Here in Seattle, the Union doesn't exactly have a whole lot of hold over the town due to the fact that there are so few jobs to begin with in theater chains that work with the Union. GC, Regal, Loews, and some of the indies in this town are all very anti-union in nature and love to employ manager-operators as you said.

The benefit of being in IATSE (YAHTZEE!) Here is that you'll always have somebody finding you jobs if you're high enough on the seniority list. Trouble is, it's nearly impossible to get on that list and even find one Union job to begin with, short of Festival and tech work. Landmark theatres here requires all manager operators to be Union guys. So it's just the same as what you described before, but with guaranteed benefits and retirement. Also, the projectionists merged with the stagehands for help in pickets and such.

The bottom line is that it would be nice if the union were recognized as much as it was when everybody was still on carbon arcs, but platters and automation have pretty much killed the whole operation. At the very least, I think it's nice that there are still options.

David

For example, years paying dues, special assessments, sick-fund contributions and pension fund and health plan contributions, etc, provide the union with an economic base that benefits
all members. The more paid in, the larger the benefits. That's why small locals have such a hard time providing benefits for their workers.

Besides economic seniority, there's the participation in elections, meetings, discussions, informational picketing, strike picketing (and sacrificing wages during the strike), often in freezing or sweltering weather. Many members over the years spent time representing their local at national meetings, participating in blood donation and other charitable drives, moving the union offices to new locations and doing carpentry and wiring gratis, marching in Labor Day celebrations and doing volunteer office work to supplement paid office staff.

So seniority applies not only to years of technical experience, but of contributions to the union and its strungth, which translates to benefits to its members.

 |  IP: Logged

<<A Union sounds very attractive, but the company won't have it.>>

Of course not! Union is something fought for and won by sacrifice of workers, not a gift of management.

Only when management is convinced that a union shop is to its advantage, will it agree to work with a union. Managements have in the past have been so convinced, but newer generations of corporate execs have broken the old agreements, and through lock-outs have forced give-backs and refused to renew contracts.

However, the bulk of movie theattres are now regional, national and international. As such, the unions should have shifted away from the local concept and started to bargin at the national level. Back when there was an installed base of union shops, the IA should have gone to barganing in a national manner. I remember all too well some chains training a group of managers to bust the locals if there was a strike. If the entire chain was go into strike conditions at once, it would have been much tougher to break the projection union. However, now there isn't much of an union base to perform such a task. It is too late.

Another thing the IA should have done is gone to the table with organizing the entire floor staff of the theatre all the way up to the person that doesn't have the hire/fire authority (regardless of if they have the dubious "manager" title). Imagine if every employee in the theatre was under a union contract. A deal would have been struck for just the operators to avoid such a thing...Whats one or two employees compared to the entire staff?

Again, the opportunity has passed. The local I belong to (Local #224) gave Cineplex-Odeon a run for it's money back in the 80s...after they lost at the NLRB to lockout the union from existing theatres, we got a contract on ALL of their theatres in the area, including those that had not been previously union. However now, through attrition, we are not in much better shape than any other local. The last contract offered was pretty much a "sign this boy if you still want a job." It doesn't really provide for a living wage in most of the jobs.

Personally, I feel unions are needed now as much as they ever were. However, I don't see the leadership in the unions, governement nor management to make it work and all three are required.

As to a company not wanting a union...it isn't THEIR choice, it is solely the worker's. Anyone that threatens or fires an employee due to their membership/affiation (or lack there of) in a union is illegal. That being said, it doesn't mean it doesnt or wont happen. If it happens you can always report it to the National Labor Relations Board in your area. They might even investigate the claim!

Steve

Many have passed away....Some went to other fields....Many of the well known people in the service part of the business were union projectionist at one time. I won't list them by name, but, it goes on and on. The exceptions are rare.

