Broadway stagehands make big bucks: theatre managers
Sara Hall

NEW YORK—Facing the second day of a costly strike by Broadway stagehands, theatre managers on Sunday accused the workers of making unreasonable demands and being highly paid at up to 200,000 dollars per year.
The workers began walking picket lines on Saturday in the dispute over contract details, shutting down the lucrative entertainment business on Broadway and leaving thousands of tourists and theatre-goers disappointed.
The stagehands’ union “left the negotiating table and abruptly went on the picket line. They refused to budge on nearly every issue,” said Charlotte St. Martin, director of the League of American Theatres and Producers.
“The union wants you to believe they are the victims, the little guys,” St. Martin said in a statement, accusing the union of trying to protect “wasteful, costly and indefensible rules ... embedded like dead weights in contracts.”
Emphasizing that “we have the highest regard and respect for our stagehands,” St. Martin said “they are not ... the typical ‘little guys’ as far as compensation is concerned.
“Their ‘average annual earnings,’ in salary and benefits, is more than 150,000 dollars, with many stagehands earning more than 200,000 dollars.”
They “should be well paid, and will remain the best paid in this industry in the world. We simply don’t want to be compelled to hire more workers than needed and pay them when there is no work for them to do,” St. Martin said.
The statement highlighted a number of grievances, including how a job like moving a piano “takes a few minutes ... but we are forced to pay stagehands for four hours of work,” meaning that many stagehands “add another 50,000 dollars (per year) to their six figure salaries from moving pianos or mopping floors.”
The stagehands’ union meanwhile accused managers of trying to slash wages and refusing to share skyrocketing profits with workers.
“Theater owners and producers are demanding a 38% cut in our jobs and wages,” said a statement by the union, Local One. “Broadway is a billion dollar a year industry and has never been more profitable than now.