| STAGEHANDS STRIKE - WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
by Jason Loewith on 11/13/2007 11:53:00 AM
Alright, I'm afraid that this blog entry won't make me many friends in the union world, but...
Back when I was a young and naive aspiring theater professional, I was an intern with the General Management office at the Public Theater in New York. They were the original producers of A CHORUS LINE, and produced it on Broadway for fourteen years after its sucess downtown. One of my duties was to take a weekly report up to the company manager at the Shubert Theater on Broadway while the show was playing.
The company manager, Bob, had been with the show since it started playing on Broadway, and he was a very kind, gentle guy who took me under his wing and would often give me backstage tours of the show, even as it was playing - what a thrill for a 19-year old, talk about starstruck!
My mind might be a bit fuzzy on the details here, but... on my second visit, he took me to the green room, which was pretty empty since the show was going on... except for four musicians who were sitting there with their instruments playing cards. I asked the company manager why there were in the green room while the show was actually going on.
Bob explained to me that these four musicians were "ghosts" (I think that was the term)... the Shubert Theater was, of course, a union house, and by union contract, any musical at the Shubert had to have a pit orchestra of at least 16. Unfortunately for the Public Theater (the nonprofit producers of the show, who had moved it at their own expense to Broadway), A CHORUS LINE was written for an orchestra of 12. So the Public was forced by union rules to hire these four "ghosts" every single night - for the 14 years the show ran, 8 shows a week - to sit in the green room with their instruments and play cards.
I don't know how much the musicians' union gets for its members nowadays, but let's estimate that, in today's dollars, each of those four musicians was making $1500 each week. Four of them costing $6000 each week. Add in social security, medicare, union pension and health, and the bill to the Public Theater was probably closer to $9000 each week. The show ran on Broadway from 1976 to 1990 - so I'm estimating that those four "ghosts" cost the nonprofit Public Theater 6.5 million dollars in today's money.
As nonprofit producers, the Public Theater would not have lined individuals' pockets with that extra $6.5 million. They would have pumped that money back into new productions and new plays; they would have paid actors better than they could usually afford; and likely, any of you who saw that production would have paid a little bit less per ticket.
Now I know this is a complicated issue, and the stagehands aren't the musicians, and everyone deserves to share in the good fortune of a show that makes it big, and goodness knows that the producers of MAMMA MIA are indeed trying to line their pockets and won't pump additional money back into your hands or those of struggling artists. But the core issue is the same - the stagehands' union wants to keep rules in place that pay its members to sit around and do nothing. But times have changed, and much of Broadway these days comes to you courtesy of the nonprofit sector... and all of Broadway is far too expensive.
The stagehands' union - like the musicians' union - is still operating under antiquated rules that come from the glory days of Broadway in the early part of the last century - when there were dozens of Broadway shows of all sorts, and unions provided important protections against unscrupulous producers. But nowadays, the producers work based on a very different economy, and there is absolutely no reason you, as the consumer, should pay for stagehands to sit around drinking coffee because of ancient rules.
This is what it boils down to: in a Broadway house with "flies" (where scenery can be raised and lowered from far above the stage), producers are forced to hire a union fly-man even if a show doesn't use scenery that's raised or lowered (like AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY, where the set doesn't change). That stagehand gets paid to do absolutely nothing. To persuade the union to give up these ridiculous rules, the producers have offerred a 16% wage increase. Doesn't sound bad to me.
In what other industry in the country - a hospital, an automotive factory, a delivery company, you name it - does a union have the power to put employees on the payroll for doing nothing?
If you've got a different opinion, post it here! I'd like to understand why I should change my mind.Labels: Broadway, stagehands, union
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The first thing I thought when I read about this strike was, too bad it didn't happen in February when a certain show that we know and love is opening off-Broadway. I've heard that off-Broadway shows are doing well at the moment...
The first thing I thought when I read about this strike was, too bad it didn't happen in February when a certain show that we know and love is opening off-Broadway. I've heard that off-Broadway shows are doing well at the moment...
i see your argument, jason. paying someone to sit around and play cards doesn't sound like fun. i get that. but, for the sake of argument, i'll ask this: if Producers didn't have to pay for what they didn't use, couldn't you foresee every show on Broadway having a unit set with no flying pieces, no musicians, no costume changes, and no props. Producers would cut all extraneous expenses. how would the artistry on stage be affected in such a scenario, if Producers had no accountability? is it fair to assume Producers would keep the best interests of the art in mind?
Seriously? We're placing the expense of putting up mammoth Broadway shows at the feet of the stagehands union? Well, gosh - there's an argument right out of the Reagan White House, isn't it? This is what the anti-union, pro-corporation forces say: "They actually PAY someone to sit around and play Parchezzi, while the poor Shubert Organization - with it's decades of treating artists and craftspeople in a fair and equitable manner, yadda, yadda, yadda."
Because producers, like large corporations - given freedom from restrictions - ALWAYS focus on improving the quality of life of the people who work for them, right?
As for cost: how 'bout lowering the property taxes in Manhatten? Never happen. How 'bout a special concession on NYC, specifically, advertising costs for shows? Nope. How 'bout cross-the-board cuts and salary/percentage caps to show parity with everyone involved? Are you joking me?
