LETTER TO THE BOARD
We, the workers of Theatre Row, are proud to announce our intent to organize a new, independent union: Theatre Shop Union (TSU).
With one hundred percent support from workers eligible, the twenty-five members of TSU demand that the board of Building for the Arts voluntarily recognize our union.
Regardless of the board’s decision, we are eager to meet them at the bargaining table to negotiate a contract that meets our demands.
Theatre is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, yet the vast majority of us struggle to pay rent, afford healthcare, and enjoy the value of our labor. We have created the wealth of the theatre industry and we deserve to share in that wealth. Theatre Row, like many other successful Off-Broadway Theatres, should recognize and compensate their workers for making the theatre industry the success it is today.
The majority of Theatre Row’s employees are also artists in other facets; as we are all aware, a career in the arts is not always a source of stability. This makes it all the more crucial that Theatre Row employees have a union to ensure job security, and to establish that workers have more control over our workplace. Without benefits, higher pay, or consistent hours, we feel a lack of protection and incentive to continue to work. While we demand guaranteed hours and higher wages that match the industry standard, the reasons to organize a union go far beyond these demands.
Today, decisions made at Theatre Row are made by a select few individuals and imposed on the rest of us. We are unionizing to democratize the workplace and make decisions collectively in the best interest of all employees. Through this unionization, we will build solidarity among workers and proudly join the larger labor movement fighting for worker power across the nation and globally.
Theatre Row employees (excluding senior managers) unanimously desire Theatre Shop Union representation for collective bargaining purposes. Accordingly, the Union requests that Building for the Arts recognize the Union as the bargaining representative of Theatre Row’s employees.
Attached here are twenty-five signed Union Authorization Cards, indicating unanimous worker support for our union.
If Theatre Shop Union does not receive notice of Voluntary Recognition from the board of directors by Thursday, December 15 at 3pm, we will be filing for a secret-ballot election with the NLRB that afternoon.
The TSU workers of Theatre Row eagerly await the decision of the board of directors.
-Theatre Shop Union
TSU PRESS RELEASE
We, the workers of Theatre Row, are proud to announce our intent to organize a new, independent union: Theatre Shop Union (TSU).
With one hundred percent support from workers eligible, the twenty-five members of TSU went to the Building for the Arts board on December 13th to demand voluntary recognition of our union. Regardless of the board’s decision, we are eager to meet them at the bargaining table to negotiate a contract that meets our demands.
Theatre is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, yet the vast majority of us struggle to pay rent, afford healthcare, and enjoy the value of our labor. We have the right to democratic power in our workplaces. Theatre Row, like many other successful Off-Broadway Theatres, should recognize and compensate their workers for making the theatre industry the success it is today.
While we stand in solidarity with IATSE and AEA, theatre workers also deserve a union that provides organizing power to entire workforces collectively. Through TSU, we can build vital solidarity between workers in different departments (box office, house management, production, stage door, general management, and more) to ensure a greater level of equity in compensation and working conditions. Under Theatre Shop Union, each shop floor will serve as its own bargaining unit, providing democratic worker control in each individual theatre.
As TSU grows, we will build solidarity and collective power among theatre workers across the country - reaching from Off-Broadway, to regional houses, to small blackbox theatres. TSU fights for the end of economic exploitation and social oppression within our community; we have created the wealth of the theatre and we demand that we get to share in that wealth.
We also recognize that once we enter the shop floor, we do not stop being people with complex and intersecting identities. Given this, TSU stands in unflinching solidarity with workers who are fighting, not only against exploitation of the bosses, but societal oppression as well. We fight, not only for better wages and working conditions, but also for disability justice, queer and Black liberation, and against all other forms of oppression.
We call on theatre workers across the country to join our fight and unionize their workplaces. We are the ones who make this industry run, so we should be the ones who run the industry.