Sheesh! This would not be good! We were thinking about going to see "Wicked" in the spring, I hope it's as short as the last one.
The Broadway stagehands’ union received strike authorization from its parent union last night, and appeared to be on the verge of a walkout against the Broadway producers and theater owners.
The authorization came after two days of contentious negotiations between the union and the producers’ league. A note appeared on the union’s Web site around 8:30 p.m. saying that Thomas C. Short, the president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the parent union, had granted strike authorization to Local One. It also said that Mr. Short would advise James J. Claffey, the president of Local One, “as to the time and date when the strike will begin.”
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If the stagehands do walk out, it will be the second time in less than five years that much of Broadway has been shut down by a strike. The musicians’ strike in 2003, which lasted four days, was the first time in nearly three decades that Broadway was shut down by a labor dispute.
A strike would cause almost all Broadway theaters to go dark, shuttering 27 shows now running. Broadway’s four nonprofit theaters — plus the New Amsterdam, the Circle in the Square, the Helen Hayes and the Hilton Theater — all operate under separate contracts with the union, and the shows in them would remain up and running.
