A photo of a flier outlining the stagehands’ gripes has gone viral on the local music scene via social media. “When Jam Productions owner Jerry Mickelson heard his stagehands wanted an election so they could vote on whether to be represented by Stagehands Local 2, he fired each and every one of us at the Riviera,” it reads. “It’s not his choice—it’s ours! You have a choice, too—don’t patronize the Riviera, Vic, or Park West until Jam hires us back!”
5 comments:
This was a nice contrast to the article about Equity members having to sue their union. IATSE is standing up for workers that aren’t even members yet. As for the owner of Jam Production claiming that “there are two sides to every story” while that’s technically true I don’t think it really applies here. His workers wanted to be able to vote on whether or not to unionize, they hadn’t even decided that much yet. Firing them is a gigantic over reaction, yes Jam Productions would have to pay them more if they unionized and that would cut into the company’s profits, but its possible that they would vote to not join the union and more importantly, its their right to be in a union. The stage hands at Jam Productions competitors are union workers so it makes sense that these workers would want to unionize as well and be able to have the same protection and make similar wages.
So, I understand that the unionization process is often times quite tricky, and often times employers don’t want their employees to unionize, but I find Jam Productions at fault here for at least one reason. You don’t just fire an entire crew because you here they want to join a union, you just don’t. If you don’t want them to unionize then maybe you should ensure that they see some of the benefits of a union contract without going whole ham on it. Or better yet, let them unionize, IATSE had been around for a while, and the union helps ensure the high quality of work that theatres have come to expect from stagehands.
I know this is a complicated issue, but regardless of the complications, Jam Productions now looks bad for firing so many of it’s employees. To me, that action makes me side with the labour and not with the employer. I’d love to hear a different take on it though.
There might have been two side to this story, but there aren't any more. Alex has commented that Jam Productions might look bad. I think he is missing how big a deal this is. Firing people for trying to unionize is super illegal. It would be hard to find a more blatant example of unfair labor practices as defined by US law. It is totally fair to negotiate, to make offers to try to appease their concerns; it is not okay to just fire the entire crew. What I really want to know though is how Jam came to that conclusion. It kind of sounds like someone heard a rumor and erupted. That person must not have had any knowledge about unions, like at all. I've said before IATSE has a lot of bull rules and I still feel that way, but you gotta play it by the law, you can't just pull a stunt like this.
The most surprising part of this for me is that I didn't see this in any other news.
There is a delicate balance between the power of the employee and the employer, and Jam productions has disrupted that balance. Yes, the process of forming a union can be costly and time consuming, but the stagehands do have the right to unionize. Like Isaac said, this a a blatant violation of the these rights. I really can't understand why Jam thought that this was the right route to take. Firing all of your employees is not only bad publicity, but it could bring on a lot of legal trouble. They could have easily set up negotiations or given them some sort of a warning but instead they made a rash decision. Now they have to deal with the repercussions and a tarnished reputation, which will cause them to get less work. Sometimes financials can't be your number one priority, and I hope that Jam productions now realizes this. With all of this bad press I will hope they arrange some kind of negotiations with stagehands, and that they will start to value their workers more.
Situations such as these are particularly tough because coming back from instances where employers have fired a large number of employees is difficult to do without having negative sentiments remaining. As the article mentions, I am sure that there are two sides to this story, but my initial guess is that it is probably a case of the employees expecting a little too much, and the employer overreacting. I think what can often happen is that smaller, underlying problems will cause a larger decision like this to be made in an apparently unfounded and rash manner, and it is only found out later that there were underlying causes on both sides of the issue.
As some other comments have mentioned, this is a strong example of the sometimes delicate balance between employer and employee. What does an employer have complete control over, and where do they sometimes cross lines? I think any instance of an entire staff being fired is a red flag. Clearly there are some larger issues that will need to be looked at as they surface, and hopefully a productive conclusion can be reached. As the article mentions, Jam Productions is a small dog in the big game of music performance production, so I’d hate to see the company experience long term trouble because of this incident.
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