show, check lights, etc) OR one immediately after the show, but not both. This will probably be revised in this next contract.

The mopping issue was resolved. Talks will resume Wednesday morning.

If Local One didn't care about the innocents being hurt by this, they wouldn't have set aside 20% of their defense fund for the sole purpose of making payments to the OTHER unions affected by the strike, for distributions to their affected members. Have the Producers continued to pay their non-striking employees? No, they have not. Will the producers fight against any claims for back-pay made by the non-striking workers? I am betting they will. Will they continue to live in comfy homes in Eas...

I heard it from a priest.

> Please pass this thought along to the Union. I actually looked > at the Stagehands Website but they had no fund the general > public to make contributions to. Thank you for the thought, it's really appreciated, but I'm guessing our defense fund is fine (as I understand it, it is automatically replenished by dues payments paid by the people still working in other parts of the union's jurisdictional area -- probably about 2000 people still working out of the roughly 2500 active members). If y...

> I agree with the fact that the new class of broadway > producers are younger and not sure of what to do in this > situation. I wish that were the case, but the people who are behind this, from all reports, are people who have been around for a long, long time, like Paul Libin, Herschel Waxman, Phil Smith, Alan Williams, Alecia Parker, Richard Frankel, etc. I fear their goal is to show the unions "who is in charge" at any cost. I'm not bullish on this ending any time soon. I hope it does, bu...

No. They don't add up. Of course they don't. They've even admitted it themselves now. This is from Bloomberg on the 21st: " Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the producers' league, issued a statement on Nov. 10 that the strike ``will have an economic impact of $17 million per day in direct and indirect costs.' True Impact That figure, widely reported, is overstated, according to the league's own research director, Karen Hauser. The true economic impact is closer to $8 million, she s...

of course they're appealing, they're not playing with a full deck. I wonder if people have started to hear the story about Gerry Schoenfeld calling Father Baker (twice) at the Actor's Chapel and threatening him for letting the unions use the chapel as a meeting place? It was considerably less subtle than what Reidel's column implies....

> I am a teacher in an NYC school and a member of a union. I > support the strike because it is NOT about how much so and so is > getting paid. It's about the rights of the working person to have > a fair contract negotiated. THANK YOU! Finally somebody gets it!

If you are outside a theatre and see people hanging out during a load-in, there is a good chance they are the Teamsters (who are not stagehands), who are waiting there for trucks to load or unload. That's their job, and their only job. In the Post a few weeks ago there was an anecdote about Mel Brooks walking by the Grinch load-in and seeing "stagehands sitting in a truck doing nothing" -- trust me, those were the Teamsters. I'm not saying "anyone you see standing in front of a theatre smokin...

> i dont mean to imply that short had worked out a final contract > and claffey rejected it. i meant that short had made some offers > to the league that when presented to claffey were rejected. exactly...but I wouldn't paint this as a battle between short vs. claffey. Don't forget that negotiating on the Local's side there are also the business agents, our lawyers, and a negotiating committee made up of people who work in every area backstage who understand all of the implications of what is...

For the sake of accuracy, the final exchange was the Local's negotiating team bringing a counter-offer to the table, the league looking at it, saying "it's not enough" and then walking out. As I understand the situation, there was NOT a comprehensive, signable deal on the table when the League walked out. They were still exchanging proposals. To say there was a full deal on the table that Short was behind and Claffey was not is at least misleading, if not just plain untrue. That version of ev...

> why didn't he force the acceptance of the offered contract? That's something you'll have to ask him, I guess. Maybe he knew it was a bad deal. Maybe he knew there was a chance the members of the local union would defy him and reject the contract. Maybe he was homesick for california. All just conjecture, of course. Just to be 100% accurate: the union put the last offer on the table. The league then rejected it and walked out.

> I also agree that neither side cares > about who else is being affected. believe me, the local one members care. I've already signed over half of my first strike benefit check to BC/EFA. I will probably sign over the other half to St Malachy's or somebody else in the neighborhood.

> I have read the reports of Tom Short's ordering the St. James > picket - I guess it seems weird to me that Mr. Claffey would just > go along with it if he didn't agree with it, He didn't have a choice. the way the union works is the international president, Tom Short, has the ultimate power (and no, the members of Local One didn't elect him). Short also ordered us to implement the strike on Saturday morning. I am pretty sure Jim Claffey would have preferred to wait until at least Monday or ...

ShowtuneRick: if you are currently employed on a broadway show, your union will have financial assistance available for you. Depending on the union, that assistance may be coming, 100%, from Local One. to the other poster who said that they don't get meal breaks or can be fired for raising concern at their job, etc. and we should end the strike because of that: let me present an alternative view: stand up for yourself. Stand up for what is right. If your employer is walking all over you, why ...