Lucky for me and my Saturday afternoon plans in Kansas City, stagehands for the traveling company of Avenue Q have not joined their Broadway counterparts in an ongoing strike. Where is the world supposed to turn for entertainment when Broadway goes dark and Hollywood writers create picket signs not monologue lines?
The Broadway strike started on Saturday, November 10, and has closed 27 shows, including The Lion King, The Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia!, Wicked and Dr Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which planned to open the morning the strike began. Only eight shows remain open. This strike pits the largest stagehands' union, Local One, against the League of American Theaters and Producers.
The stagehands have been working without a set contract since July, and negotiations ended in mid-October when the League of American Theaters and Producers presented their "final offer". It included a 16 percent wage increase over five years, with further increases for some workers in the lowest pay bracket, but the union wanted a contract with a 22 percent raise over five years. However, the bigger problem began when the league insisted on relaxing decades-old work rules that force them to hire more stagehands than they actually need. When that section of the contract was implemented, the workers went on strike. These new rules give producers flexibility in deciding when stagehands are needed and how many are needed.
It makes sense. Why would producers support stagehand hiring quotas that force them to hire workers even when they are not needed? Charlotte St Martin, a spokeswoman, said that the union wanted to protect "wasteful, costly and indefensible rules that are embedded like dead weights in contracts."
Strikes have always been disappointing to me. It kills a fantasy world that I turn to for entertainment. My Grandma sites the 1994 Major League Baseball strike as the downfall of the Kansas City Royals. The strike, which lasted from August 12, 1994, to April 2, 1995, led to the cancellation of 938 games overall, including the entire 1994 postseason and World Series. Sadly, Major League Baseball became the first professional sport to lose its entire postseason due to a labor dispute.
And now, the Broadway stagehands join film, television and radio writers of the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) who began a strike against American film and television producers belonging to the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on November 5. The last such strike was the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike; it lasted 22 weeks, costing the American entertainment industry an estimated $500 million.
The estimated cost of the Broadway shutdown thus far is $51 million, or $17 million a day. Plus, the strike threatens to drag on into the Christmas season, disappointing thousands of tourists and costing New York millions in lost revenue.
An action like this is unbelievably selfish.
Not only are stagehands disappointing Broadway enthusiasts who are unable to attend scheduled shows but their actions are affecting restaurants in the theatre district that are losing business on a usually overcrowded holiday weekend.
It's not an issue of respect, as James J. Claffey, Local One's president, claims. Broadway is a business and the producers need to make the best decisions for their productions. Just as a school doesn't hire extra cafeteria workers, Broadway doesn't have a use for auxiliary stagehands.
The two parties need to accept the proposal of Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, who offered a mediator and neutral venue for continued talks, as he did during the musicians' strike in 2003. Negotiations need to continue, but Local 1 needs to stop acting like a victim. Broadway is evolving and jobs change. Demanding jobs for unnecessary stagehands is a self-defeating measure today.
Please, let the fat lady sing again and let this strike be over.
For now, check out this Broadway survival guide if you have a trip planned:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/broadway-lockout-survival-guide/