I had 20 years in the IATSE.
My father and 2 of his brothers also. Mother was a union usher/ticket seller. All passed away now. Except me of course....And sometimes I'm not so sure about that.

 |  IP: Logged

First of all, if you'll look to your left, you'll notice this is my first post here. I have spent a long time (over a year and a half) "lurking in the shadows" (I'm a projectionist, that is what we do best, right? ) reading all of your well thought ideas and in some cases, ramblings. I chose this as my first post because being a Union Member and talking about labor struggles has recently become a nice bonus to my rewarding career as a projectionist. Yes, I said career. Although it won't pay the bills long, I hope to be around as long as I can, providing the best film presentation possible.

Secondly, I would like to give cheers to the administrators and moderators of this board. I volunteer for a website dedicated to a favorite actress and we use the Ultimate Bulletin Board as well. Organization on any message board can be very difficult to keep and making sure everyone follows the rules is certainly a thankless job. So, here's to the community you have here, cheers!

Now, on to MY diatribe about unions, starting with the short story of how I joined one:

I started for Loews Cineplex Entertainment back in December of 1998 as a "floorstaff". Basically running concessions, box office, ticket-taker, and usher. This is how most of the Loews staff works, going from one position to the other on a daily basis. After 2 weeks employment, I was promoted to Service Supervisor. Actually my first sub-management role, and I have to be honest, I did love it. I liked the staff I worked with, for the most part we were always a team and everyone stayed late to help eachother (including when my inventory was off).

About 3 months later my friend Jon suggested I come up into the projection booth on my spare time and maybe learn a bit. The theater was still in it's "de-bugging phase" so I had a chance to see a lot of problems with a lot of solutions (something I'm sure any projectionist would testify as being the best way to learn). After 2 months learning on my time, I was asked to take 2 shifts in the booth. Never had I been happier! I, like Ken, was getting what I thought was the best of both worlds. Well, I was promoted to Corporate Trainer specializing in Projection and Concessions. I opened the Methuen, MA theater practically alone. Fortunately we had technicians from New England Theater Services setting up most of the equipment as far as sound goes and cutting apperature plates. The one complaint I had was that my home theater in Danvers, MA was opened with 5 people who had prior projection experience and 3 really good trainees. I opened Methuen ALONE and given 3 staff to train who had never even seen a projector before (2 of which quit during training).

Well, when I returned to my home theater everyone seemed fairly pleased with me, despite some small problems during the opening (The Cell didn't show up until the afternoon of opening day, Big Sky platters were giving me NO love and were so slow on makeup, plus trying to run 20 screens alone in 2 booths and training 2 people at a time..yeesh...and I enjoyed this! )

Shortly after I got back I had gotten pretty sick, and called out. Well, the next day I worked the head manager, a real gem of a guy (sarcasm, of course), started to "tear me a new one" because I: "...should be more responsible being a supervisor, set an example, and I tarnished his good name by doing a lousy job in Methuen." Now, I'm sure just about everyone here can imagine the amount of pride I had taken in getting a projection booth up and running with minimal problems after having learned projection not even 6 months prior. To have my work quality/ethics torn down this hard was very aggrivating.

Well, things did get worse, and not just with me. This manager generally tore into everyone the wrong way, even the other managers. Eventually our "head projectionist" got sick of it and applied for a job at the discount/art house across the street for better money and benefits. Just to keep him on, the Regional Director offered him a raise from $10/hour to $13/hour. Well, he didn't think this was quite right. He knew he did the same work as the rest of us, and that we all deserved better pay and treatment. So we were all going to quit, it just got that bad. Instead, we tried to think of something that would annoy the company who put this knit-wit in charge and possibly improve our job. So we called the local union, IATSE 182 of Boston. They were, of course, glad to help out. Before my 20 screen had opened up in Danvers, they represented the projectionists at the 2 Danvers theaters which ran 8 screens and of course when Loews shut them down they didn't want the union in the new building. Obviously, keeping the theater non-union for 2 years only to have your projectionists go begging the union for representation didn't bode well with management.

