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ATPAM: News: HL0303E

NEWS

March 17, 2003

B'way gets back to business

New union alliance played key role in outcome

By Robert Hofler

Broadway slapped on its smiling face pretty quickly last week, trying to shake off the damage done by a four-day work stoppage that put the industry at the center of media attention for all the wrong reasons.

The musicians' strike that shut down Broadway cost the industry at least $7 million in direct revenue lost, as grosses for the week tumbled by more than 50%.

Harder to estimate is any future impact, both on the consumer front and within the industry.

Talks between the producers and the musicians were suspended over the weekend of the strike, after the stagehands' and actors' unions voted to support the strike and Broadway closed down.

On March 10, with the industry facing a full week of canceled performances, Mayor Michael Bloomberg called both sides to Gracie Mansion for around-the-clock negotiations that resulted in a deal by early morning on March 11, in time for evening performances to resume.

Not surprisingly, the new contract agreed upon required some compromise on both sides. The producers had to give up the most: Originally hoping to eliminate the mandated miminums at Broadway theaters, they had to settle for reducing them from 26 to 18 and 19 at the largest theaters.

Musicians had been holding firm at 24, and hoped to hold the line at 20, but eventually agreed to the lower numbers, with a guarantee that there would be no new negotiations on the issue for 10 years.

The contract itself, which also calls for annual raises of 2.75%, runs for four years. At the Gracie Mansion press conference, musicians Local 802 president William Moriarity put an upbeat spin on the outcome: "We preserve live music. We have the largest staff minimums in the world."

League of American Theaters & Producers president Jed Bernstein said minimums established under the old contract remain in place for tuners already up and running.

"Neither side got everything it wanted," Bernstein said. "There were significant compromises on both sides. We are happy our musician family is back with us."

Producers, of course, also are happy they'll be able to save significant money with the new reduced orchestra sizes. Players receive salaries that begin at $70,000 a year.

And producers are pleased the makeup of the committee that presides over decisions about exemptions from the minimums will change. They're expected to have more representation on the committee.

Future question

But it is also clear the producers were blindsided by the decision by the actors and stagehands not to cross the musician's picket lines.

Producers had gone public with plans to mount their shows with "virtual orchestras," obviously not expecting to have to face the prospect of coming up with virtual actors and stagehands, too.

But the writing on the wall was there to be read.

Although little notice was taken of it at the time, an alliance set up between various Broadway unions in December -- the Coalition of Broadway Unions & Guilds, or Cobug -- paved the way for the unexpected support by the actors and stagehands that left the producers at a disadvantage when it came time for final negotiations.

Cobug brought together no fewer than 14 labor orgs representing 75,000 legit workers.

The org was formed by the guilds "to address issues of common interest to their membership," and its initial press release, back in December, made specific mention of the upcoming Local 802 contract.

"None of us thought Cobug would be tested so quickly in this manner," says Barbara Hauptman, executive director of the Society of Stage Directors & Choreographers, one of its constituent unions.

Local 802's Bill Dennison credits Cobug with helping to bring industrywide union support to the musicians.

"It is a big power now," he says.

Reps from Local 802 and the league met with Cobug reps two days before the strike to present their sides on the issue. Local 802 had been there previously.

"Bill Moriarity presented the musicians' case very well," says Hauptman, who was at the meeting as a Cobug rep. "We could then turn to our members and tell them what was happening. It was not about 'walkers,' it was about keeping live music on Broadway."

Cobug evolved from a previous union group called the Fact Finding Committee, created in the wake of 9/11.

John Weidman, president of the Dramatists Guild, went to one of those first FFC meetings.

"I was astonished at the level of animosity toward the producers," Weidman says. Even more eye-opening for the playwright: "Broadway is a small world, but we found ourselves with people like hair-and-makeup and porters, who we'd never been in a room with."

Issues were shared and explained. While minimums are unique to Local 802, every union or guild has a bone the producers would like to bury: the playwrights' collective-bargaining status, Actors' Equity's strict rules about allowing British actors to perform on Broadway, etc.

"Once you've been in the league's firing line, you tend to sympathize with other unions," says one labor exec.

Gordon Forbes, secretary-treasurer of the publicists' ATPAM, says, "The producers had assurances that the other unions would cross the picket lines, but that didn't materialize, thanks to Cobug," Forbes says. "We've now seen the power of what they can accomplish when they're united."

Forbes went on to call the virtual orchestras so much "union-busting. New Yorkers don't like that and the league misstepped."

With the Actors' Equity contract up for renegotiation next year, the producers may need to watch their step more carefully.

In the coming months, they may have to take stock of what could be a permanent shift in the balance of power signaled by the musicians' strike.