Broadway Talks Scheduled to Resume After Break

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON of the New York Times

Photo by Sara Krulwich of the New York Times

Published: November 28, 2007

Negotiations are scheduled to resume this morning between the stagehands’ union and the league representing Broadway theater owners and producers after a one-day hiatus that was described by a union spokesman as a “rain delay.”

A member of the stagehands’ union, on strike for 17 days, arrived at the Broadway Theater yesterday to join the picket line.

After a 12-hour round of talks that began Monday night — just 12 hours after a 20-hour session that started Sunday morning — league and union officials left the bargaining table a little after daybreak, and both sides issued statements that the talks had ended without a deal.

But within hours, they announced that they would be coming back to the table for more negotiations today, the 19th day of a strike that has left 26 Broadway shows dark and cost the city tens of millions of dollars.

The league announced that all performances of shows affected by the strike had been canceled through matinees today.

While the talks are apparently in the endgame, it’s an endgame that could last for quite a while, said officials who are involved with the negotiations on both sides.

Discussions about wage increases are usually considered the final stages of a labor negotiation, but the gap between the sides that has existed all along is still very much there, the officials said.

The situation is fairly simple: The league wants changes to a number of work rules in the stagehands’ contract, including restrictions on rehearsal time and other nonperformance-related duties.

The union, Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has agreed to many of the changes, or variations of them, and has set what it considers just compensation in wage increases and other areas for their agreeing to the rule changes. The league considers the union’s price tag unreasonable.

Tensions were apparently somewhat high in the talks, which have been taking place at the law offices of Proskauer Rose, the firm representing the league.

About 2 a.m. yesterday, a union official who was outside with other officials for a cigarette break got in a fistfight with a panhandler who was walking around 48th Street.

In the two and a half weeks of the strike, producers have lost out on millions, while stagehands — and the members of other Broadway unions, including actors, musicians, hair and makeup artists and ushers — have been getting by on strike pay, considerably less than what they would be making if they were at work.