The company ordered all of us promoted on the spot to supervisor (I was one, but the others mostly were not) which, as most of you probably know, is illegal. They fired one projectionist for "playing with teddy bears". Okay, just so you don't go off on that bit, these were bears given to the theater by Coca-Cola for distribution on opening day. Since they were not company property, they could not be sold. So 2,000 bears sat in the booth for 2 years despite our suggestions of donation to local charities such as Toys for Tots or Salvation Army. Occasionally the projectionists would pop some out to kids before the show. Then one day, Ed, our resident funny guy, comes in before his shift and puts some bears in a funny situation. Sacrificial bear in the middle of the floor in a little-used room with a circle of bears around it. On the whiteboard in that room the message "Curses upon those who dare to disturb the holy circle of bears!"

Now, was this professional? Of course not. Necessary? Nope. Funny? Absolutely! Even the managers thought it was hilarious. Then, the VP of East Coast Operations Paul Wehrle comes by after our first bout at the negotiating table and sees the bears and fires Ed. Of course, we got Ed his job back with back pay. Since that day, things have been nothing but hostile. Now that my story is up to date as far as joining a union, I think I'll point out why they are a good thing for workers, companies, and especially the customers.

To make sure all this is taken in context, you should know that on June 11th, 2002 Loews locked out the projectionists of 182 in all theaters except for their Boston Commons theater, where the contract is still in effect therefor they cannot lock us out.

One big issue discussed in this thread is the "demise" of IATSE projection unions. My thoughts are:

1) Cutdown on diversification of the local. Many locals, including my own, have abandoned covering work such as convention shows, stagehand, filming, and other such jobs which are now covered by different IATSE locals. This was obviously not a great idea because as Gerard has said, a union's power is in it's numbers. It is difficult to get attention when you have 40 members, only 20 employed by one company. With most other trades if workers go on strike or if the employer thinks about locking out they have to deal with almost no work getting done, thus no money coming in. In projection they only really need to replace one person in each theater, accomplished by adding a day onto each managers' schedule. That doesn't cost them obviously since managers are salaried and do not get paid hourly.

2)IATSE national having sworn off the projectionist trade. When we were fighting for our rights to organize in Danvers the National helped pay our organizing fees, yet will not help with the negotiations or the lockout. I recently read about a local in Canada working for Famous Players who were locked out, decided that the National was useless, tried to decertify the IATSE representation and join a more helpful National only to have the IATSE National "swoop down" and try and take the local's resources and assets for their own. The Boston local has faced the same problem with our union hall, the National has tried to take it away from us despite the fact it was bought by certain members and lent out to be used as the hall, not the property of the local.

3)Corporate GREED! My favorite. The general attitude with Loews (I have only worked a few days here and there for Showcase and GCC so I cannot attest to EVERYONE's attitude) is who cares about presentation when you are selling popcorn? I refer to Sean's post about "overhead" and how we should feel so bad for a multi-million dollar international corporation just because it filed bankruptcy to escape it's lease obligations in it's underperforming theaters. When you see a popcorn bag with something on it other than the Loews logo, that was paid for by someone else, basically given to the theater. Calvin Klein was the longest running campaign to do this. Now a bag of seed costs $50 and makes roughly 100 "Value" size popcorns at $4.50. Cost=$50, profit=$400. Now multiply that $400 by the 50 bags of seed we got on average in a week. $20,000 profit per week, and all we have calculated is the popcorn. Hell, during the re-organization Loews executives, the ones responsible for the over-building which led to these financial problems, petitioned for and won $4.4 million in bonuses to be paid to their executives. Now, don't think like $200 bonuses, we're talking 30-60% of their annual salaries ranging from $200,000-1.2 million! It's amazing the financial information you can get when a company goes into bankruptcy court.

4) Lack of government enforcement of labor law. It has taken the National Labor Relations Board over 2 years to make any headway in our 70 unfair labor practices. We have had people who weren't even licensed (I wasn't even told about a license until I joined the union!) operating the equipment. We have had serious OSHA violations which ended up in fines amounting to $16,000 but were reduced to $8,000. The local police will not let us leaflet on our job site, when Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act clearly states we can so long as the areas are normally accessable to the public (in other words, you couldn't leaflet inside a warehouse or on the grounds at the telephone company, etc.)