Huh. Must be the union, then.
Here's just a couple of disparate points:
In the first place, I think you have to look at the situation with a wider lens, Jason: there are Broadway theatres, of course - each theatre has a full-time permanent staff, composed of Local One union members - most, second and third generation, with wives and kids and bills, and rent, and mortgages, like you and me. They spent years working for that membership, and they shuffle back and forth to other theatres in the City, as needed. Even still, they have a high rate of unemployment.
So they are there year-round for the theatre itself - not just for whatever individual show happens to be coming through at the time. The union established rules - and well they should - to prevent the people they represent from falling prey to the whims, "creative" management, and, yes, chicanery of individual producers who might decide to throw a few million bucks into a show like CARRIE: The Musical, run for a couple of days, and then lose his, and all his investors', collective shirts. What do you say to the people who live and work there permanently? "Get a job?"
You're not seriously going to postulate that if the Shuberts - or the Public, for that matter - didn't have to pay for a full Broadway theatre staff, that they would channel that cash directly to the actors' paychecks, are you? I didn't think so.
Not even Mr. Papp would have done that. Yes, the Public moved A COURUS LINE to Broadway on its own dime - and it paid off for them in spades. A COURUS LINE - even with it's 4 nominal musicians - kept the Public and its staff alive for 15 years. But the Sainted Public has also remained alive - even in its solvent years under Mr. Papp - by paying local unknown actors sub-level wages by pointing to the fact that they can get Richard Dreyfuss to play Iago for $320.00 a week - so why shouldn't everybody make that? Well, needless to say, Mr. Dreyfuss has supplemental income elsewhere - or used to. Can the New York Shakespeare Festival afford to pay working-stiff actors more? Of course they can - much more. Even - dare I say it - a living wage. Also not gonna happen.
So, why should the theatre's local professional staff have to lose days, weeks, and months of employment - like the performers involved, if a show is not doing well, or closes? Because that's the risk. If I'm the head of the union, I'm going to try to make sure ALL my people make a living, consistently, year-round - case closed. That's what unions do - or the good ones, anyway. People died in the streets to get that job security. God, I wish any one of the 3 performers' unions I belong to had the clout and courage of Local One.
Should there be reforms? Sure - why not? If you're a producer, and you want a change or concession in those rules, you can get it - it's never pointed out, they do it all the time - it's much easier to demonize the union in the press - but you have to sit down and negotiate like a sane, serious person - not like these folks have done. And your past record as a producer comes into play when those negotiations happen. And if you've been a scumbag at any point to working people - guess what? You don't get a break. But that, of course, would NEVER happen to New York City producers. They're all so trustworthy and generous and kind.
You put up a show - you have to engage the theatre and it's full staff - regardless of the requirements of your particular play. Welcome to the NFL. You don't like it, negotiate concessions like a mensch - or get another theatre in another town, or go non-union - like the vermin who put up shows like Barry Williams in THE MUSIC MAN, advertise them as Broadway touring shows, and make significantly higher profit margins off the backs of young non-Equity performers who just want to work with no protection.
More later.
Allow me to counter that back when *I* was a young and naive aspiring theater professional, I worked for a big equity house. Three years I worked for them. Seven shows. On that seventh show I discovered that I was being paid significantly less than any other cast member - same show, same hours, arguably more work on my end. And the big producer opted to underpay me. Why? Because he could. I was not a union member at the time. So let's just say there is some injustice on both sides, hm'kay?
Let's put this thing in perspective: the producers of Broadway were not suffering under the thumb of the oppressive union bosses. They are trying to get their labor more cheaply. Know why the staffing requirements are there? Because few of us doubt that producers could and would pay as few people as little as possible to get the job done, even if that means understaffing. That means as a performer, my safety is at risk. No thank you.
The one hard reality of our profession is that we are constantly in the process of *losing our jobs*, usually every few months, and I get downright resentful when a person on salary complains about my free-wheeling lifestyle. We dig and scratch for every job, and you can bet your boots we will fight for every bit of job security we can.
My grandfather was a layout man for a construction company. He often pointed out that unions protect some lazy employees. He would then tell us that the rest of us need unions ANYWAY.
I'm so glad this issue has raised passionate responses on this blog... I've learned much already from what I've read so far, and encourage more debate on the issue.
I'll concede a few things from what I've read:
1) The bloggers who suggest producers, nonprofit or otherwise, will cut corners wherever possible are absolutely right. Unions are vital to the protection of workers in our industry.
2) Job security in a world of shows constantly opening and closing is an enormously important issue, and one that I don't understand as well as many because, luckily (or through my own sweat and years of being underpaid) I don't have experience with.
Nonetheless, a number of the issues I raised remain. Theater and its mode of production changes, and both unions and producers need to come to agreement about adapting to that changing world for the art form to survive. (That's of course why the Writers are striking out west - and you might be interested to know that I wholeheartedly support the WGA). Concessions will have to be made on every front. I was so hopeful that the straight play was returning to Broadway this year... and I'd hate to see this strike spell the end of that.
i'm too am sad that all of these wonderful new plays aren't getting a chance to be seen on Broadway!
i hope this strike ends soon.
i read that the talk that took place last weekend between Broadway producers and labor reps was a bust.
does anyone know any more details than that??
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