Originally I wanted to go out, volunteer myself onto a picket with the Edirol and record striking Union members thoughts about the strike. This was before I learned about the media black out (which, I think, is a brilliant stance for the union to take. I mean the League of Producers and Theatre owner\'s position is so weak, the more they talk the more they put their collective foot in their mouths). After a phone conversation with David b during which we both felt we brought up salient points not being presented by major media, we figured we\'d move ahead with the subject using the running joke of me constantly saying, \"No Comment\" with David presenting all that we had discussed previously. In practice it doesn\'t play as well I would have liked it to (and I even said more than I would have liked too). I think we come off as too flippant given the seriousness of the subject matter, even for \"TheOccasionalFag\".

Another reality at play here is that I work up at a shop with its\' own contract with the Union and have yet to really crack the downtown (I work in Yonkers making midtown down for me...) socio-political scene. Because of the strike I have learned more about the Union in the past two weeks than I have in the past four years. Quite an exciting time, really. Not that I can or wish to share within this public a framework what I have learned, but David and I communicate daily about how best to track or follow up on this issue.

As to Chef Mark\'s story of his experience with the Union, I really don\'t know what to say. It sounds to me as if people were being taken economically advantage of on many levels.

posted by: Brian G on 2007-11-21 16:09:00

Hi guys, nice to hear a show with the both of you for a change.

This strike is very sad for many reasons. What an old fashioned response to conflict. Are we in the 30\'s? In this day and age, when either \"management\" or \"workers\" try to portray themselves as the victims of the other side, it\'s absurd, disingenuous and insulting to the general public, who are the ones who are hurt in a strike. Both sides are being selfish, and have lost sight of reasonable goals, and seem to want only to make out better for themselves. BOTH SIDES.

The unions have evolved into very sophisticated organizations, with huge slush funds, and offtentimes the leadership makes as much or more than some of the producers that they try to portray as ruthless tycoons trying to squash the little guys.

As an actor on Broadway, I saw first hand real actual \"featherbedding\". Absurd rules that required that a certain number of union workers be present in a theatre, based on the size of the theater and not on the actual needs of the production. I was in a production of The School for Scandal on Broadway, where my role as a \"servant\" consisted of me dressing up in period costume, complete with powdered wig and stockings, and along with my fellow servants, we would rearrange the restoration period furniture in an elaborate choreography between each scene set to period music to indicate the change of scene. Once in a while, a set piece wasn\'t needed, so we would bring it offstage.

We were only allowed to bring it JUST offstage (out of sight of the audience), and then 2 IATSE stagehands would then take that set piece and move it 2 feet to it\'s \"resting place\". That was their entire job during the run of the entire show! Therefore, the producer had to hire 4 full time IATSE members being paid at full scale to do an absurd job that really didn\'t need to be done. It actually made our job MORE difficult to set it down or hand it off to the union workers than it would have been to just keep walking that extra 2 feet into the wings to set the piece down.

In the case of this show, it was the non-profit National Actors Theatre, and we were on a LORT contract, so all the actors were receiving less pay than if it had been a commercial Broadway production, and even then, the show had a hard time breaking even, and had to close within a few weeks. I wonder how much easier it would have been for the show to reach its breakeven had the producers not been forced to hire 4 unnecessary IATSE members who were the highest paid people in the building, with the exception of Tony Randall and Simon Jones. (actually, I think that as the founder of NAT, Tony gave his actor\'s salary back to the company to help cover costs)

I have heard many people talking about safety and that the numbers of unions members needed is for safety. No one argues against this, and I have never in all my years heard a producer try to cut corners with the safety of the actors.

Brian, you mentioned that it should be the people who work with the materials who get to decide how many people are needed. This would seem to work in theory, but as humans, they would surely be tempted to try to help out their \"brother workers\" and be sure that someone gets a job here and there where it\'s not needed. What about having someone else in the industry who\'s familiar with the needs make that determination? Someone who\'s not a member of the union nor a stakeholder in the production, and therefore, we\'d get an unbiased determination of just how many workers are needed for a given job or a load in.

posted by: Chef Mark on 2007-11-19 17:59:00