The truth about the theater industry is that it will pinch the penny until every aspect of quality is gone to a point where they even replace film with digital. Perhaps replace concession stands with vending machines or self-service lines like those in Stop&Shop and build robots to clean the theaters. Actually, cleaning the theaters can just be paid out to the low-cost non-english speaking exploited immigrants which currently do the overnight cleaning.

The best example of a chain not caring about quality is this lockout in Boston. We have been present at theaters when there were problems and we were holding rallies. I have people on the floorstaff whom we were organizing into their own union who have reported constantly on daily problems. When I was running the booth, I was lucky if I got called for a volume change, nevermind a film break, trailer on backwards, wrong format presentation, lights not up/down, and on and on. There was actually a brainwrap of Minority Report on OPENING WEEKEND so severe at their Fresh Pond theater in Cambridge that they had to cancel the rest of the night, saw the film off the brain, and order a whole new print!

One time, we had a manager come up and train before the union was even a glimmer in our eye, she damaged 12 prints totalling in $20,000 (a year's salary for me!) in damage which Loews got stuck with. But this is not the first time, I'm sure during the 10-month lockout in Chicago there were problems.

Now, as far as cost-effectiveness goes we were asking for $15/hour at my 20 screen, not even the price of 2 admissions. Now yes, I know, they make hardly anything on tickets, so say the price of 2 "Super Combos". There is a 12 screen which gets 18/hour in Somerville. How does this not seem worth it? More rationale: Before the we sought out the union, we would run the booth with around 150 hours of projectionist paid hours. Shortly after that number went down to 120, then to 110 where we were shortly before lockout. I myself ran the booth on Wednesdays and Thursdays which are our "print work" days for makeup/breakdown, trailer changes, etc. I had days where I built 10 prints, changed 20 trailers, programmed the times for the projectors to start (we have the Strong Automation system), did 10-15 print moves across a booth 1/8th of a mile long, broke down 5-10 prints AND ran 20 projectors. In any other booth they would have 2 or 3 people doing what I was doing, at 15-20/hour (in other locals much higher) but only paying me $10/hour, so why is it too costly to employ me now? Now that they are out of bankruptcy. Sigh. The best part is this is even wearing out the managers who would gladly have replaced us before the lockout. Since the lockout time 2 head managers and 2 "regular" managers have given their notice. Something I'm sure Sean M. can elaborate on now that he is quitting.

So, the stories just keep coming in. Lights didn't go down right, changeover shut in the middle of the movie, film breaks, scratched prints, backwards reels, brainwraps, etc. The only really sad part about this is the public won't speak up most of the time. They can't stop going because the nearest first run theater is in Revere (about 20 minutes away on highway) so they just deal with it and wait for their free pass to come back and watch another shitty show. Alas, what is a projectionist to do?

Well, that is my first post I guess. Can't seem to find any improvements, sorry if I ranted a bit, but this has been bottled up for a while now. It's good to see there are still honest hard working pro-union guys out there that care about quality. Looking forward to future involvement in the board, Read you later!

------------------
"The greatest thing you will ever learn, is just love and be loved in return."

Steve

You know you have a very common story, and one that many people would make comments regarding your struggle as you just being a "greedy troublemaker who just wants to stir up problems and get paid more". Corporate and *some* management sees unions as nothing more. They do not see why they should pay someone a living wage to do a good job and they completely fail to understand why such a peon in this world should be given any amount of respect at all. What matters to them is that THEY get more bonuses and salary increases, because you are just a worthless troublemaker.

Yet if these corporate geniuses were so smart, they would look at situations like yours and say "what in the hell is the manager doing to get them so angry that they are unionizing on us?" It really boils down to two things.

#1 Pay. You cannot live in this world without a decent wage.

#2 Treatment. No one wants to work for an A-hole.

In EVERY situation I've heard of where a theater decided to unionize, it was a direct reaction to bad management. Had you been paid well in the first place and been treated with appropriate respect, unionizing would have never even been a consideration, would it?