In Changing Theater Landscape, Labor Organizing Picks Up Pace

IATSE has been organizing workers Off-Broadway in a push for greater benefits and a say in the changing theater landscape.

Thus far, workers at commercial productions of Titanique and Little Shop of Horrors have won organizing victories, as have the nonprofit Vineyard Theatre and Atlantic Theater Company, which has developed notable shows such as The Band’s Visit and Kimberly Akimbo, and the Public Theater, one of the largest nonprofit theater companies in the country and the starting point for productions such as Hamilton and A Chorus Line. 

The five companies have recognized IATSE as the collective bargaining agent for the production employees. All theaters are currently at the beginning stages of talks, with no completed collective bargaining agreements as of yet. IATSE hopes to keep organizing additional workers, but is doing so against a backdrop of layoffs, rising costs and fear over how this could impact the industry. 

While Off-Broadway is slightly less unionized than Broadway, many Off-Broadway workers are already represented by unions, including designers, who have been represented by one of IATSE’s local unions, USA 829, via negotiations with the Off-Broadway League. In this case, IATSE is negotiating on behalf of production workers, including theatrical electricians and carpenters, painters, wardrobe and costume dressers.

The decision to unionize came about after IATSE organized a meeting in July 2023, and invited a handful of workers, only to have about 100 show up. The meeting, which was also happening amid the dual writers and actors strikes, served as a catalyst for workers who had been mulling the idea for years. 

“I think there’s been a consistent kind of hushed conversation about the willingness and the readiness to organize for several years in New York for Off-Broadway workers, but nobody really knew how or what the steps were to go about it. And what the risks could be and the benefits could be,” said Mikey Stevens, a freelance carpenter who has worked mostly at the Atlantic Theater Company. 

One of the fears, Stevens said, was that because the workers typically operate on a freelance basis, employers could have retaliated to any perceived hostility by removing those workers from the call list, an email blast theaters use to recruit workers when the need arises. 

Having a bit more job security was one of the reasons workers sought to unionize, with a larger common goal around healthcare, particularly portable insurance that could follow the workers from job to job, as well as higher wages and retirement benefits.  

“A lot of Off-Broadway folks are young and age out of their parents’ health insurance, and that’s a really big thing for us. It’s incredibly hard to get healthcare as a freelancer,” said Shane Crowley, who has primarily worked as an electrician at The Public Theater.

The decision to unionize also comes as the theater industry continues to recover coming out of the pandemic, where the theaters are often dealing with lower audience numbers and with higher costs. This has, in turn, led to a number of layoffs. Dan Little, IATSE’s lead Off-Broadway organizer, says having a collective bargaining agreement doesn’t necessarily stop layoffs, but “it brings the workers into the conversation” about how best to make up for the revenue shortfall. 

“American theater production seems to be at a crossroads,” Little said. “There have been a number of companies that have either reported that they are going to some hiatus or they’re laying folks off or they’re going out of business.” 

A wave of layoffs and cost-cutting measures began hitting nonprofit theaters across the country last year, including at Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, which laid off 11 percent of its staff and at The Public Theater, which laid off 19 percent of its staff.

Most recently, days after the June 16 Tony Awards, even Playwrights Horizons, which developed best play winner Stereophonic, conducted layoffs of three employees, effective immediately, with two more designated to come at the end of the 2024-2025 season, according to BroadwayWorld. 

IATSE has been negotiating with individual employers, rather than the Off-Broadway League as a whole.

Amid the layoffs, some members of the Off-Broadway community are wary about the IATSE organization due to the higher costs that can come with having a unionized workforce and its impact on industry. 

“I am concerned about anything that could potentially increase the production expenses that producers are experiencing,” said Joey Monda, a general manager for commercial Off-Broadway shows. “And producers are all supportive of trying to find ways for us to increase the quality of life of our workers, while also acknowledging that it’s extraordinarily difficult right now and expensive to produce theater.”

In addition to higher production costs and an audience that, like on Broadway, has been slow to return, Monda noted that many producers were already paying higher rates for workers than they were pre-COVID in order to attract laborers. And while there have been a few buzzy Off-Broadway productions, including Oh, Mary! and Job, which both recently transferred to Broadway, Monda argues that these were “outliers rather than the rule” and the economics for most are still difficult. 

“While the commercial sector has enjoyed some very high profile successes in the recent season, the reality is that the majority of commercial successes Off-Broadway still close at a complete loss,” Monda said. 

In response to arguments about the expense, Stevens says that driving up costs is not their goal in unionizing. 

“We don’t want our places that we work to go out of business because then we don’t have work. So we’re not just trying to grab all the money that these companies have,” Stevens said.  

And Crowley argues that it benefits the theaters to have a workforce that can afford to continue working in the industry, rather than leave as many had to during the pandemic. A regular workforce also allows theater companies and productions to retain institutional knowledge and specific knowledge about that theater.

“What it does is make a sustainable workforce that will ultimately be better for the theaters moving forward. So yes, costs might go up a little bit, but labor is certainly not the only part driving costs up at the moment. That is simply the world that we work in,” Crowley said. 

Among the theater companies so far, the Vineyard Theatre voluntarily recognized the union and the Public Theater took a position of neutrality and allowed the workers to conduct a private election, via the American Arbitration Association, where they voted in favor of unionization, 178 to 11.

In the other cases, IATSE petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a secret ballot election of the workers, with all six workers on Titanique voting for unionization and 16 votes for unionization at Little Shop of Horrors, and one against, with two votes challenged by producers and the law firm hired to represent them, according to filings with the NLRB, and 129 and one against at the Atlantic Theater Company. 

The details of the collective bargaining agreements are still to be worked out, Little said, including the structure of the healthcare plan, which has been a top priority for workers. The idea would be to set up contributions to a Taft Hartley Fund, or a multiemployer benefit trust fund, in which employers agree to make contributions at a certain rate, with trustees from both sides. But it’s unclear whether it would work like the SAG-AFTRA plan, for example, where a certain number of hours or wage earnings has to be hit to qualify. 

Even so, IATSE leaders are optimistic about what it could look like moving forward.

“​​Theater is a living and breathing art form, but it’s also a uniquely collaborative art form and the people who work in production want a meaningful opportunity to cooperate in working with the leaders of this industry in shaping it, so that it works for everyone into the future,” Little said.