Philadelphia Theatre Company Stagehands Striking

"The management of the Philadelphia Theatre Company is guilty of hypocrisy in putting on a show about the last days of Dr. Martin Luther King — a man who lived and died for the cause of social justice — at the same time they are threatening the job security of the men and women who make the theatre work. IATSE Local 8 is walking in Dr. King's footsteps by walking the picket line in protest of the Philadelphia Theatre Company's anti-worker policies."

What a load of crock.
 
That was quite a stupid line. However, I happen to know everyone who is striking, and they are doing so with good reason. PTC has been attempting to replace paid positions with unpaid "internships." I fail to see how it is an "internship" when you aren't working under anyone......
 
There are very strict guidelines as to what warrants an internship. If they truly were attempting that, they could get in serious trouble with the labor board. When I was a TD of a road house, where we had several resident theater companies, I was asked to start an internship program. Unfortunately, the way our organization was structured, I could not do so as I couldn't figure out how to make it work with labor laws.
 
I have no idea what is going on in Philadelphia, but if you go on backstage jobs there are often postings for companies looking for an "intern" to Design and/or ME and/or program a show. Often with fairly strict requirements (ex past design experience, knowing how to program a board). Yeah, intern, right. Free labor is what they are after as if you already how how to do everything they're wanting, and there's no one there to teach you're not going to be learning much.
 
Nothing wrong with them firing full time employees and using interns. You might not like it, but that's business.
 
There's only 400 seats in their primary theater. How many stagehands do they even have working there who would be eligible for representation?!? Theater management there deserves the fight they're getting for even letting it get to the point of a ballot.
 
Nothing wrong with them firing full time employees and using interns. You might not like it, but that's business.

Union or no union, there is when the collection of the remaining staff feel they could lose their jobs at any moment and decide as a group that if some of them are going lose their jobs, they'd rather put up a fight than quietly get fired one by one.

Effectively what the theatre is communicating to both its fired and to its remaining stagehands is, "You and your work have no value to us despite that our business model depends on your work for us to make money."

I can blame no one who wouldn't want to work in a situation where they feel they aren't valued and that their employer may be replace them at any moment with an unpaid intern -- especially anyone who's trying to pay a rent check at the end of the month.

To say Local 8 is walking in the footsteps of Dr. King may be a bit of a stretch, but the Mountaintop speech King gave the day before he was shot was in defense of the Memphis Santitation workers' strike. There's at least a little bit of irony that Local 8 is picketing The Mountaintop.
 
From a management perspective, they should have never let it get to that point. In a small theater, when employee grumblings start to get serious you sign a labor contract with a local production company, then fire your current employees (assuming there are only a few). Then label it some "budget restructuring" or something.

It seems like the IA down there has had it out for them for a while. Or the local is desperate for work. Either way the theater should have handled it a lot faster.
 
Nothing wrong with them firing full time employees and using interns. You might not like it, but that's business.

This is incorrect. Even ignoring the definitions of "wrong" which include the ideas of treating employees well and negotiating with organized employees in good faith, there are laws about what jobs you may use "interns" for.

Kevin
 
I never said they didn't have to follow the law. Legally they can replace full time employees with unpaid interns. Legalities aside, your argument can only be based on morality. I find nothing morally wrong with it.
 
I never said they didn't have to follow the law. Legally they can replace full time employees with unpaid interns. Legalities aside, your argument can only be based on morality. I find nothing morally wrong with it.

Next time you're on tour and at my space, I'll go find some interns for the event and give all the experienced folks the day off. Then best of luck when something goes wrong and the interns haven't a clue what to do. The show will not happen, but there's nothing morally wrong with that
 
One thing missed in this is that the employees chose to unionize. That typically points to an underlying and ongoing problems between management and the employees. It is in managements best interest to treat the employees fairly and to pay them a competitive wage. IATSE locals typically do not go around unionizing the facilities on the margins of profitability. It costs a LOT of money to do that, sometimes for little gain. If however, the employees choose union representation, the union is required to take it on and that appears to be the case in this instance.
 
Next time you're on tour and at my space, I'll go find some interns for the event and give all the experienced folks the day off. Then best of luck when something goes wrong and the interns haven't a clue what to do. The show will not happen, but there's nothing morally wrong with that

I use Labor Ready very frequently to setup my shows, all across the country, so your point is invalid. And where did I state a theater should lay off everyone qualified? Never stated that, you're fishing.

