Bloomberg.com: "The contract between Broadway producers and unionized stagehands will expire Sunday with a distinctly undramatic absence of shaking fists, angry placards and picket-line chants. There will be no strike and no interruption of box-office business-as-usual, certainly not during one of the busiest times of the year as tourists flood the city.
The two sides took a recess last week until after the contract runs out, and this being one labor-management showdown in which all parties can generally afford summer homes, who can blame them? After all, the only certain outcome of the negotiations is that when the dust settles, everyone will claim victory -- and ticket prices will go up."
1 comment:
This seems to happen very often where neither the labor or the management is willing to budge... so they just pass what they can off to the consumer. If the statistics that this article cites are correct then I would rather see the union back off on some of its demands. Considering that this business isn't cheap... the fact that so much money has to be budgeted for labor, this could arguably mean less money for strengthening the development of designs. However, IATSE has plenty of very reasonable requests to keep the workers protected that the management should never scoff at. Unfortunately this is one of those love hate relationships where IATSE is necessary for the workers but somewhat hard on the industry. Its times like this where I curse Joseph McCarthy and his GOP allies for sinking the efforts of the National Theater Project which may have helped in scenarios like this. In the meantime, we can only hope for the idealistic solution that will magically allow for everyone to have their way while reducing costs on the customers.
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