Monday, October 19, 2015
Members of Actors’ Equity file lawsuit against their Union
Footlights: Actors and other members of the Los Angeles theatrical community (Ed Asner, Tom Bower, Gregg Daniel, John Flynn, Maria Gobetti, Gary Grossman, Ed Harris, Salome Jens, Veralyn Jones, Karen Kondazian, Simon Levy, Amy Madigan, Tom Ormeny, Lawrence Pressman, Michael Shepperd, Joseph Stern, French Stewart, and Vanessa Stewart) filed a lawsuit today against Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers and Mary McColl, AEA Executive Director. The lawsuit challenges the Union’s decision to eliminate its 25-year-old waiver of jurisdiction over small 99-seat theaters, a program popularly known as Equity Waiver. Plaintiffs claim that the Union’s decision to end Equity Waiver will unfairly destroy small theater in Los Angeles and deprive thousands of actors of opportunities to collaborate on creative theatrical projects.
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3 comments:
This is quite shocking. I am amazed that a union would ignore a 2-1 vote by their members. In addition to being confused about why they would do that, I am confused about their intent. This is a weird situation in which the union is goliath and the company is David. Unions are there to protect the individual worker from corporation with a lot of power, not crush small businesses. It seems as though Equity has forgotten their purpose. I typically am a fan of unions in general, but have also typically been very critical of IATSE and Equity. Some of the rules they enforce are ridiculous. But again, the most shocking part of this is that the union blatantly ignored the decision made by their members in favor of leaderships unilateral decision. It seems as though it might be like when we elect Congressmen. People do not vote until someone does something outrageous. Despite Congress's 10-20% approval rating they have a re-election rating of above 80%. Maybe no-one in the union cared who was running them, but now they will.
When I read the title of this article I initially assumed I mis-read it. It seems like if the members of a union decide to sue to union in order to get the union to listen to them, the union isn’t doing its job. The whole point of a union is for individual workers who don’t have much power in comparison to companies to join together and collectively form a force that has power. This lawsuit is exactly that, but the company is the union and the union members are more or less forming a sub-union in order to fight the union. What I don’t understand is why the union made a decision that the members clearly didn’t like. Does the union itself benefit from this decision? Are there individuals in the Equity Government that benefit from the decision, maybe due to some sort of conflict of interest? I’m wondering what caused the union to make a call that was clearly going to be unpopular among its members.
I was very confused when I read the article title. Unions are supposed to protect their members and work for their benefit. When those same members have to sue the union just to get it to listen to their complaints then something has gone badly wrong. If that same union, then makes a decision that its members have shot down with a 2-1 vote then I don’t even know if its acting as a union anymore. Equity is supposed to protect actors but this decision seems to hurt them and theaters. It prevents them from doing work with small theaters and those same small theaters are suddenly being forced to compete with the wages that bigger theaters can pay. I’m sure equity is doing this in an attempt to protect actors but it seems more likely to hurt them. If this decision puts small theaters out of business or forces them to hire non equity actors, then there will be fewer jobs for unionized actors.
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