IATSE-2nd2018_web

For the carpenters, scene shifters, flypeople, electricians,
property workers and other stagehands who worked on this production
and hundreds of others around the U.S. and Canada,
jobs were (with apologies to Thomas Hobbes) nasty, brutish and
short, albeit with long hours.
The most experienced stagehands received 50 cents a day.
They were expected to work around the clock, often without
meals or breaks. They labored in virtually every department
of the theater. After opening night, many stagehands who had
worked so hard to load the show were sent on their way, with no
promise of future work.
They even faced competition from unpaid child labor, as
young boys were often enlisted to help work the show or take
small parts as extras, all in exchange for “free” tickets.
To remedy these injustices ... to improve their horrible working
conditions ... and to empower stagehands to improve their
lives and have a voice in the workplace ... seventeen courageous
individuals made a bold decision. They would risk their jobs,
their homes, even their ability to work in their chosen field for
an idea whose time has come.
Their idea is embodied in a single word: Union.
And so on July 17, 1893, the group of seventeen met in New
York City as the delegates to the first convention of the National
Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes. 1 They came from
Boston, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, New
York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Syracuse. Together,
they pledged to support each other’s efforts to establish fair
wages and working conditions for their members.
For today’s 140,000 proud members of the union they
founded, no event had a greater, more long-lasting and transformative
impact on their craft, careers and well-being. For the
wages, benefits, working conditions, rights and voice on the job
that we enjoy today, every one of us owes these founders of our
great union an incalculable debt of thanks.
Tough as it is to organize, bargain and advocate in 2018, there
is simply no comparison to the state of our industry in 1893.
A small group of managers and producers had an iron grip on
most of the entertainment industry. They could fire workers for
any cause, let alone trying to form a union to advocate for better
pay and working conditions. (The National Labor Relations Act
was still forty-two years away.)
But they had already taken important strides toward the
goal of empowering all stagehands with union representation. In
1888, a predecessor to IATSE had been founded, the Theatrical
Protective Union of New York (now IATSE Local One). A work
stoppage at the Bowery Theatre, a walkout at Wallack’s Theatre
and a strike at the Academy of Music on 14th Street put muscle
behind the union’s demand of a dollar a show and 50 cents for
each load in and load out. Strikebreakers were hired. When a flat
dropped on acclaimed actor Louis James during Hamlet’s soliloquy,
the actor reportedly stormed into his dressing room and
told management that he would not return to the stage until the
professional stagehands were reinstated. They were. The bond
between stagehands and actors, still solid today, was made fast. 2
Five years later, joining together with sixteen other local
unions was the logical next step to build worker strength and
bargain on a more equal footing with a relatively small number
of powerful employers.
Delegates to the first Convention elected John G. Williams
president. It was an unpaid position at the time and typically
turned over annually at each convention. In 1894, delegates to
the second Convention elected Lee M. Hart of Chicago, who
1
In 2001, delegates to the International Convention changed “Employes” to “Employees” in the Alliance’s full name, reflecting the modern spelling of the word as
opposed to the old English version.
2
Source: https://iatselocalone.org/public/About-Local-One/History-of-Local-One
7