Good morning. It’s Thursday. As we speak we’ll discover out concerning the push to unionize backstage crews Off Broadway. We’ll additionally get particulars on the Trump administration’s seizure of $80 million that was speculated to cowl among the metropolis’s bills for housing migrants.
For greater than a month, hanging stage crews have idled the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Firm, the place the musicals “Spring Awakening” and “Kimberly Akimbo” ran earlier than they moved to Broadway and received Tony Awards. The strike is a part of a unionization push that would change the economics of Off Broadway, which was hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and has but to get well. I requested Michael Paulson, The New York Instances’s theater reporter, to clarify the place issues stand.
You write that unionization will change the economics of theaters in New York. Will unionization drive nonprofit theater corporations out of enterprise? Can nonprofit theater corporations afford to pay what unions demand?
These are all questions that totally different folks have totally different solutions to. This unionization effort is happening at for-profit and nonprofit entities, however nonprofits are having a very onerous time proper now. They’re doing fewer reveals. The variety of reveals eligible for the Lucille Lortel Awards this season is roughly half what it was 5 years in the past. Prices have gone up because the pandemic and, if labor prices rise, that can be one other monetary problem.
However the individuals who work backstage say the salaries they’re being paid are usually not sufficient to reside on. They are saying that simply as theaters face monetary challenges, so do staff, and the system wants to determine methods to pay dwelling wages.
Who’s trying to unionize?
It’s individuals who work backstage, together with the folks we normally consider as stagehands — individuals who transfer surroundings round — and likewise individuals who work in hair, make-up, audio, video, lighting and props.
Crews at 5 Off Broadway entities have voted to unionize over the past yr.
Two of the 5 entities the place crews voted to unionize are business musicals. The crew of “Titaníque,” which spoofs the movie “Titanic,” permitted a contract final October, and the crew at “Little Store of Horrors,” a revival of the sci-fi musical comedy, adopted in January. The opposite three entities are nonprofits: the Public Theater, a big nonprofit; the Atlantic, which is a midsize operation; and the Winery, which is smaller.
What concerning the actors?
The crews are among the many solely staff at Off Broadway theaters who are usually not unionized — the actors unionized a long time in the past — and the crews are unionizing store by store.
“Titaníque” and “Little Store” started earlier than the pandemic and are working indefinitely, in order that they’re established operations. It might be tough to prepare a musical that has a five-week run — by the point you may take the vote, every little thing can be over. However everybody concerned believes that is the start of an effort to prepare as lots of the established Off Broadway entities as doable — the institutional corporations and the long-running reveals.
What are the crews’ explicit considerations? Working situations? Medical insurance?
The considerations that I hear principally are compensation, well being care and retirement advantages. However there can be different points on the desk, together with work guidelines, which concern extra time and staffing practices.
Off Broadway has traditionally been scrappier and extra experimental than the business Broadway world. That always meant that Off Broadway employed individuals who have been on the earliest levels of their careers, and sometimes didn’t pay them notably properly, with the understanding that they have been in a coaching floor. I feel there was a time when folks thought that as a result of the work was noble and vital they have been keen to endure for the work. One of many realities of the present local weather is that fewer folks now assume that method. The prevailing concept is that work is figure and ought to be compensated appropriately.
Off Broadway has matured over time. In its origins, the manufacturing values have been low, the funds have been anemic, and the sector recognized as if every little thing was being made by teams of hungry younger artists creating collectively in basements and different discovered areas.
That’s now not the case for a good portion of Off Broadway. That form of work nonetheless occurs. However we’re additionally speaking about mature establishments with multimillion-dollar budgets and growth places of work and complicated manufacturing values. The Off Broadway sector has modified over time, and these staff are asking for the best way they’re handled to alter, too.
What concerning the Atlantic?
The Atlantic is a crucial theater that has birthed loads of reveals which have gone on to nice success, however like many different nonprofits, it’s dealing with monetary challenges due to rising prices postpandemic. Negotiations there broke down in mid-January.
There have been two performs in previews at the moment. The productions have now been canceled. And it’s not clear what’s going to occur to the Atlantic’s spring season.
For either side, that is existential. The corporate says it’s frightened that labor prices will go so excessive it received’t be capable to live on. And the employees fear that compensation is so low they will’t proceed to do theater as a profession.
How a lot was the push to unionize a response to the pandemic? How does this match with efforts to unionize at Amazon and Starbucks?
I feel the labor motion emerged from the pandemic energized. We’re seeing, all throughout the nation in quite a lot of totally different industries, staff in corporations that had not been unionized asking whether or not unionization may assist them. Individuals who work on Off Broadway crews know what’s taking place at Amazon or Starbucks — and know unionized staff in different jobs within the theater world — and assume, Wow, would my work situations be higher if I did that? A few of them are answering sure.
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The most recent New York information
The White Home took again $80 million for migrant shelters
The Trump administration took again $80 million that the Federal Emergency Administration Company paid New York Metropolis final week. The cash, seized from New York Metropolis accounts, was speculated to cowl among the metropolis’s bills for housing migrants.
The workplace of town comptroller, Brad Lander, observed on Wednesday that the $80 million had disappeared from the financial institution accounts. The transfer by the Division of Homeland Safety, of which FEMA is part, was a major escalation of President Trump’s makes an attempt to freeze or reverse funding that had beforehand been appropriated by Congress.
Kristi Noem, the homeland safety secretary, asserted on X that town was utilizing FEMA funding to finance using the Roosevelt Resort in Midtown Manhattan as a migrant shelter. She claimed that the resort had served as a “base of operations” for the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Liz Garcia, a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams, mentioned that Metropolis Corridor had communicated with the White Home and had requested an emergency assembly with FEMA to “try to resolve the matter as shortly as doable.” She added that Metropolis Corridor was conducting an “inner investigation into how this occurred,” and that town’s Regulation Division was “already exploring numerous litigation choices.”
On Monday Elon Musk mentioned on X that his cost-cutting group had recognized a $59 million fee from FEMA to pay for housing migrants at lodges in New York Metropolis. Metropolis officers mentioned that the $59 million was a part of the $80 million fee from FEMA final week.
The fallout from Musk’s put up led to the firing on Tuesday of 4 staff of FEMA, together with its chief monetary officer, who was accused of undermining the company’s management by disbursing the $80 million.
