NEW YORK (AP) — Broadway is a tense place today after two main labor unions approved strike motion amid ongoing contract negotiations with producers.
Actors’ Fairness Affiliation — which represents over 51,000 members, together with singers, actors, dancers and stage managers — and American Federation of Musicians Native 802 — which represents 1,200 musicians — have voted in favor of a strike authorization, a strategic step forward of any work stoppage. No strike has been known as.
Members of each unions are at present working underneath expired contracts. The musicians’ contract expired on Aug. 31, and the Fairness contract expired on Sept. 28.
Each unions need pay will increase and better contributions by producers towards worker well being care prices, a key sticking level. Actors Fairness additionally needs producers to rent extra backup performers and stage managers, add protections for performers within the occasion of damage and put limits on what number of performances in a row actors may be requested to do with no time off.
The well being of Broadway — as soon as very a lot unsure because of the COVID-19 pandemic — is now superb, not less than by way of field workplace. The 2024-2025 season took in $1.9 billion, the highest-grossing season in recorded historical past, overtaking the pre-pandemic earlier excessive of $1.8 billion through the 2018-2019 season. It has been an extended street again from the times when theaters have been shuttered and the long run regarded bleak.
The unions are pointing to the monetary well being of Broadway to argue that producers can afford to up pay and advantages for musicians and actors. Producers, represented by The Broadway League, counter that the well being of Broadway might be endangered by rising ticket costs.
“On the heels of the most successful season in history, the Broadway League wants the working musicians and artists who fueled that very success to accept wage cuts, threats to healthcare benefits, and potential job losses,” Native 802 President Bob Suttmann stated in an announcement Tuesday.
A strike would cripple most of Broadway, however some exhibits would possibly proceed. “Beetlejuice” and “Mamma Mia!” arrived as a part of excursions and so wouldn’t have a conventional Broadway contract. And exhibits taking part in at nonprofit theaters, such because the musical “Ragtime” at Lincoln Heart Theater and the play “Punch” from the Manhattan Theatre Membership, have separate labor agreements.
The newest main strike on Broadway was in late 2007, when a 19-day walkout dimmed the lights on greater than two dozen exhibits and value producers and town tens of millions of {dollars} in misplaced income.
Greater than 30 members of Congress, together with the whole New York delegation, have signed a letter urging all sides to cut price in good religion and keep away from a strike.
“A disruption to Broadway will result in significant economic disruption to not just the New York metropolitan area but harm theater workers and patrons across the country and around the world,” the letter states.
