NY Times Sunday :In Broadway Dispute, Both Sides Agree: It’s All About Fairness

full article is below
The theater owners and producers have zeroed in on several work rules that they say are particularly inefficient and costly. They resent a rule, for instance, that requires them to pay stagehands $56 per hour, the highest pay rate, for mopping a stage before each performance, amounting, they say, to as much as $24,000 extra a year, plus benefit contributions. . The league also dislikes, but is no longer insisting on changing, a rule that requires paying premium payments to stagehands who work on Sunday when other Broadway workers, like actors, do not receive these Sunday premiums.

The league also abhors a rule that requires producers to maintain a predetermined number of stagehands for every day of a load-in, the period when a show is being set up in a theater, which can last for weeks. As a result of this rule, the league says, many stagehands get paid even though they sit around for hours on end with nothing to do (the two sides are close to a compromise on this issue).


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/nyregion/25broadway.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=nyregion&pagewanted=print

NY TIMES

"Producers have presented some offers to make changes palatable in the short term — including a one-time payment of $25,000 to every stagehand who mops, in exchange for cutting the mopping rate roughly in half. Over time, it would save the producers a considerable amount, but the union rejected the proposal because it would mean less pay for members in the future."

billynj -

Thanks for posting this. A balanced article on the whole but it fails to drive home the point that needs to be made... The union has not asked for any increases in anything. There is no increase to pass on to the consumer. Local One would have accepted status quo. I get that the producers find some of the rules to be antiquated and the union (in recent history) tried to use common sense when enforcing the rules. Local One has shown good faith and a willingness to alter conditions to suit the best interests of the production providing that it doesn't translate to money being taken out of every stagehand's pocket.

Featherbedding is best left to describe a (dark) period in the union's history when extra people might have been DELIBERATELY added to the payroll in order to essentially steal from the management. This is a very derogatory word and does not belong in this dispute. Extra people are not added on purpose these days. We don't want to stand around waiting for work to happen. If production management is organized, there is no need for people to run out of things to do during a load-in.

It is not in the interest of striking a deal for the League to continually beat up the union in the press.

Updated On: 11/24/07 at 08:50 PM

I certainly will say a prayer that this is all over in the morning.

Ed, I too would be wary of "one-time payment" agreements, in ANY business. It always stinks of shady dealings.

FYI curtain - and by the way, it's nice that we aren't arguing over Mermaid at the moment...

The mopping proposal was this... The League offered to give the CURRENT Head Prop people (the people who do the mopping) a one-time payout of $25,000 AND the union would agree to immediately drop the paid rate for mopping by 50%. Doing the math, it would mean that, after a 2 year period, this benefit would have paid the offset in wages (the other half, if you will) so anyone mopping beyond that two year mark would - for all eternity (or at least this contract) - make half as much for the same amount of work that they do now. Sell out your future brethren in exchange for lining your pockets now... The same sort of thing that Proskauer Rose attempted with the MTA last year when they tried to get the transit workers to accept a crap deal as long as it didn't effect them - it would only burn the new hires.

By the way, there was another proposal on the table early on in a similar vein - the League wanted to be able to pay anybody who had not previously worked at a given venue (regardless of experience level or time in the union) a sub-par wage for a period equal to the length of the new contract. A sort of 'probation rate' even if the employee is a skilled person who is a full member of the union.

Knowing human nature, employers expect that people will sell out some faceless future employee. Sometimes that works but not with stagehands.

Updated On: 11/25/07 at 01:57 AM