Landmark Theaters Employee Union

Posted on:
http://www.iww.org/en/node/2760

Submitted by bruce on Sat, 08/05/2006 - 3:16pm.

Workers at Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley and all Landmark Cinema employees nation wide are about to receive a pay increse.
At Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley the starting wage goes up to $8 per
hour from $7.25.  That's if the workers choose to accept it. Landmark
attorney Tom Pavone sent a letter announcing the pay raises to the IWW
along with spread sheet data showing the increase for each worker.

The
IWW-Shattuckunion considers this to be a clear demonstration of union
power and will continue to press the company for gains in benefits and
improvments in working conditions.  The IWW in the Bay Area
along with union workers at Kendall Square cinema in Cambridge Mass.,
are the first two Landmark Cinemas to go union.  There are
approximately 60 Landmark theaters in total. 

IWW-Shattuckunion will hold a rally in front of the Shattuck Cinema on September 1st at 6:30 pm.

One year ago the Kendall Square Cinema staff voted 17-1 to join UFCW Local 791.  Today, we
still do not have a contract. However, with 65% of the staff involved in the vote still working at the Kendall, new employees taking part in the process, negotiations continuing at a regular pace,  plus our new drum-beating, song-singing, BFFs at the Shattuck …we’re still going strong.

Maybe if we had reached this point without support of patrons, local activist groups and all the well wishes from you all who read this site, or maybe if another Landmark hadn’t voted to join a union, we could be dismissed as just a bunch of disgruntled
ruffians and scalawags.

That’s not the case, give or take a scalawag.

Over the past three years, three Landmarks held union elections.  While we’ve all worked together, all three discussed unionizing before contacting each other. Theatres in Minneapolis, Cambridge and Berkeley are reacting to cultural shift taking place in the service industry.  We don’t live in a vacuum.   Look at Borders and Starbucks.  Check out what Chicago is doing.  And the current minimum wage increases being debated.

And to everyone else who has been asking about organizing, why not?  What do you have to loose?  Just a $7.00 an hour job that may or may not give you a raise, where you are an “at-will” employee who can be fired at the
drop of a hat (literally, they could fire you for dropping your hat there's nothing you can do about it).

BERKELEY 6:30 PM -- This afternoon workers at Landmark Shattuck
Cinemas voted an outstanding 22 to 2
in favor of unionization. Despite new promises by Landmark and an attempt by
CEO Bill Banowsky to thwart the union attempt, workers at the Shattuck say
they've never really been worried about the vote.

"I've felt extremely confidant that the union would go through since
the beginning." said Ryan Hatt, cinema employee age 21. "Support has
been almost unanimous since day one. There was no contest, if you would have
asked me two months ago I could've guaranteed a landslide victory."

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