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by Joel Haskard
http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1054
Workers at all three of Landmark Theatre’s Twin Cities movie theaters recently filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. Employees of the Lagoon Cinema, Uptown Theatre and Edina Cinema have petitioned to join the United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 789 of South St. Paul, Minn. If successful, these workers will create the first wall to wall unionized movie theater in the State of Minnesota (some projectionists are currently unionized).
Workers, many of whom live in Minneapolis, site recent cutbacks in hours and unpredictable scheduling, plus a $6.80/hr wage cap as their main grievances. Landmark Theatres also doesn’t currently offer full-time positions to any of its regular local employees.
“We love our jobs. We love movies. We like the people we work with. We just want to be able keep our jobs, pay our rent and be appreciated for what we contribute,” Lagoon Cinema worker Emily Davis explained.
In September of 2003 Landmark Theatres was purchased by 2929 Entertainment Company which is co-owned by Dallas Maverick’s owner, Mark Cuban. Landmark Theatres Corporation was founded in 1974 and operates 57 theaters with 204 screens in 14 states across the United States.
“A lot of the employees have been here for years,” Uptown Theatre employee Dan Schneidkraut said. “We have a great relationship with the community. I guess when you come to the theaters it seems like a real progressive place, but it has gotten really far away from that. It’s kinda like the movie ‘Office Space’ now.”
The human resource manager at Landmark Theatre corporate headquarters was contacted and refused to comment for this article.
If UFCW Local 789 seems familiar to Pulse readers, it may be that they are the same organization that worked with the Borders in Uptown to successfully unionize. When asked why the Landmark workers wanted to form a union, Schneidkraut stated, “Our growling stomachs and empty bank accounts. Aside from that, the recent actions by both the transit workers union and Borders Bookstore employees definitely provided some inspiration. It takes a lot of courage to do what they did and it made us feel guilty about sitting around and complaining about our situation when there are laws and organizations that exist solely to prevent our kind of predicament.”
“We have petitions that will be out all over town, and we will be asking for signatures outside of the theaters on busy nights,” Schneidkraut added. “Sign the hell out of those things, spread the word to everyone you know and talk to us. Ask us questions. We need to know that people support us because what we are doing has never really been done before and we don’t want to get discouraged. Just beginning this process has helped our morale more than I could have imagined. We need the community to keep our spirits up during what is going to be a very arduous process.”
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