Bring up legality and morality all you want, the bottom line is it's legal, and at the cost of going under any business owner would lay people off and still try to get the job done by whatever means necessary.
 
And before you fish some more, let's assume "whatever means necessary" involves following the law. HAHA.

Also, please be aware that I am one of the few people on this board who is in an administrative management position, so I try to bring some alternative perspective to these discussions.
 
I use Labor Ready very frequently to setup my shows, all across the country, so your point is invalid. And where did I state a theater should lay off everyone qualified? Never stated that, you're fishing.

Bring up legality and morality all you want, the bottom line is it's legal, and at the cost of going under any business owner would lay people off and still try to get the job done by whatever means necessary.

Here's what you wrote

"Legally they can replace full time employees with unpaid interns. Legalities aside, your argument can only be based on morality. I find nothing morally wrong with it."

That reads to me like you have no use for full time employees. And that it's "moral" to fire all, or even some of the full time'ers to be replaced by either unpaid or poorly paid interns (show me a well paid intern).

Legal maybe. Moral ?, well no.

Besides all the related issues of lack of knowledge and experience for interns, typically who are interns because they don't have any experience or knowledge, this scenario may leave you legally vulnerable. You are replacing experienced employees with non-experienced interns. What happens if something goes wrong ?. What will the lawyers say during the lawsuit when you explain how it was cost effective to use an intern to operate potentially dangerous equipment (do YOU have an ETCP certification for rigging ?, will your intern flyperson ?). Suppose one of the folks you let go was the mandated fire warden ?. Will the local AHJ allow an intern in that place ?. How then can it be moral to fire (no other name for it) your paid staff in favor of those with no qualifications. Why as a business owner would you do that ?.

In an ideal world there would be no reason for unions. The management would do a good job running the company, which hopefully would be profitable and would in turn pay the employees a reasonable wage. The employees would in turn, do good work for the company, be loyal employees and allow the owner/management to provide a good product to the customers. Theater isn't any different then any other company in this regard. Your model as stated seems to find it "moral" to fire all or some of those potentially dedicated employees and replace them with interns. How dedicated will the remaining full time staff be at that point ?, knowing this is the reward for dedicated work ?. Do you expect the interns to stay loyal ?. That's not going to happen as the interns will be gone as soon as they can find payed employment. And they are not staying with you, and why should they ?, when they too can expect to be let go and replaced by yet another intern.

And my point is valid in that regardless if you use "We Are The Greatest Staqehands Ever Co." as crew, were you to attempt to load that show to a theater that has one full time person and the rest of the crew as completely inexperienced students (what's a c-wrench ?), your day goes badly. I'm certain here are any number of folks here who deal with this all the time. The burden to get the show up and running in a safe manner entirely falls on the road crew and that one person with a set of keys. After a tour full of these events, well SURPRISE, you have turn-over. And that does not make your job as management easier.

But best of luck with your business model.
 
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Well how you read it is incorrect.

I do over 100 shows a year in the US, Canada, South America, and Europe. So yes my model is working. HAHA.

You wrongly insinuated I meant all full time employees should be replaced with unpaid interns. You also accused my morality in the discussion, and the morality of this is very subjective. Can an argument not be made that it is morally OK to fire an employee and use an unpaid intern if it will save the jobs of others?

You continue to put words in my mouth, then try to disagree with the words you put there. Unbelievable. I never speak in absolutes, and your inferences are completely incorrect.
 
unfortunately, what you are talking about isn't what is happeing to local 8, The theater wants to kick all the stagehands to the curb and setup an "Internship" for free labor, NOT LEGAL TO DO. I work in a facility that has interns quite often. They are only allowed to work to learn, we are not allowed to make a profitable gain from them. In this case every intern would be creating a profit gain for this theater. So jstroming while you are pointing out someone fishing you are just as guilty about it.


Either way I don't know local 8 nor do i know the theater. I know something similar is going to happen here soon to our local (although the only opposition to this local shutting down is the guys on the union paycheck not actually doing the gigs [office guys]).

A better way of going about the move from union is to hire your own staff and use the paid staff as they would be paying for a union guy. We did that here in our space and ended up with happier employees because instead of paying a union $17/hr/hand we could pay the employees directly $13 (after union dues they would make $11.--/hr. We also hold training sessions and have better working conditions because we don't put neck down guys on head positions.
 

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